“Most Times I Stay Awake Having a Lot of Things on My Mind”: Migration, Masculinity, and Self-Care Among African Men in the United States

This study examines how African men living in the United States understand and practice self-care, and how migration recasts their orientations to health and wellness. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 16 African immigrant men aged 23–41, the study employs thematic analysis to map both the strategies through which participants “take care of themselves” and the migration-driven conditions that reconfigure their attitudes and approaches to wellness. The findings of the study reveal that self-care strategies of African men cluster around three core themes: physical and bodily care; leisure, social connection, and spirituality; and financial security and independence. Migration further reconfigures their health orientations through preventive vigilance, changes in social and structural infrastructure, emotional recalibration, and shifting spatial and urban rhythms. The study advances an African-centered account of men’s health in the United States and substantiates the need for interventions grounded in African men’s own repertoires of care, with implications for research, community-based support, and the field of Black psychology.