From urban to highly urban: Internal migration patterns of sexual minorities in Brazil

Abstract

This paper analyzes the migration patterns of gay men and lesbians in Brazil and seeks to show if they differ from those of heterosexuals. The common understanding is that gay men and lesbians are concentrated in more developed parts of the country especially in major cities. However, in this study, I show that gay men and lesbians migrate mostly to medium‐sized cities, as do heterosexuals following the internal migration patterns in recent decades in Brazil. Although, compared to heterosexuals, gay men and lesbians still migrate more to large cities. Therefore, when moving beyond the Global North, the migration patterns of gay men and lesbians differ with an emphasis of flows to medium‐sized cities as opposed to concentrating to larger cities like in the Global North. Lastly, the results show that gay men, lesbians and heterosexuals have different migration patterns suggesting that sexuality could be a defining factor in internal migration.

Talking population geographies and a ‘love letter’ to the journal

“…12 We have yet to locate anything approximating a 'trans population geography', but there is a small body of work on trans demographics (e.g., Meier & Labuski, 2013). In the complex arena of sexual rather than (or entangled with) gender identity, there are intimations of a gay and lesbian population geography in the journal (Brown & Knopp, 2006;Cooke, 2005;Fortes de Lena, 2022;Wimark & Fortes de Lena, 2022;Wimark & Östh, 2014), although a more deep-seated 'queering' of the subdiscipline is arguably still awaited. 13 For all that, explicitly Foucauldian treatments in the journal remain limited.…”