Does Social Capital Act as a Buffer Against HIV Risk Among Migrant Men in Sub-Saharan Africa?

The 2007 World Bank data on HIV/AIDS for sub-Saharan Africa indicates that 22.5 million adults and children over 15 are living with HIV, including 1.7 million new infections. AIDS killed approximately 2.3 million people in the same year, making this region by far the worst affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. This paper proposes a macro-level model for understanding the spread of disease within the context of migration. We use social capital theory to generate a framework for exploring how migration might serve as a conduit for the disease transmission. Specifically, we investigated male migrants in the Republic of Angola and argued that a migrant laborer's movement away from his village diminishes his social capital in terms of social support, norms, and networks while stresses from migration could prove to be conducive to the spread of the HIV virus. We use univariate, bivariate, and multivariate analyses to explore the relationship between migration and HIV risk while considering social capital as the intervening factor. Social capital is conceptualized as a combination of social engagement, social support, and personto-person contact. To this end, this study analyzes secondary data collected on a sample of migrants in Angola. Two hypotheses are tested: Migrants have lower social capital than nonmigrants and lower levels of social capital are related to higher risky behaviors. Results indicate that migrants have a lower level of social capital and migrants with lower social capital tended to have higher risky behavior.