Positively Belonging in Peru?: Venezuelan Migrants with HIV/AIDS at the intersections of Pharmaceutical Citizenship, Biosocialities, Race and Biomedicine.

The feminisation of HIV is an increasing issue of concern, especially amongst Latin American migrant populations.

As the predominant demographic of those living with HIV in the region are men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM), there is a gendered Diversity & Inclusion gap.

Women living with HIV have different needs & experiences than MSM, however due to gender-based constraints (e.g.childcare, home-based-working) they are less present/visible in my research environment, as well as within local NGO activities/projects.

How the activity will look: Working alongside the United-Nations-Population-Fund (UNFPA), this two-day participatory workshop will bring female migrants living with HIV in Peru together to discuss and ‘story-tell’ specific experiences and needs that may be overlooked due to lifestyle constraints limiting participation in research and NGO projects.

Relevant stakeholders will be invited and, learning horizontally from the experiences of migrants, we will collaboratively discuss how to address the feminisation of HIV in migrant populations.

We will professionally produce an informative-animation to disseminate outcomes/stories widely and easily through social-media.

This will ensure that a) research environment and NGO activities are more hospitable to the gender-specific barriers to participation faced by migrant women; b) migrants themselves have opportunities for their voices to be heard and fed- back into research and NGO activities.

What we will achieve for: Diversity & Inclusion Initiatives: Greater understanding of the migrant-based feminisation-of-HIV amongst relevant stakeholders, and greater inclusion of women in research where they are often left-out due to practical constraints.

Participants/Collaborators: Prioritisation of experiences and voices of female migrants living with HIV, thereby empowering them.