Negotiating belonging, risk and agency: discourses of sexuality among young people with migration experience in Southern Sweden

The study explores sexuality discourses among young people with migration experience in Sweden. Using a qualitative design and a combination of convenience, snowball and purposive sampling, twenty interviews were conducted between October 2021 and August 2023. Participants self-identified as women (8) and men (12), were aged between 17 and 26, and had migrated to Sweden between two months to 16 years ago. Drawing on concepts of cultural and bio-sexual citizenship, discourse analysis was used to identify their interpretative repertoires regarding discourses of sexuality. Three interpretative repertoires were identified. First, there was the positioning repertoire, in which sexuality appears as a border marker for belonging, reflecting how participants positioned themselves regarding discursive constructions of sexuality in mainstream Swedish society and their ethnicised migrant communities. Secondly, there was the risk repertoire, in which sex was constructed as a risk and associated with negative sexual and reproductive health outcomes. This repertoire emphasised the notion of sexual responsibility, entailing adherence to preventive measures, responsible decisions, and maturity. Thirdly, there was the sexual agency repertoire, which referred to how participants negotiated sexual agency at the societal and interpersonal levels. Each repertoire elucidated a hybrid conceptualisation of sexuality through which participants made sense of their sexuality-related experiences and views.