Migrant and HIV-positive women in Switzerland: the strategies of the secrecy action: Gender Campus

Migrant and HIV-positive women in Switzerland: the strategies of the secrecy action

Thirty years after the beginning of the epidemic, HIV/aids is still considered a stigmatizing illness. Carrying an invisible stigma, HIV-positive women from sub-Saharan Africa carefully manage the information on their HIV status. The aim of this paper is to address the dynamics of the “secrecy action” that these women demonstrate, pointing out their contextual and relational dimensions. We analyze the strategies that they implement to dissimulate the clues that could allow identifying their HIV status. Whether they are clothing strategies, strategies of conversion or of repair, anticipatory or situational strategies, they show the preventive actions in which these women engage themselves, in order to avoid risk of rejection and to increase their chances of remaining in the host country.