Abstract
The 2010s marked a turning point in HIV prevention. The historic emphasis on condom promotion is being replaced by screening and access to multi-drug preventive therapies, aimed at "key" populations. Among the latter, with the exception of a privileged fringe of men who have sex with men (MSM), injecting drug users, sex workers and migrants are rarely present in hospital screening centers. How are these populations reached? To what extent are they reached by the initiatives implemented? How are the incentives received by these people, and what is their experience of them?This thesis work is based on a multi-sited ethnography conducted in Île-de-France between March 2018 and March 2023 among French-speaking men from West Africa seeking asylum in France on the grounds of sexual orientation. Entering the field as an employee of an HIV prevention association deploying screening and treatment access actions for these men enabled the study of issues relating to the implementation of preventive policies and the establishment of trusting relationships with key informants. These facilitated the creation of a group of sixteen men with whom regular exchanges and repeated interviews were conducted throughout their asylum procedure. The autobiographical narratives thus produced shed light on how social and family environments, as well as educational and economic dispositions, shape experiences of homosexuality in the country and migratory paths. The experiences of applying for asylum in France documented in exchanges with the interviewees, but also observed as a volunteer in an LGBTI association specializing in support for the asylum application process and a partner in the screening system, provide information on the conditions of survival and preparation for administrative tests throughout the procedure.The ethnography of the interweaving of sexual, migratory and asylum-seeking careers, and the obstacles encountered in conducting the survey to study them, ultimately leads to two main lines of analysis. The first, centered on a comparative approach to life courses and experiences, reveals the influence of educational, economic and (homo)social resources at home on sexual and migratory careers. These resources influence migration experiences, administrative and material reception conditions on arrival in France, survival strategies and levels of dependence on the heterosexist social worlds frequented, as well as the greater or lesser ease of recourse to screening or support in the asylum application procedure in LGBTI universes. The second axis reveals the discrepancy between the expectations of respondents and those of asylum or prevention officers in their face-to-face interactions, and the resulting misunderstandings. On the one hand, institutions are focused on identifying "real" homosexuals, those deserving refugee status or in greater need of sexual health care than others. On the other, applicants are - for the most part, and most of the time - engaged in a logic of resistance to this injunction to display their sexual orientation. To what extent does the observed gap in expectations produce a form of blindness to the experiences of exile? By reconstructing the careers within which these experiences take place, the thesis seeks to shed light not only on the effects produced by these divergent expectations, but also on their social and political construction.