Structure, Culture, and HIV/STI Vulnerabilities among Migrant Women in Russia
ISBN: 978-1-78743-062-4, eISBN: 978-1-78743-061-7
Publication date: 7 January 2019
Abstract
The Russian Federation is the scene of one of the fastest-growing HIV epidemics in the world. In dialogue with the scholarship on gendered connections between migration and HIV/STIs, this study employs unique survey and qualitative data to examine HIV/STI-related risks and attitudes among working migrant women from three Central Asian countries and their native counterparts in three Russian cities. The analyses focus on involvement in risky sexual relationships, negotiation of trust and safer sexual practices in permanent partnerships, worries about HIV infection, and experience of HIV testing by comparing natives and migrants as well as migrants of different legal statuses. The results suggest that while migrant women are generally less likely to engage in risky behavior, they are also less able to establish trust and to negotiate safer sex within their permanent partnerships, compared to native women. Migrants are less worried about HIV risks than are native women. Finally, migrant women are less likely to get tested for HIV than natives, but the analyses also point to a particular disadvantage of migrants with temporary or irregular legal status. The findings are interpreted within the structural and cultural constraints that shape migrant women’s lives in Russia and similar migrant-receiving contexts.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgment
Data collection for this study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (USA) and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research under Round I of the US–Russia collaboration on the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS and comorbidities (Project number RUB1-31086-MO-12).
Citation
Agadjanian, V. and Zotova, N. (2019), "Structure, Culture, and HIV/STI Vulnerabilities among Migrant Women in Russia", Immigration and Health (Advances in Medical Sociology, Vol. 19), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 47-67. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1057-629020190000019003
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019 Emerald Publishing Limited