TY - JOUR
T1 - "I am tired but if i don't try to have sex, my wife will think i've been fooling around in the city"
T2 - Work, migration, and sex among vietnamese migrant laborers
AU - Nguyen, Huong Ngoc
AU - Hardesty, Melissa
AU - Hong, Khuat Thu
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - Mostly operating from a risk and risk-reduction paradigm, existing research on migrants in Vietnam tends to conceptualize sex and risky sexual behaviors as isolated life domains. This study begins to develop a contextually rich understanding of migrants' sex lives by examining the relationships among sex, work, and the constant pendulum-like migrating movements of 23 Vietnamese married migrants in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Using data from in-depth interviews, it was found that most participants had no sex in the city; this was followed by visits to the home village, where they had sex with their spouses as often as possible to make up for the "long drought" in the city. Within this sexual schema, sex came secondary, and even peripherally, to migrants' working lives; thus, exhaustion from work was cited by migrants as the overwhelming factor leading to their sexual problems. This study suggests that migrants' intimate lives are more strongly linked to their working lives than has previously been recognized, and that their sexual behaviors should be viewed in tandem with the hardships of their working lives.
AB - Mostly operating from a risk and risk-reduction paradigm, existing research on migrants in Vietnam tends to conceptualize sex and risky sexual behaviors as isolated life domains. This study begins to develop a contextually rich understanding of migrants' sex lives by examining the relationships among sex, work, and the constant pendulum-like migrating movements of 23 Vietnamese married migrants in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Using data from in-depth interviews, it was found that most participants had no sex in the city; this was followed by visits to the home village, where they had sex with their spouses as often as possible to make up for the "long drought" in the city. Within this sexual schema, sex came secondary, and even peripherally, to migrants' working lives; thus, exhaustion from work was cited by migrants as the overwhelming factor leading to their sexual problems. This study suggests that migrants' intimate lives are more strongly linked to their working lives than has previously been recognized, and that their sexual behaviors should be viewed in tandem with the hardships of their working lives.
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U2 - 10.1080/00224499.2012.663419
DO - 10.1080/00224499.2012.663419
M3 - Article
C2 - 22524412
AN - SCOPUS:84881335761
SN - 0022-4499
VL - 50
SP - 548
EP - 559
JO - Journal of Sex Research
JF - Journal of Sex Research
IS - 6
ER -