Title: Intimate Negotiations
Description: This ethnographic project examines sexual communication and negotiation in the context of the political economy of migration. Using participant observation as well as in-depth and life history interviews and secondary sources, the research goals are to explicate the meanings and practices related to gender and sexuality among the transnational population of mid-life heterosexual Mexicans in New York; map ideologies and practices regarding family size and family planning, including histories of negotiation within the context of relationships and couples, embedded within processes of sexual socialization and historical-political-economic structures in the selected population; map experiences with accessing health care services, in the context of this community of low-wage, undocumented, uninsured workers; and explicate the relationships between gender, sexuality, reproduction, parenthood, and labor migration, within the political economy of Mexican migration to New York. The research population consists of Mexican-born women and men in Queens, New York City, ages twenty-two to forty-five.

This project aims to contribute to our understanding of how culture changes through interactions between agents and structures; to contribute to an area of sexuality research that has received insufficient attention, which intersects the fields of gender, migration, demography, and health; to increase our understanding of sexual communication among mid-life cohabiting adult migrants; to identify gaps between service needs and utilization; and to offer suggestions on how to improve health programs and services for this emerging immigrant population.