ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on findings from ethnographic research among male sex workers in the Dominican Republic who work in the borderlands between globalized tourism areas and surrounding local communities. It takes as its point of departure the notion that experiences of globalization can be profoundly shaped by local or sub-national shifts in the social geography of space. When entry into particular social spaces comes to ‘stand in’ for global experiences, people may symbolically transport themselves into the ‘global’ arena through entry into these spaces. Further, we argue that these vicarious global experiences have a particular quality in tourism areas, where impoverished service workers who are functionally excluded from global mobility intermingle with a wide range of global ‘elites’, for whom such mobility is a taken-for-granted source of pride and modern social capital. Tourism areas are therefore particular kinds of borderlands between the local and the global, creating experiences that are bounded by geography and stark social hierarchies (localizing effects), while allowing for play and a temporary, partial escape from normative constraints as one ‘opens up’ to the global (globalizing effects). These tensions between the localizing and globalizing effects of tourism areas
have become more salient in the past few decades due to dramatic changes in Caribbean social geographies. As the tourism industry has become the primary economic driver of Caribbean economies, a growing proportion of local populations are making a marginal living by traversing the boundaries that separate two very different lived realities: those of foreigners who travel to coastal areas in search of sun and sand, and those of the local service providers who serve these temporary visitors. The touristic borderlands that form the terrain in which these two populations interact are often located within gated communities or spatially bounded areas characterized by strong social and economic inequalities; low wages and job insecurity for service providers; a diverse informal ‘pleasure industry’ that provides intimate services such as massage, hair braiding, cultural exchange, and sex; intense population mobility and mixing; and a cultural climate that is markedly distinct from other parts of the local or national environment (Padilla 2007a). We therefore define touristic borderlands as spaces with the localizing and globalizing characteristics described above, and which tend to
exist as geographically separable terrains in which the logic, erotic climate, and instrumental rationality of the tourism industry pervade nearly all features of social life. While global epidemiological research on HIV has shown consistent associa-
tions between migration and viral transmission (see, for example, Bronfman et al. 1989; Jochelson et al. 1991; Broring and Van Duifhuizen 1993; Decosas 1998; Benoît 1999), relatively little ethnographic work has been conducted to understand how migratory environments are understood or experienced as social spaces, a fact which reduces the relevance of much research for the design of meaningful programs or interventions. In addition, much existing research on HIV and migration neglects a consideration of tourism areas as particular kinds of destinations of labour migration, and the lack of such research is particularly pronounced in the Caribbean. While a complete analysis of the characteristics of touristic borderlands is
beyond the scope of this chapter, here we reflect on the social and sexual integration of touristic borderlands within the actual and fantasized travels of young Dominican male sex workers. In exploring how men encounter and experience these spaces, we draw upon ethnographic data derived from a larger anthropological research project led by the first author (Padilla 2007b). Data include ethnographic observations within social networks of male sex workers, in-depth interviews with 72 male sex workers, and an extensive demographic, behavioural and social survey with 200 sex workers. This chapter draws primarily on an analysis of the in-depth interviews. Data collection for these interviews occurred in 2001, and was assisted by the first author’s affiliation with the Dominican nongovernmental organization, Amigos Siempre Amigos, and involved snowball sampling male sex workers through a wide range of social networks that were identified through a first phase of the study. Table 7.1 summarizes the characteristics of the in-depth interview sample, by research site.
