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Canadian epidemiological data suggest an increasing number of HIV infections among people from HIV-endemic countries, including sub-Saharan Africa. Currently, there are few studies that focus on the lived experience of HIV illness among Canadian residents of African ancestry. The purpose of this paper is to study the lived experiences of African immigrants living with HIV in Canada, using narrative inquiry methodology.

This qualitative study focussed on the experiences of sub-Saharan African immigrants living with HIV in Alberta, Canada. Using the philosophical underpinnings of narrative inquiry methodology (Clandinin, 2013), three African immigrants living with HIV in Alberta contributed to this study over an extended period of time. Between five and six interviews were conducted with each participant, over a period of 12 months. Interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed, and negotiated with each participant during analysis to uncover the experience and meaning of living with HIV as African immigrants in Canada.

The researchers found several narrative threads related to: stigma, social, and family exclusion; as well as HIV illness as a complex personal, familial, and social experience. Also, narratives across different geographic and social spaces shaped the complex experience among African immigrants living with HIV in their new host country of Canada.

The authors recognize that the sample size, though appropriate for narrative inquiry study, was small. The intention with this research was not to generalize findings to the broader African immigrant community that is affected by HIV illness in Canada. Rather, the intent was to demonstrate a deeper understanding of lived experience, among African immigrants living with HIV in Canada.

The findings show the complex personal, familial, and societal factors that shape the experience of living with HIV and HIV-related stigma among African immigrants. It is important to understand such factors and the experience of HIV-related stigma because such experiences impact access to health and social services, as well as health and social outcomes of immigrants living with HIV.

This is the first Canadian study to examine lived experience of African immigrants living with HIV in Canada. This study demonstrates a deep understanding of lived experience, among African immigrants living with HIV in Canada. Complex personal, familial, and societal factors shape the experience of living with HIV and HIV-related stigma. Based on the findings of this study, further research is needed to: study more closely the familial contexts of African families affected by HIV in Canada; explore the social and political landscapes that impact the experience of HIV illness and related stigma in Canada, in the context of migration and settlement; and examine the relationship between these experiences and the health and social outcomes of African immigrants living with HIV in Canada.

The basic family unit is an important institution whose scope and function has changed greatly over the past one hundred years. The contemporary form of the family is understood as “conjugal and nuclear.” This implies a greater emphasis than previously on individual roles and relationships within the private sphere of the contemporary family. Additionally, the family is understood to have lost many of its former functions, further separating itself from the external world. The separation has further stripped the family from many of the roles it once had, with traditional familial functions performed by other institutions.

The stigmatisation of COVID-19 patients or suspected cases is a matter of grave concern across the world, including India. Today, COVID-19 patients or suspected cases are being stigmatised or labelled as “corona carrier” and “corona spreader” because of which they are facing social rejection, mental torture, abusive behaviour and violence in the society. The objectives of the present study are to examine the nature of stigma construction in Indian society during COVID-19 pandemic and to explore its outcome on the well-being of corona-affected people.

The study uses content analysis method to explain the COVID-19 stigma. The data have been collected from various Indian newspapers and magazines. The researchers have analysed the content of the news items related to social stigma which were collected from March to September 2020.

The study finds that COVID-19 patients or suspected cases are insulted and discriminated rudely by their family members and neighbours, and in many cases, they are not allowed to enter the house or the neighbourhood. The study has also pointed out that many COVID-19 patients or suspected cases have committed suicide as a result of being stigmatisation. Finally, the study explores that this social stigma is spreading due to fake news, lack of awareness and fear of corona infection.

This is an original paper which is based on content analysis. The present study focuses on the social stigma in Indian society during COVID-19. Basically, the present study has applied the theory of Erving Goffman which is based on stigma to examine the nature and problem of social stigma during COVID-19. The study has found that there are three types of social stigma during the corona pandemic: self-made stigma, family-made stigma and society-made stigma.

Racialized minority and newcomer communities are over-represented in positive HIV cases in Canada. Stigma has been identified as one of the barriers to HIV prevention, testing, and treatment. Faith, media, and social justice sectors have historically served a vital role in promoting health issues in these communities. However, they have been relatively inactive in addressing HIV-related issues. The purpose of this paper is to report on the results of an exploratory study that engaged faith, media, and social justice leaders in the African-Caribbean, Asian, and Latino communities in Toronto.

This study used a qualitative interpretive design and focus groups to explore the challenges and opportunities in addressing HIV stigma. A total of 23 people living with HIV and 22 community leaders took part in seven focus groups. Intersectionality was used as an analytical lens to examine the social processes that perpetuate HIV stigma.

This paper focuses on the perspectives of community leaders. Five themes were identified: misconception of HIV as a gay disease; moralistic religious discourses perpetuate HIV stigma; invisibility of HIV reinforces community denial; need to promote awareness and compassion for people with HIV; and the power of collective community efforts within and across different sectors.

Although affected communities are faced with many challenges related to HIV stigma, effective change may be possible through concerted efforts championed by people living with HIV and community leaders. One important strategy identified by the participants is to build strategic alliances among the HIV, media, faith, social justice, and other sectors. Such alliances can develop public education and HIV champion activities to promote public awareness and positive emotional connections with HIV issues, challenge HIV stigma and related systems of oppression, and engage young people in HIV championship.

Lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) employees constitute one of the largest, but least studied, minority groups in the workforce. This article examines what we know, and what we need to know, about the career and workplace experiences of this understudied population. The construct of sexual identity is defined, followed by a review of the research on sexual orientation in the workplace. Then an analysis of the differences between LGB employees and other stigmatized groups is presented. Three unique challenges facing LGB employees are identified, and conceptual models are developed that explain underlying processes. Finally, career theories are critically analyzed, and an identity-based longitudinal theory of LGB careers is presented.

We argue that self-stigma places patients on a path of marginalization throughout their life course leading to a negative cycle of opportunity and advancement. Mental health patients with higher levels of self-stigma tend to have much lower self-esteem, efficacy, and personal agency; therefore, they will be more inclined to adopt role-identities at the periphery of major social institutions, like those of work, family, and academia. Similarly, the emotions felt when enacting such roles may be similarly dampened.

Utilizing principles from affect control theory (ACT) and the affect control theory of selves (ACTS), we generate predictions related to self-stigmatized patients’ role-identity adoption and emotions. We use the Indianapolis Mental Health Study and Interact, a computerized version of ACT and ACTS, to generate empirically based simulation results for patients with an affective disorder (e.g., major depression and bipolar disorder) with comparably high or low levels of self-stigmatization.

Self-stigma among affective patients reduces the tendency to adopt major life course identities. Self-stigma also affects patients’ emotional expression by compelling patients to seek out interactions that make them feel anxious or affectively neutral.

This piece has implications for the self-stigma and stigma literatures. It is also one of the first pieces to utilize ACTS, thereby offering a new framework for understanding the self-stigma process. We offer new hypotheses for future research to test with non-simulation-based data and suggest some policy implications.

This chapter responds to calls to “reclaim” the work of Erving Goffman, and specifically his conceptualization of stigma, arguing that Goffman’s ideas can inform a critical social theory of mental illness in sport. The analysis pays particular attention to the challenges to social identity for those experiencing mental illness stigma, the role of personal identity in negotiating mental illness stigma, and strategies for stigma reduction including the adoption of stigma symbols.

The first section of the chapter revisits the concept of stigma, before proceeding to relate this to mental illness stigma as applied to sport. The second section overviews several high-profile cases of mental illness stigma of elite athletes, before presenting some examples of campaigns to address the perceived stigma related to mental health issues in sport.

The chapter proposes that Goffman’s work maintains relevance when related to social contexts other than those directly observed by him, and that the conceptualization of stigma helps understanding of, and challenges to, mental illness stigma in sport.

While sport continues to be proposed as an arena for positive character development, analysis informed by the work of Erving Goffman demonstrates that the culture of sport provides a context within which athletes experiencing mental health issues may be stigmatized. This, in turn, undermines the potential for them to secure the health care that they need, with participation and performance often taking precedence over well-being, even in the campaigns ostensibly designed to address mental illness stigma.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how and with what reasons, divorced women respond to harassment they face at work, within a patriarchal culture of stigma and prejudice about divorced women. This inquiry will be performed by integrating stigma-management and identity-management research with research on responding to and coping with harassment.

Using qualitative research methodology, semi-structured, in-depth interviews were carried out with 12 divorced working women.

Findings of the study illuminate the manner in which stigma management interacts with harassment coping/respond mechanisms in dynamic ways, leading to complex response strategies for divorced women, which can be broadly identified as stigma-focused response strategies and harassment-focused response strategies. A strategy typology – consisting of seven major quadrants and nine major strategies therein – is thus provided, explaining how divorced women struggle to maintain their identity and manage stigma while coping with harassment.

The paper point towards the need for organisations to be mindful of the struggles of stigmatised individuals in coping and responding to harassment, and their distinct situations and experiences in developing and implementing interventions such as training, awareness creation and policies on harassment.

While research on reaction to harassment is abundant, how divorced women – as a stigmatised and marginalised group of individuals in society – cope with harassment at work is almost non-existent. The present study fills this gap by exploring harassment responses at the nexus of stigma and identity management.

Goffman (1963) provided us with an explanation of the operation of stigma in microinteractional contexts. However, his definition and explication of the experiences and processes of stigmatization predate what many consider to be the most major shift in discourse and categorization to develop in the twentieth century – the rise of the language of risk. In this chapter, I discuss the intersections of risk discourse and stigma. Drawing on my empirical research with families affected by incarceration, I illustrate the shift toward structural stigma as an exercise of power and governance. I argue that contemporary “common-sense” understandings and usage of the term stigma emphasize negative individual interactions while ignoring the ways that risk categorizations, even in seemingly benign contexts, create structural disadvantage and serve to “other” stigmatized individuals. Singular focus on stigma at the microinteractional level, particularly in destigmatization campaigns, obscures the pervasive structural stigma couched in the language of risk management that permits systematic marginalization.

We present a model of reappropriation, the phenomenon whereby a stigmatized group revalues an externally imposed negative label by self-consciously referring to itself in terms of that label. The model specifies the causes and consequences of reappropriation as well as the essential conditions necessary for reappropriation to be effective. To place the concept of reappropriation in proper context, we begin by discussing the roots of stigma and the mediating role played by social categorization and social identity in the realization of stigma’s deleterious effects. We also discuss the strategies available to both individuals and groups by which stigmatized individuals can enhance their devalued social identities. We provide a discussion of two historical cases of reappropriation and some preliminary empirical evidence concerning the consequences of self-labeling and attempting to reappropriate a stigmatizing label. Finally we discuss the implications of the model for groups and teams, both within and outside of organizations.