Online Event
Did being gay prompt Mexican men to migrate to the United States in the second half of the twentieth century? In Pathways of Desire, sociologist Héctor Carrillo argues that in the 1980s and 1990s the desire to escape job discrimination and familial disapproval prompted many gay Mexicans to leave for what they believed would be the greater sexual and cultural freedom of the United States. In Undocumented Lives, historian Ana Minian argues that from the 1960s to 1980s, queer men were less likely to migrate than their straight peers because they believed their jobs and lives (including their sexual lives) were better in their hometowns than they would be in the US. In this conversation, moderated by George Chauncey (Columbia), they will present their major research findings and discuss both the disciplinary differences and late twentieth-century transnational cultural changes in Mexico and the US that may account for their different conclusions.
