"Sexual Citizenship in Migrant Latin American Communities"
Dr. Estefanía Simich Muñoz -Immigrant Appreciation Day Event
Wednesday, May 1, 2024 · 11 - 11:50 AM
In-Person
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Library and Gallery, Albin O. Kuhn
Join us for our opening keynote speaker event for Immigrant Appreciation Day.
Flyer Attached. Light refreshments will be served.
If reposting, please use this event page for RSVP information.
Dr. Simich Muñoz is a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor, Board Approved Supervisor in Maryland and an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist and Supervisor. She owns a bilingual sexuality practice in Baltimore where she advocates for sex positivity and healing ancestral wounds related to sexuality within the Latinx community. She is also the Chair of the Sex Therapy Certification Committee at the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists. As an immigrant in the United States, Dr. Simich Muñoz passion lies in supporting migrant populations who have experienced violence and sexual trauma. She started her journey as a sexuality professional working with underserved Latinx youth in Washington, DC by providing sex positive education and resources to youth in the community. She currently advocates as an immigration court expert on gender violence and LGBTQI+ violence cases involving Latin American immigrants. In the past she has been in the role of Clinical Director in an Intimate Partner Violence, Human Trafficking and Sexual Assault non-profit, and she has been a consultant for the governmental and non-profit sectors in Peru, The Netherlands, and the US. As an academic, Dr. Simich Muñoz focuses on how sexual citizenship is experienced in migrant populations.
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In 2021 a narrative-based study was conducted to identify the conceptualization of sexual citizenship among migrant Peruvian women residing in the U.S. Sexual citizenship is described as the access to sexual rights, the expression of sexual desire, the autonomy over one’s sexual identity and the intersection with the state (Richardson, 2015), and to what extent this individual is treated as a citizen who has rights within that system. The main question addressed in this study was: How do migration experiences of Peruvian women to the United States discursively position their sexual citizenship differently across their journey?
This question was explored through experiences before migration, during migration journey, adaptation to a new environment, and settlement in the United States. Based on this research the construction of Peruvian women’s sexual citizenship was influenced by Peru’s national conditions and the introduction of neoliberalism which further exacerbated the unsafety of the social environment for women. Furthermore, similar examples of national conditions such as gender violence, the introduction of neoliberalism, and the push for necropolitics in other Latin American nations have influenced the way that women navigate their daily lives as well as how they experience their sexual citizenship as migrant women in the United States.