Sexual migration, cross-cultural sexual encounters, and sexual health

Sexual migration, a concept developed recently in the sexuality studies literature, is defined as international relocation that is motivated, directly or indirectly, by the sexuality of those who migrate. I argue that to conceptualize sexual migration fully, we need to consider a number of dimensions associated with this kind of transnational movement, including sexual immigrants’ transportation of practices across international borders, their lives in their places of origin, their exposure to local and foreign sexual ideologies prior to migrating, their agency in adapting and appropriating ideologies and practices prevalent in both home and host countries, and the transformations in sexual identities and behaviors that they experience after migration. I present two case studies that illustrate these points, analyze the conceptual relationship between sexual migration and sex tourism, and discuss the effects of sexual migration on immigrants’ sexual health.