Nathaniel M. Lewis

Mental health in sexual minorities: Recent indicators, trends, and their relationships to place in North America and Europe

This meta-analysis featuring 12 national adult studies and 16 state/regional youth studies of sexuality and mental health finds that sexual minorities--as a likely consequence of place-contingent minority stress--experience mental health outcomes such as depression, anxiety, and suicide ideation much more frequently than their heterosexual counterparts. By interrogating the geographic variations in the findings, such as high rates of poor mental health outcomes in the United Kingdom, large gay-heterosexual disparities in the Netherlands, and lower and improving rates of both outcomes and risk factors in Vermont and British Columbia, this study asserts that policy regimes, health programming, and the ways in which sexual minorities are constructed in places all contribute to their mental health.

A New Rubric for ‘Creative City’ Potential in Canada’s Smaller Cities

In Canada and elsewhere, Richard Florida’s ‘creative capital’ model has gained considerable influence over urban policy and development strategies. The model posits that most cities can be economically successful if they become diverse, high-tech and amenity-rich. The way that creative capital is theorised, quantified and applied, however, tends to marginalise smaller Canadian cities. We use recent census data and qualitative evidence from a study on the social dynamics of economic performance in Kingston, Ontario, to argue that a new rubric based on livability and sustainability provides a more optimistic and empowering picture of creative potential in smaller Canadian cities. Critiques of creative capital thus far have tended to discredit the model entirely, leaving large cities as winners by default in an irrational capitalist system and small cities with few options. Instead, the goal of this paper is to change fundamentally the parameters of the creativity debate for smaller cities by offering new ways to conceptualise and operationalise development in the ‘new economy’.

Rupture, resilience, and risk: relationships between mental health and migration among gay-identified men in North America.

An established body of research in psychology, psychiatry and epidemiology links social stigma and stress with poor mental and sexual health outcomes among gay-identified men. Less work considers how these linkages are mediated by place and almost none considers the role of movement across places. This qualitative study, based on the migration narratives of 48 gay-identified men living in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and Washington, D.C., U.S.A. gives more careful consideration to the ways in which mental and emotional health issues (e.g., anxiety, depression, substance use) in this population both precipitate migration and stem from migration. The narratives show that decisions to migrate often emerge from men׳s experiences of place-based minority stress and associated health outcomes. At the same time, moving to urban gay communities, when coupled with other life circumstances, can create or reinforce physical and emotional insecurities that lead to low self-esteem, substance use and sexual risk-taking.

MOVING 'OUT,' MOVING ON: GAY MEN'S MIGRATIONS THROUGH THE LIFE COURSE

Research in the field of sexuality and space has begun to explore the relationships between gay and queer sexual subjectivities and migration. Much of this research examines the regulation and policing of queer international migrants or identity formation processes among younger queer people migrating within countries. This study, although located partially within the second category, broadens and deepens existing accounts of gay mens migrations within countries by focusing on life circumstances and events beyond an initial coming-out process and considering the migration experiences of gay men at multiple points in the life course. This study uses life course theory to contextualize the migration narratives of 48 self-identified gay men in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and Washington, DC. The findings lend credence to recent claims that migration is central in the lives of gay men and other queer people but extends the concept of gay migration to include more than just the disclosure or initial development of a gay identity. They reframe migration as a tool used to negotiate a variety of life circumstances and transitions (e.g., establishing careers, creating meaningful community identities) rendered challenging by variegated landscapes of stigma and inclusion in North America.

A Decade Later: Assessing Successes and Challenges in Manitoba's Provincial Immigrant Nominee Program

Au cours de la dernière décennie, le Programme Candidats du Manitoba a permis d’accroître l’immigration dans la province et de mieux répartir les immigrants sur son territoire. En même temps, la croissance rapide du programme et l’accent qui a été mis sur la décentralisation au cours de son application n’ont pas été sans soulever certains problèmes. Dans l’analyse que je fais ici des 10 ans d’existence du programme, j’observe que, dans plusieurs localités de la province, il y a un manque de services d’établissement, et que la plus grande partie de l’application du programme et des tâches relatives à l’établissement est prise en charge par les immigrants et les communautés. L’analyse montre également que l’éparpillement des efforts qui a caractérisé la publicité et la mise en place du programme (le fait de compter sur des employeurs et des consultants particuliers et sur des organismes ethnoculturels, par exemple) a conduit à une sorte d’inégalité ethnoculturelle, puisque certains groupes se voient offrir beaucoup d’aide pour s’établir dans la province – souvent pour y faire un travail bien précis –, alors que d’autres sont pratiquement écartés.

Grappling with Governance: The Emergence of Business Improvement Districts in a National Capital

Business improvement districts (BIDs) constitute a relatively new mode of urban governance in which business and property owners pay surtaxes for collectivized, privatized maintenance and development services in their respective neighborhoods. Although they are typically considered an innovative means of improving urban areas—or at the very least a benign intervention of business owners to draw new consumers—the case of Washington, D.C., shows that BIDs are also an increasingly entrenched neo-liberal institution promoted by state restructuring and interurban competition. Given local conditions, such as a permissive legislative environment and fragmented governance, the proliferation, size, and influence of D.C.’s BIDs pose concerns about institutional accountability, socioeconomic inequality, and sustainability of services. Using a mixed-methods approach that integrates urban governance theory, performance metrics, and interviews with BID and D.C. government officials, this study finds that Washington’s BIDs have promoted revitalization but also pose concerns about limited public accountability, exacerbated socioeconomic and spatial inequalities, and further retreat of the municipal government.

Gay in a ‘government town’: the settlement and regulation of gay-identified men in Ottawa, Canada

This case study examines Ottawa, Canada, a ‘government town’, as both a destination for mobile gay men and a place where their conduct historically has been regulated by the government and military institutions located there. By placing the findings of 24 in-depth qualitative interviews with self-identified gay men in a Foucauldian governmentality framework, I argue that the government town is a powerful attractor for gay men in terms of economic opportunity and official prescriptions of nondiscrimination and acceptance, but is also a site where gay men and gay communities are regulated into certain modes of conduct. In particular, this article finds that Ottawa, as both a historic center of antigay activity and a more recent center of an LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered) rights-seeking agenda in Canada, encourages practices that are based on discretion, gender normalization, and maintenance of the status quo. The article argues that these practices – with some notable exceptions – have led to a fragmented gay community characterized by economic and professional stratification, out-of-town consumption of gay culture, and a lack of recognizable social, political, and geographic focal points for gay men. It also posits that the mechanisms through which governmentality is leveraged are particularly central to the experiences of sexual minorities in places like Ottawa, where government institutions are especially dense or thick.

Community Cleavages: Gay and Bisexual Men’s Perceptions of Gay and Mainstream Community Acceptance in the Post-AIDS, Post-Rights Era

Changes in gay and bisexual men’s connectedness to the gay community are related to the declining public visibility of HIV/AIDS and greater acceptance for homosexuality and bisexuality in mainstream society. Little work, however, has focused on perceived acceptance for subgroups within the gay community or broader society. Using interviews (n = 20) and a survey (n = 202) of gay and bisexual men in a mid-sized Canadian city, we find perceived hierarchies of acceptance for the various subgroups as well as an age effect wherein middle-aged men perceive the least acceptance for all groups. These differences are linked with the uneven impact of social, political, and institutional changes relevant to gay and bisexual men in Canada.

Queerying planning: challenging heteronormative assumptions and reframing planning practice

QUEERYING PLA NNING: CHA LLENGING HETERONORMATIV E A SSUMPTIONS A ND REFRA MING PLA NNING PRA CTICE (HA RDBA CK) To download Queerying Planning : Challeng ing Heteronormative A ssumptions and Reframing Planning Pract ice (Hardback) PDF, you should access the web link under and save the ebook or have accessibility to other information which are have conjunction with Queerying Planning: Challenging Heteronormative Assumptions and Reframing Planning Practice (Hardback) book.

Urban Encounters and Sexual Health among Gay and Bisexual Immigrant Men: Perspectives from the Settlement and AIDS Service Sectors

Abstract Gay mens health researchers in North America have recently attended to sexual and mental health issues affecting ethnic minority men, many of whom are also immigrants. Most of this work is grounded in epidemiological models that focus on relationships between individual risk and sexual behaviors. Consequently, they the frame the sexual health of gay and bisexual immigrants as the product of cultural issues (for example, family and religious homophobia, lack of health education) or gay community issues (prevalence of drug use and casual sex) that lead to self‐devaluation, depression, and unprotected sex with multiple partners. Few studies, however, examine these phenomena through the lens of migration and resettlement. Using the narratives from twelve in‐depth interviews with settlement and AIDS Service Organization (ASO) workers in Toronto, Ottawa, and London, Ontario, Canada, this article examines four types of post‐migration urban encounters that influence sexual health: negotiations of resettlement‐related stress, encounters with the urban gay community, encounters with the online gay community, and encounters with sexual health promotion itself. The findings suggest that these encounters are important intervening events that mediate the relationship between the attributes of the immigrant and his sexual health behaviors and outcomes.