Pathways of Desire: The Sexual Migration of Mexican Gay Men

With Pathways of Desire, Héctor Carrillo brings us into the lives of Mexican gay men who have left their home country to pursue greatersexualautonomy andsexualfreedom in the United States.The groundbreaking ethnographic study brings our attention to the full arc ofthese men'smigration experiences, from their upbringing in Mexican cities and towns, to their cross-border journeys, to their incorporation into urban gay communities in American cities, andtheir sexual and romantic relationships with American men.These men'sdiverse and fascinatingstoriesdemonstrate the intertwiningofsexual, economic, and familial motivations for migration.Further, Carrillo shows thatsexual globalizationmust be regarded as a bidirectional, albeit uneven, process of exchange between countriesin the global north and the global south.With this approach, Carrillo challengesthe view that gay men from countries like Mexico would logically want to migrate to a "more sexually enlightened" country like the United States—a partial and limited understanding, giventhe dynamic character of sexuality incountries such as Mexico, whicharebecoming more accepting ofsexual diversity. Pathways of Desire alsoprovides ahelpfulanalyticalframeworkfor thesimultaneous considerationofstructuralandcultural factorsin social scientific studies of sexuality. Carrillo explainsthepatterns ofcross-cultural interaction thatsexual migrationgeneratesand—at themost practicallevel—showshowthe intricacies of cross-cultural sexual and romantic relationsmay affectthe sexualhealth andHIVriskoftransnational immigrant populations.