Discounted Life: The Price of Global Surrogacy in India
... Feminist ethnographic research has focused on the lived experiences of women surrogates and highlighted the unequal structures of socioeconomic and caste hierarchies that limit South Asian women's options to secure living wage jobs (Twine, 2015, p. 18). Emphasizing the abyssal stratifications of Indian society, Rudrappa (2015) insists on the necessity of addressing the "endemic social, political and economic inequalities among different communities which shape individuals' abilities to access a good life" (p. 170). ...
... Furthermore, research has highlighted the agency and resistance of women living under constrained and exploitative conditions (Rudrappa, 2015;Vora, 2015). This body of work demonstrates the need to go beyond Western moral frameworks of autonomy, choice, and coercion-concepts that tend to be mobilized in discussions of transnational commercial surrogacy-to understand commercial reproductive labor as it is practiced in the Global South. ...
... The "lack of choice" is a recurring motif within commercial surrogacy, especially amongst women in India and other parts of the Global South (Majumdar, 2014;Pande, 2014;Rudrappa, 2015). AR demonstrates contradictory ideas on this matter, on the one hand describing poverty as a coercive factor for becoming surrogates and, on the other hand, insisting that women freely "choose" to become surrogates and therefore should be aware of potential problems ahead. ...
Vulnerability is a pivotal concept for understanding transnational commercial surrogacy and the ethics of reproductive travel. While implicitly recognizing vulnerability as important, existing scholarship falls short of understanding the dynamism of vulnerability. Placing our empirical analysis in conjunction with the rich theoretical literature on this concept, we explore vulnerability in surrogacy arrangements in India as a “mode of openness,” defined by its multilayeredness and context specificity. We focus on two retellings of vulnerability. In the first narrative, we analyse the journey of an intended parent who becomes an agent, while in the second narrative, we focus on the trajectory of a surrogate and egg donor becoming an agent. In both narratives, the layers of vulnerability across different interconnected circuits of reproduction—of intended parent, agent, and surrogate—are explicated. Our analysis illustrates the complex and conflicting meanings of vulnerability and illustrates vulnerability as an instigator of agency and resistance; how it can propel upward social mobility and animate attempts to transform an unjust system, but also how such individual agency and empowerment may serve to uphold exploitative relationships.
... Por otra lado, la subrogación gestacional, donde a través de la Fecundación In Vitro -FIV-, los padres comitentes 3 usan sus propios óvulos y espermatozoides, es decir, su propio material genético, o si la "calidad" del gameto está comprometida, se utilizan de donantes de los bancos de óvulos y esperma en cualquier otro lugar. En este tipo de gestación, los óvulos se fertilizan en laboratorios y se colocan en un cultivo nutritivo hasta realizar la inseminación artificial en la mujer gestante (Rudrappa, 2015). Estudios recientes han mostrado cómo la legislación sumamente heterogénea de los países al respecto ha desembocado en una migración reproductiva internacional, donde los tratamientos de reproducción asistida muchas veces se comienzan en los países de origen de los padres de intención, y luego son continuados en los países que permiten llevar a cabo embarazos por gestación sustituta. ...
... Este movimiento transfronterizo de la reproducción tiene estrecha relación con las consecuencias devenidas de las regulaciones y limitaciones en el campo de la ovodonación o la donación de esperma, el acceso restringido a las TRHA o a la gestación por sustitución, y también a los protocolos de adopción directa que suelen ser complicados en ciertos países. Esta ruta ha posibilitado que las mujeres de países no occidentales o económicamente más pobres sean una especia de "biodisponibilidad" (Cohen, 2005;Nahman, 2016), y donde la bioeconomía de la vida (Rudrappa, 2015) ha encontrado su lugar de aplicación. ...
... Estos procesos revierten la propia naturaleza social de la reproducción, debido a que introduce disparidades en la manera en la cual dichos actos de donación se encarnan en las relaciones sociales entre sujetos que ejercen diversos grados de control sobre sí mismos y los demás (Strathern, 1991: 41). Así mismo, introducen lo que Rudrappa (2015) denomina mercados de la vida, donde las tecnologías de reproducción de fronteras se convierten en un bien intercambiable. Estas nuevas economías basadas en la biología, por tanto, permiten la mercantilización de los procesos productivos que anteriormente no se encontraban insertos en el mercado capitalista, y ahora se materializan en instituciones que hacen posibles las relaciones entre cuerpos, fragmentos corporales, identidades humanas y sistemas sociales. ...
Esta investigación persigue el objetivo de adentrarse en la discusión sobre las técnicas de reproducción y la gestación por sustitución en estrecha relación con la biotecnología, la biomedicina y el biopoder en la Argentina. A partir de la ampliación de la tecnología aplicada a los procesos reproductivos, la gestación por sustitución advierte nuevas dimensiones culturales en las sociedades occidentales modernas. La biomedicina y el desarrollo de bioeconomías en relación con la gestación por
sustitución infieren íntimamente en la apropiación del trabajo reproductivo de las mujeres. En este contexto resultar menester investigar sobre el trabajo reproductivo en el marco del modelo biotecnológico de (re)producción, donde se interconectan la internacionalización del trabajo en una cadena mundial de trabajo reproductivo en relación con el turismo de la fertilidad, las desigualdades, las homoparentalidades y el ascenso social. El caso de Argentina permite preguntarse de qué manera las tecnologías de reproducción asistida se han conformado en un pilar fundamental en
el estudio de la biotecnología y la biomedicina, y la manera en la cual tienen injerencia en la configuración de identidades individuales, familiares y colectivas, impulsando transformaciones en diversos dominios de la cultura. Así es como, en tanto las prácticas de gestación por sustitución abren un abanico de amplias y complejas dimensiones de la vida social esta investigación se concluye como un aporte latinoamericano a los estudios feministas de la antropología de la reproducción, ampliando la comprensión sobre cómo coexiste el tipo de trabajo (re)productivo de la gestación por sustitución con las prácticas biotecnológicas, la biopolítica y los cambios socioculturales en Argentina.
... In the past decade, scholars of biocapitalism have sought to treat the colonial histories and imaginaries that subtend the (re)production of surplus value. Attentiveness to such legacies is treated in rich ethnographies on the processes and products offered for sale in parts of the Global South formerly subject to colonialism, especially India (Pande 2014;Rudrappa 2015;Hochschild 2012;Vora 2015;Deomampo 2016). Notably, the colonial legacies of ARTs are also amplified in several articles collected in this special issue. ...
... In creating a seeming oxymoron, Marx challenged us to consider nineteenth-century wage labor as existent on a continuum with slavery. By extension, here I challenge us to critically re-examine the character of the so-called choices that are made by contemporary (re)productive laborers, women who, in some instances, enter the market without even the supposed protection afforded by labor contracts or other legal documents (Rudrappa 2015). From a vantage point that apprehends the predication of liberal notions of freedom on the exemption of slaves, the colonized, and Indigenous Peoples from such freedom (Lowe 2015;Smallwood 2004), it is apparent that on the underside of the supposed freedom to alienate labor power lie interlocked forms of gendered, sexualized, and racialized governance that divide laboring populations into categories of human and lessthan-human. ...
... This reorientation begins with an observation, indebted to feminist historians of slavery, that enslaved women's participation in (re)productive labor was regarded as racializing of the labor performed (it rendered it less-than-human, "black", and therefore fungible and alienable), and of the products of this labor. In other words, rather than begin by assuming the a priori racial identity of (re)productive laborers, as existing studies of surrogates and other participants in the (re)productive economy have (Twine 2011;Hochschild 2012;Pande 2014;Rudrappa 2015;Vora 2015;Deomampo 2016;Harrison 2016), I instead suggest that scholars of (re)production in biocapitalism follow the example set by feminist historians of slavery. This requires focus on (re)production as a racializing process--a process that racializes labor and renders labor and products fungible and alienable. ...
This article explores the connection between the extraction and dispossession of human reproductive labor power and its products in the contexts of Atlantic slavery and contemporary biocapitalism. It argues that the conceptualization and practice of slave reproduction that sustained slave racial capitalism is forwarded into the biocapitalist present through “the slave episteme.” This becomes evident when reproduction in biocapitalism is viewed through the lens of the long history of slave “breeding” in the Atlantic world. While the “blackness” that enslavers attributed to enslaved mothers and their progeny objectified and dehumanized both and rationalized their treatment as fungible and alienable commodities, in contempory biocapitalism the racial formation that subtends reproductive extraction and dispossession has been complexly recalibrated to do related ideological and material work. The article concludes with a discussion of the sublation of “blackness” in contemporary market exchanges in which reproductive labor and its products are bought and sold.
... With the expansion of the transnational surrogacy market in the mid-2000s and India becoming the surrogacy hub of the world, ethnographic research on transnational surrogacy also developed. The majority of the research has focused on India (Pande 2014b;Vora 2009;Majumdar 2017;Rudrappa 2015;Deomampo 2016), although other national contexts have been investigated: Thailand (Hibino and Shimazono 2013;Whittaker 2014;Nilsson 2015;, Mexico (Schurr 2018;, and Russia (Weis 2017;Siegl 2018). ...
... By mapping out personal relationships and social networks, Rudrappa locates the women's decisions to become surrogate mothers within the context of garment factory work, where surrogacy generates hopes for greater control over their lives. She demonstrates how this "market in life", where women from the social margins are recruited to gestate children for others, is embedded within neoliberal global capitalism (Rudrappa 2015). ...
... Deomampo employs the concept of "stratified reproduction" (Colen 1995) to demonstrate the impact surrogacy has on ideological discourses of kinship, ethnicity, gender, and nation. The concept stratified reproduction has become central in analysis of the dynamics of transnational surrogacy (see Pande 2014b, Rudrappa 2015, Vora 2009, Whittaker 2018, Schurr 2018, as it captures the hierarchal organisation of reproduction and how certain people are empowered in their fertility, reproduction and parenting while others are disempowered. Furthermore, highlighting the orientalist, racist and nationalist imaginaries of intended parents seeking surrogacy in India, Deomampo illustrates the othering process of surrogacy and how surrogate mothers' agency is circumscribed. ...
Transnational commercial surrogacy is an arrangement where a woman gestates and delivers a child for intended parents from another country in exchange for money. This thesis explores the experiences of women who have acted as surrogate mothers in Thailand. Based on in-depth interviews with twelve former surrogate mothers, the thesis analyses their accounts in relation to gendered, local, and global dimensions of transnational commercial surrogacy. More specifically, it investigates how surrogacy has affected the women materially, socially, and personally; how they understand and negotiate family, kinship, and relationships in connection with their surrogacy experiences; but also how the global surrogacy market and local context interact in shaping the conditions for surrogacy in Thailand. The thesis engages in dialogue with research on commercial surrogacy in other settings, and draws upon theoretical frameworks of gender, motherhood and kinship, local moral economies, and precarious intimate labour. The analysis explores, first, how the women’s decisions to undertake surrogacy, and, for some, further involvement in surrogacy are enabled through women’s social networks and family relationships. Second, it investigates how, through the framing of surrogacy as primarily an opportunity to earn money for their own family but also as an act of making merit, the women draw upon material and religious rationalities as well as gender ideals that allow them to live up to their obligations as mothers and daughters. Third, it explores how their trajectories are marked by im/mobility and flexibility, taking shape in relation to the global reproductive market as well as local and national conditions. Finally, it demonstrates how the women use strategies of de/kinning that both align with and resist the idea that the surrogate mother is not related to the child. The results highlight the precariousness of these women’s labour and how surrogacy stretches into their lives beyond the nine months of pregnancy. Results also focus the women’s own decision-making and negotiations within the context of constrained but real agency. This thesis contributes knowledge about the situation of surrogate mothers post-pregnancy, and also in a context where surrogacy is illegal. It also contributes to the research fields of transnational reproduction, gendered and global division of intimate labour and feminist discussions on motherhood.
... Markens, 2007;Ragoné, 1994), following the shifting geopolitics of surrogacy, they have been progressively conducted also in countries of the Global South (e.g. Dasgupta and Dasgupta, 2014;Deomampo, 2016;Majumdar, 2017;Pande, 2014;Rudrappa, 2015;Whittaker, 2019). To date, major anthropological ethnographies and sociological studies have contributed to a nuanced view of the local specificities, cultural differences, and complexities of surrogacy in a number of different national settings including in Israel (Teman, 2010), India (Deomampo, 2016;Majumdar, 2017;Pande, 2014;Rozée et al., 2019;Rudrappa, 2015;Stockey-Bridge, 2017), Russia (Weis, 2017(Weis, , 2019, Ghana (Gerrits, 2016), Mexico (Hovav, 2019;Olavarría, 2018;Schurr, 2017), Thailand (Whittaker, 2019), Canada , and the United States (Berend, 2016;Jacobson, 2016;Markens, 2007;Ragoné, 1994). ...
... Dasgupta and Dasgupta, 2014;Deomampo, 2016;Majumdar, 2017;Pande, 2014;Rudrappa, 2015;Whittaker, 2019). To date, major anthropological ethnographies and sociological studies have contributed to a nuanced view of the local specificities, cultural differences, and complexities of surrogacy in a number of different national settings including in Israel (Teman, 2010), India (Deomampo, 2016;Majumdar, 2017;Pande, 2014;Rozée et al., 2019;Rudrappa, 2015;Stockey-Bridge, 2017), Russia (Weis, 2017(Weis, , 2019, Ghana (Gerrits, 2016), Mexico (Hovav, 2019;Olavarría, 2018;Schurr, 2017), Thailand (Whittaker, 2019), Canada , and the United States (Berend, 2016;Jacobson, 2016;Markens, 2007;Ragoné, 1994). These studies pay attention to surrogates and intended parents' experiences and subjectivities and consider surrogacies and other types of thirdparty-assisted reproduction as forms of interactive encounters at the bodily, local, and national levels, shaped by processes of globalization. ...
... A large body of work has described the organization of surrogacy and its political economy (see Whittaker, 2020, for a review). This work is characterized by the recognition of surrogacy as a form of labor (Cooper and Waldby, 2014;Pande, 2010;Rudrappa, 2015), described in various ways as: alienated work (Saravanan, 2016), social work (Vora, 2010), reproductive labor (Pande, 2010), clinical labor (Cooper and Waldby, 2014), sacred work (Deomampo, 2014), obscured labor (Jacobson, 2016), and intimate work (Boris and Parreñas, 2010). Considering surrogacy as work allows us to move beyond the usual binary analysis of surrogacy (exploitation vs liberty) and to go beyond the emotional, maternal, and affective dimensions of surrogacy, to better understand its complexity and its gendered dimensions (Rozée, 2020). ...
Gestational surrogacy is a reproductive arrangement where a woman gestates a child for others—the “intended parents”—in order to be handed over to them after birth. Since the turn of the millennium, demands for surrogacy have continuously increased due to social and demographic changes, rising rates of infertility, and the normalization of new, non-heteronormative, family forms. Many countries prohibit surrogacy, and others that previously permitted this reproductive arrangement closed down as a result of political decisions or surrogacy scandals. Moreover, surrogacy is offered at greatly varying costs, ranging from approximately US200,000 in fertility clinics in California. Accordingly, many of these arrangements are transnational, with intended parents who cannot access surrogacy or afford surrogacy in their home country commissioning it in countries such as the United States, until recently Ukraine, and today increasingly in the Republic of Georgia. Existing research has focused on surrogacy from different angles, such as practices of kinning and de-kinning, inequality and stratification, the political economy of the fertility industry, and its gender dimensions. We engage in, but further these debates by drawing attention to settings, accounts, experiences, and new theoretical notions that diverge from “mainstream” presentations of surrogacy. Moreover, in this Special Issue, we experimented with writing joint papers with a deliberative aim to provide comparative analyses and emphasize the links between and diversity of different cases of surrogacy. Therefore, all papers have an explicit comparative character and are all based on empirical studies from more than one field site. They provide nuanced understandings of surrogacy arrangements, grounded in empirical data rather than ideological, political, or moral assessments.
... Svariati autori (Harrison, 2016;Pande, 2014;Rudrappa, 2015;Twine, 2015) leggono la GPA come una forma di "riproduzione stratificata" (Colen, 2009), ovvero il fenomeno per cui le persone svolgono azioni riproduttive diverse in base alla loro classe, etnia, genere e luogo dell'economia globale in cui vivono. Con la mercificazione del lavoro procreativo questa stratificazione si rinforza rendendo ancora più intense le disuguaglianze: ci sono gruppi di popolazione che vengono incoraggiati dalla loro posizione sociale e dalle politiche pubbliche a riprodursi, anche con l'accesso alle tecnologie biomediche, mentre altri gruppi aiutano i primi a riprodursi (Ginsburg e Rapp, 1995;Ryan, 2009). ...
... In Messico può essere una migrante oppure appartenere alle comunità di stranieri o alla popolazione indigena (Olavarría, 2019). In India può avere una pregressa esperienza nei biomercati come cavia per test farmaceutici e fornitrice di ovuli (Saravanan, 2018), oppure può essere un'operaia dell'industria tessile che vede nella surrogazione un lavoro, non solo più remunerativo, ma anche meno stancante e alienante, e più soddisfacente sul piano emotivo rispetto al suo impiego (Rudrappa, 2014(Rudrappa, , 2015: per un salario settimanale di 100-150 $, le operaie svolgono giornate di lavoro estenuanti, esposte a frequenti infortuni, sorvegliate e umiliate dal caposervizio, senza nemmeno la possibilità di urinare, se non nella pausa pranzo. ...
... Secondo la sociologa Sharmila Rudrappa (2015) le donne poverissime degli strati sociali più emarginati non vengono reclutate, poiché più esposte ad ambienti insalubri e alla prostituzione. Un recente studio condotto sempre in India da Virgin Rozée e colleghe (Rozée et al., 2019) ha rivelato che la situazione sociale di 96 surroganti tende a essere migliore rispetto a quella della popolazione generale femminile dai 20 ai 34 anni, sia in termini di istruzione sia di occupazione e reddito familiare. ...
The imaginary of the pro-surrogacy discourse. Self-entrepreneurs' will to power in the global production of life. Gestational surrogacy is an emerging sector of bioeconomy, a reproductive option and a form of female labour which is increasingly accepted worldwide. It entails a deep rationalization of human processes, which are reduced to their mere biological aspects and managed through self-discipline and technology with the goal of producing high quality products (children). In this paper I discuss how the social practice of surrogacy is legitimized through a broader discourse of individual freedom and self-determination, typical of neoliberal capitalism, and how this frame is applied to two categories of "self-entrepreneurs": people who aspire to become parents and women with gestational capability that once placed on the reproductive market becomes source of economic empowerment. I argue that the pro-surrogacy discourse, which dips into the feminist rhetoric of women's autonomy and a culture of limitless technological manipulation, encourages the human will to power by activating the pleasure principle and the Great Mother archetype.
... However, comparing these two important centers of the global surrogacy industry provides interesting evidence to counter the usual assumptions about surrogacy as described in much of the non-ethnographic literature and in the media. Our argument developed out of our readings of the growing body of empirical research on surrogacy in the sociological and anthropological qualitative and ethnographic tradition (Berend, 2016;Deomampo, 2016;Jadva et al., 2015;Majumdar, 2017;Olavarría, 2018;Pande, 2014;Ragoné, 1994;Rudrappa, 2015;Teman, 2010) including our own studies conducted in the United States and in India (Jacobson, 2016(Jacobson, , 2018(Jacobson, , 2021(Jacobson, , 2022Rozée, 2018;Rozée, Unisa, La Rochebrochard, 2019, 2020. ...
... The few field studies on surrogacy in India and the United States do show that the reality of this global practice is complex: for example, ethnographic studies show that surrogates often have a level of socio-economic stability relative to other women in their local environments and, especially in the Indian context, may find surrogacy a better alternative than their previous paid work involving harassment and unpaid overtime (Rudrappa, 2015). Some researchers draw a parallel between reproductive labor like surrogacy and other types of labor that may be considered more difficult or dangerous, less paid, and less valued (Humbyrd, 2009;Kirby, 2014;Orfali and Chiappori, 2014;Ramskold and Posner, 2013;Sera, 1997). ...
... Indeed, there are other paid activities where the body is under pressure, under control, and sometimes under domination (domestic work, waste pickers, and sex work). Except for the work of Sharmila Rudrappa (2015), who empirically drew the parallel between surrogacy and textile factory labor in India, the existing studies on surrogacy in developing countries like India (Deomampo, 2016;Mahajan and Marwah, 2012;Majumdar, 2017;Pande, 2014;Saravanan, 2016;Vora, 2013), however, generally do not allow for an identification of the (non)particularity of reproductive labor compared to other wage-paid labor or the (non)particular profiles of reproductive workers compared to other developing countries. ...
Income disparity has become a mainstay of the international critique and public discourse on commercial surrogacy. Using existing empirical data, including our two respective field studies in India and the United States, we analyze surrogacy from a gender perspective and show how the visibility of gender disparities in a transnational context encourages assumptions at the local and national context. In doing so, we highlight the narrative of inequality, explore the complexity of surrogacy outside of a one-note narrative, and show how that narrative operates to overshadow the complex, lived experiences of those engaged in surrogacy.
... She termed stratified reproduction as the conceptual tool to examine the transnational hierarchy and the racialisation of reproduction through the uneven distribution of transnational mobiles from peripheries to wealthy host countries in the 'non-flat-world' which forms the 'global care chain' (Colen, 1995). Built on Shellee Colen's work, scholars researching both global reproductive industries (Deomampo, 2016;Rudrappa, 2016) and queer reproduction (Mamo, 2018;Smietana, 2019) took up this concept to elucidate the unequal phenomena in reproductive arenas. ...
... Before 2015, India allowed foreigners, regardless of their sexualities and marital status, to access local reproductive treatments and commercial surrogacy. In 2016, the government banned all foreigners from using Indian surrogate services(Deomampo, 2016;Rudrappa, 2016).7 LGBT Family Podcast (Mandarin) Held by an association Taiwan LGBT Family Rights Advocacy. https://rephonic.com/ ...
This article uses Taiwan as an example to argue that reproductive justice for gay men should be conceptualised within social, legal, and political contexts. Taiwan is the first Asian country to legalise same‐sex marriage, yet the law favours heterosexual couples and denies LGBTQ+ reproductive rights. Thus, Taiwanese gay men seek third‐party reproduction overseas to become parents. This article exemplifies gay men's unequal conditions from a non‐Western perspective. I re‐examine scholarly literature on the interlocking concepts of reproductive justice, stratified reproduction, and queer reproduction to answer what reproductive justice gay men need and how their injustice position situates within and beyond the nation‐state borders. Drawing on the reproductive justice framework and studies of queer reproduction, this article proposes a transnational perspective to understand queer reproductive justice through the case that elucidates the specific context of Taiwanese gay men. This article aims to make two contributions. Firstly, it reconsiders the reproductive framework from a transnational perspective to argue that gay men's reproductive justice should be conceptualised at the intersection with other dimensions of injustice. Secondly, this article suggests that the transnational approach could be applied as a critical lens for future research in queer reproduction and reproductive justice.
... Feminist scholars such as Vertommen and Barbagallo (2021), Vora (2015Vora ( , 2019, Pande (2010)), Lewis (2017) and Rudrappa (2015) offer the fiercest critique of the neo-liberal and benign posture of surrogacy arrangements, which portray surrogates as self-interested individuals who receive financial rewards for taking the autonomous decision to participate in surrogacy arrangements. These scholars largely frame surrogacy from a labour perspective and draw attention to the dehumanising dimension of commercial surrogacy. ...
... Psychologically, they have to contend with the grief, regret and loss that linger for long periods after giving up the surrogate child to the intended parents (Brinig, 1995). Jacobson (2016) and Rudrappa (2015) also allude to the emotional stress of having to give up the baby to the intended parents after delivery. Wilkinson (2003) recognises the exploitative nature of commercial surrogacy yet he does not support its ban because, according to him, a ban will not necessarily remove the conditions (that is, poverty) that could make surrogates vulnerable to exploitation elsewhere if not through surrogacy. ...
The issues facing surrogates are labour issues. However, there is scanty literature on the working conditions of surrogates in sub-Saharan Africa. This article explores the labour conditions of these unprotected and invisible reproductive workers in Ghana. In-depth interviews were conducted with key informants between 2018 and 2019. The study revealed the following: 1) Baby agents were increasingly playing a dominant role in the surrogacy industry, and through the surrogacy homes are able to create docile and disciplined surrogates. 2) Surrogacy agreements were oppressive and designed to reinforce the control over the bodies of surrogates. 3) Pregnancy-related scars leave emotional scars on the minds of surrogates. We recommend state regulation of the industry to ensure strict supervision of baby agents to minimise exploitation of surrogates.
KEYWORDS: surrogacy home; baby agents; surrogates; commercial surrogacy; Ghana
... Surrogacy, the carrying of a child by a woman (a "gestational surrogate" or "surrogate mother") for others ("intended parents"), in many cases, takes place transnationally. Intended parents seek surrogacy services abroad for various reasons, most importantly restrictive laws and regulations in the home country (König, 2018) and greatly differing costs (Rudrappa, 2015), with clinics and agencies in some countries (e.g. India (Majumdar, 2017), Ukraine (Siegl, 2018), and Mexico (Hovav, 2019)) offering surrogacy services at a small fraction of the cost in other places (e.g. ...
... While the transnational aspect of surrogacy has been investigated by a number of scholars from an anthropological and sociological perspective (e.g. Deomampo, 2016;Majumdar, 2017;Pande, 2014;Rudrappa, 2015;Whittaker, 2018), the legal issues involved have so far been mainly examined by legal scholars (e.g. Ergas, 2013;Smerdon, 2012;Trimmings and Beaumont, 2011) and have not received much attention within the social sciences. ...
Transnational surrogacy—the carrying of a child by a woman in one country on behalf of persons in another—is strongly shaped by documents. Of these, identity documents are particularly crucial as they establish the belonging of a child born through such an arrangement both to its parents (birth certificate) and to a country (passport). However, the acquisition of these documents is subject to national laws that may contradict one another in transnational settings where citizens of more than one country are involved. As a result, in the last few years, there have been several cases of children stuck in legal limbo without clear parenthood and citizenship. Based on ethnographic research in India and Germany, we analyze how in such a transnational setting, documents and documentation become part of the making and unmaking of persons and belonging.
... Drawing on feminist scholarship that analyses surrogacy as a form of reproductive labor and a conscious meaningful social activity (Lewis, 2017(Lewis, , 2019Pande, 2014;Rudrappa, 2015;Vora, 2015Vora, , 2019, I refer to the women working in this market for reproductive labor as 'reproductive laborers,' and challenge the boundaries between productive and reproductive labor in a capitalist society and economy. Reproductive labor has largely been precarious, invisible, and generally without any kind of remuneration beyond the fulfilment of an ideological normative idea of women as beings to serve others (Federici, 2012;Fortunati, 1995;Fraser, 2014;Katz, 2001;Meehan and Strauss, 2015;Weeks, 2011). ...
The commercial surrogacy industry in India administers in a way where the women working as surrogate mothers live in surrogate houses. It is a space deliberately designed and run by either the fertility clinics or a third-party agency, where the surrogate mothers are required to stay for the entire gestation period. The surrogacy industry in India utilizes the vulnerability of couples who do not or cannot have children, in order to prepare valuable and docile bodies which can serve as a platform for accumulation of wealth. This paper draws from an ethnographic inquiry of the surrogate housing facilities functioning in two cities in India: Anand and Bengaluru. The paper will argue that the surrogacy industry in India produces geographies of carceral domesticity by deploying disciplining apparatuses governing the day-to-day mundane activities of the reproductive laborers. The medical experts often resort to the narrative that these women cannot be trusted with the safety of the babies they carry, hence, justifying their confinement in the surrogate house. Further, the possibility that the surrogate mothers may develop emotional attachments to the babies they carry, which in turn, will endanger the surrogacy arrangements, also runs through such narratives of regulation.
... Dicho estudio identifica como principal motivo para participar como gestante la mejora de la situación socioeconómica de la familia -tener casa propia, pagar la educación de sus hijos, ahorrar para la boda de las hijas… La racionalidad de estas motivaciones ha llevado a plantear que, en ocasiones, las gestantes del sur evidencian mayor autonomía que algunas del Norte. 23 Por ejemplo, Rudrappa (2015), tras realizar un estudio basado en la observación participante en Bangalore, concluye que las gestantes prefieren vender sus óvulos y alquilar sus vientres en lugar de trabajar en la industria textil debido a las condiciones abusivas a las que se ven sometidas. ...
Se reflexiona sobre la reprobabilidad moral de la Gestación por Sustitución a través del debate en torno a la autonomía de la gestante y los derechos reproductivos. En primer lugar, se contrastan las posturas liberal y feminista en países del Norte. Asimismo, se consideran las implicaciones para el debate de los intereses económicos de la industria de las Nuevas Técnicas de Reproducción Humana Asistida. Por último, se examina el fenómeno desde una perspectiva transnacional a través de un análisis interseccional y teniendo en cuenta los estudios etnográficos realizados por investigadoras en la India y sus implicaciones para el debate.
... The frequent use of ARTs and surrogacy arrangements by Bollywood celebrities in India reinforces the complexities of inequality and class differences in the lives of impoverished Indian women who engage in the surrogacy industry. Building on the ethnographic work of Deomampo (2013), Rudrappa (2015) and Pande (2010a), who have broadly discussed the structural and social constraints of the Indian surrogates, the article speculates that the intraclass social divisions between celebrities and their service providers are amplified through the functioning of the surrogacy industry. Deomampo (2013: 169) argues that 'gestational surrogacy in India necessarily relies on the reproductive labor and bodies of a variety of individuals that … increases the intraclass social divisions among surrogates and surrogate agents'. ...
The article makes a biopolitical study of commercial surrogacy in India through the case studies of Bollywood celebrities prioritizing bioengineered babies through surrogacy. Drawing upon the theories of the culture industry and neoliberal subjectivity, the entanglement between the cultural economy of celebrity and the medico-industrial complex is decoded. The study attempts to focus on the existing popular public discourse using newspaper articles, tabloid press, interviews, and journal articles to investigate how Bollywood celebrities, as bioconsumers in the neoliberal surrogacy market, further genetic essentialism and neoliberal eugenics. Celebrities, as agents of new reproductive subjectivities, invite critical forays into bioeconomies of intensity, intimate life and belongings through the affective bonds of familial ties and kinship. Examining the moral economy of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) in India, the study highlights the exploitative use of the reproductive labour of surrogates, who are treated as effaced entities and as collateral ‘prosthetics’ in the ART industry.
... This interdisciplinarity was not only the basis of my research training and my approach to engaging in a field-oriented study of women in surrogacy but it also related to the gap that I tried to address within the literature on Indian surrogacy. The existing studies on surrogacy in India that were rooted in some form of ethnography or field research delved into issues in the sociology of labour (Pande 2014;Rudrappa 2016), cultural and medical anthropology and transnational studies (Majumdar 2017;Deomampo 2017), colonial-feminist encounters (Vora 2009), psychological well-being (Lamba 2017), law and bioethics (Nadimpally and Marwah 2014;Nadimpally 2015;Mitra 2018) and reproductive bio-markets (Saravanan 2018). My research ventured into areas that had not so far been explored, such as the economic sociology of surrogacy in terms of its market modalities, or fields such as reproductive policy studies, contract and transaction cost economics, ethics and behavioural economics, consumption studies, neoliberal rationality in reproductive healthcare management and the insurance literature. ...
This handbook offers epistemologically and ontologically important personal accounts of academic and professional researchers having long-term intensive, comprehensive and ethnographic fieldwork in various social settings and versatile regional contexts across the globe. The accounts are cross-disciplinary including anthropology, sociology, geography, political sciences, gender studies, forestry and environmental studies, economics, and international relations. They are also trans-regional, covering the globe including South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and North America. The book offers a comprehensive portrait of multifaceted challenges that social researchers experience while doing fieldwork in various social settings. The accounts provide both challenges of doing fieldwork in the 21st century and the ways how to address/redress them in the field by complying with the codes of ethics, and the politics of fieldwork. Readers will benefit from the handbook by understanding methodological issues from both disciplinary relevance and regional specificity across time and spaces.
... This interdisciplinarity was not only the basis of my research training and my approach to engaging in a field-oriented study of women in surrogacy but it also related to the gap that I tried to address within the literature on Indian surrogacy. The existing studies on surrogacy in India that were rooted in some form of ethnography or field research delved into issues in the sociology of labour (Pande 2014;Rudrappa 2016), cultural and medical anthropology and transnational studies (Majumdar 2017;Deomampo 2017), colonial-feminist encounters (Vora 2009), psychological well-being (Lamba 2017), law and bioethics (Nadimpally and Marwah 2014;Nadimpally 2015;Mitra 2018) and reproductive bio-markets (Saravanan 2018). My research ventured into areas that had not so far been explored, such as the economic sociology of surrogacy in terms of its market modalities, or fields such as reproductive policy studies, contract and transaction cost economics, ethics and behavioural economics, consumption studies, neoliberal rationality in reproductive healthcare management and the insurance literature. ...
Qualitative research requires carefully considered and nuanced understandings and approaches, and attention to a wide variety of potential pitfalls. Over the last few decades, the literature in geography related to ethnography, and qualitative methods more generally, has expanded and deepened considerably, leading to heightened attention to research methods and ethics. Much has also been written about interviewing approaches. However, longer-term relations between researchers and research participants have not received nearly as much attention, revealing an important gap in the literature. In this chapter, I focus on some of my own long-term relationships with research participants. Here, I reflect on these relationships—-some of which began over a decade ago—and how these long-term relationships can greatly benefit research.
... UU., Charis Thompson (2005) mostraba cómo tanto esta como la donación de óvulos se inscriben en un complejo entramado de expectativas sociales en torno a la maternidad, la paternidad y la economía. Fuera del ámbito anglosajón se ha dado cuenta de cómo la agencia de las gestantes es compatible con la expansión en términos casi industriales de nuevos modelos laborales precarizados para las mujeres, de la mano de la expansión neoliberal (Pande, 2009(Pande, , 2010Hewitson, 2014), que dan lugar a mercados sobre la vida (Rudrappa, 2015) así como a nuevas formas laborales en las que la energía vital es lo que se pone en juego (Vora, 2015). ...
La reproducción asistida ha transformado la forma en que un número creciente de personas se reproduce, así como los imaginarios sociales sobre la reproducción y su potencial medicalización y comercialización. En el Estado español el sector privado ha acogido la mayor parte de los tratamientos, si bien existe también cobertura pública de los mismos (dentro de la cual se cubren un gran número de técnicas, pero existen largas listas de espera y limitaciones de acceso heteronormativas y por edad). En este artículo analizamos la expansión de la reproducción asistida unificando una revisión de la literatura existente (tanto médica como social), haciendo una revisión crítica de los datos de uso existentes (procedentes de la Sociedad Española de Fertilidad) y presentado algunos resultados de un trabajo de tipo cualitativo que analiza el papel de la donación de óvulos en las clínicas de reproducción asistida a partir de entrevistas a profesionales de las mismas. A través del análisis de estos datos cualitativos, mostramos las formas en que estas técnicas están involucradas en la reproducción de un statu quo heteronormativo, que afianza y naturaliza los roles de género intrafamiliares, a nivel tanto humano como celular.
... These transformations have been accompanied by various social contingencies. Feminist analyses of transnational surrogacy have focused on questions of women's reproductive labor (Huber et al. 2018;Pande 2014), women's rights over their own bodies (Gupta 2006;Pande 2010), and the exploitation of disadvantaged surrogate women in the global south (Deomampo 2013;Pande 2015;Rudrappa 2015;Rudrappa and Collins 2015). Feminist scholarship has also shown how the development of the transnational surrogacy industry in the last two decades is implicated with an emerging biopolitics of reproduction integral to contemporary economies (Waldby and Cooper 2008). ...
This article centers on ‘forced surrogacy,’ an underexplored collateral of the erstwhile transnational surrogacy industry in India, to critically analyze recent policy developments around surrogacy regulation in India. Building upon Dalit feminist perspectives, in this article, I argue that ‘forced surrogacy’ is an indentured form of clinical labor performed through the bodies of subaltern women inhabiting the margins of the Indian polity. Analyzing recent media discourses on ‘forced surrogacy’ in conjunction with reproductive legislations formulated between 2005 and 2021, I demonstrate how an indigenous standpoint perspective usefully complicates theorizing about clinical labor highlighting a continuum between caste-based indentured labor and contemporary clinical labor in India. The analysis investigates the necropolitical dimensions of India’s recent policy directive to ban ‘commercial’ surrogacy while condoning ‘altruistic’ surrogacy. Such a criminalization absolves the State of accountability for circumstances that enable ‘forced surrogacy’ outside the limits of both the traditional family and the ‘free’ market. The article concludes with a discussion on how indentured clinical labor reveals the limits of existing normative frameworks that overlook structural realities in governing clinical market regimes, and how these limits in turn become the basis for the extraction of unfree clinical labor from subaltern bodies.
... It has been examined by a number of scholars, including some of the authors and editors of this themed issue (Briggs and Marre 2009;Marre 2016;Marre et al. 2018;Rosanna et al. 2015;Smietana 2017). Some scholars, such as Anagnost, consider these practices to be forms of "euphemized violence" (Anagnost 1995:34) against working-class, impoverished and marginalized women living in the global South, who are often denied access to reproductive rights, health, and justice in their own countries and provide not only children for adoption, but also eggs and biological children (via ARTs and surrogacy) to mostly white, upper-middle-and middle-class families in Europe and the US, as well as to wealthy parents of high social status in other contexts (Briggs and Marre 2009;Rudrappa 2015). As the authors of this themed issue show, however, euphemized violence also occurs in wealthy countries where young people are affected by the increasing precaritization of work, salary differentials between women and men, and dramatic cuts to public social and health services, which impact employment, housing, and childbearing decisions. ...
... Wie unsere Forschungen gezeigt haben, sind Eizellenspenderinnen und Leihmütter oft Frauen, die sich in prekären Lebenssituationen befinden, sei es, weil sie alleinerziehende Mütter sind, Migrantinnen ohne sicheren Aufenthaltsstatus, weil sie wenige Alternativen auf dem Arbeitsmarkt haben oder sich ihr Studium finanzieren wollen (Perler & Schurr 2020;Siegl 2018b). Gleichzeitig gilt es anzuerkennen, dass viele Frauen, die Leihmütter werden, dies tun, weil sie die Leihmutterschaft anderen Arbeitsverhältnissen vorziehen, die mit (grösseren) körperlichen Belastungen und Ausbeutungsverhältnissen einhergehen (Parry 2018;Rudrappa 2016). Diskussionen über kommerzielle reproduktive Arbeit muss also immer auch im Kontext einer kapitalistischen Welt-und Gesellschaftsordnung diskutiert werden. ...
Weltweit reisen immer mehr Personen für die Erfüllung des Kinderwunsches ins Ausland. Im vorliegenden Working Paper setzen wir uns mit diesem Markt für Reproduktionsmedizin insbesondere mit Blick auf transnationale reproduktive Mobilität auseinander. Das Paper basiert auf einer Studie, die vom Bundesamt für Gesundheit (BAG) in Auftrag gegeben und der Universität Bern konzipiert und durchgeführt wurde. Im ersten Teil des Working Papers diskutieren wir die Problematik der reproduktiven Mobilität aus feministischer und intersektionaler Perspektive – basierend auf unseren eigenen langjährigen Forschungen und mit Blick auf die Themen: veränderte Lebensrealitäten, globale Vernetzung, Ökonomisierung und Kommerzialisierung von Reproduktion, vielschichtige Ungleichheiten sowie auf die Verschränkung reproduktiver Verfahren. Im zweiten Teil präsentieren wir die Ergebnisse der für das BAG durchgeführten Studie, die mittels quantitativer Methoden der Sozialforschung untersuchte, wie viele in der Schweiz wohnhafte Personen aus welchen Gründen und für welche reproduktiven Verfahren im Jahr 2019 ins Ausland gereist sind. Im letzten Teil setzen wir diese Ergebnisse in Bezug zu den aktuellen politischen Debatten um die Legalisierung der Eizellenspende in der Schweiz. Wir argumentieren einerseits, dass Diskussionen über eine Lega- lisierung der Eizellenspende sozioökonomische Ungleichheitsverhältnisse und den Schutz sowie die (langfristige) Gesundheit der potentiellen «Spenderinnen» ins Zentrum stellen müssen. Andererseits plädieren wir dafür, dass ungewollte Kinderlosigkeit nicht primär durch die Einführung neuer Reproduktionstechnolo- gien adressiert wird, sondern durch gesellschaftspolitische Veränderungen, die die Vereinbarkeit von Beruf und Familie erleichtern und vielfältige Familienmodelle ermöglichen und rechtlich absichern.
... While questions of power and structural inequalities underpin social science discussions regarding access to and provision of fertility treatment services, especially in relation to reproductive justice for disadvantaged individuals and marginalised groups (e.g. Bell, 2014;Briggs, 2017;Rudrappa, 2015), a key focus for many social scientists engaged in empirical work on this topic relates to the intersubjective meanings that gamete donors, surrogates, and intended parents attribute to assisted conception in the process of family creation. Unlike debates in bioethics, social science scholars seek to examine the ways assisted reproductive technologies (ART) raise issues around kin-making and social relatedness in the process of forming families via assisted conception and pregnancy, and how people manage and negotiate their identities and involvement in family and kinship practices when giving and receiving reproductive materials and services (e.g. ...
There is little research documenting the experience of surrogate mothers in Aotearoa New Zealand, and no published studies to date have asked surrogates about the significance of financial benefit or compensation for their moral decision-making. In this article, we draw on qualitative data from in-depth interviews with 20 traditional and gestational surrogates, 20 intended parents, and 46 experts in the field of assisted reproduction about their views and experiences of surrogacy both within the national boundaries of the New Zealand fertility clinic setting and offshore. While altruistic procurement of reproductive materials and services is legally mandated in New Zealand, compensation and payment is prohibited. To support our analysis, we draw on the concept of bio-intimacy to discuss the production and management of relational work involved in altruistic surrogacy arrangements. We conclude that the economic circumstances for surrogates, where compensation for direct and indirect costs is absent or insufficient, need to be reconsidered.
Surrogacy is the commissioning of a woman to gestate and give birth to a child for another would-be parent. The practice raises several ethical questions concerning, for example, the commodification of both surrogate and baby and the exploitation of the surrogate, issues which have been extensively debated. This book offers a fresh take on two different questions that bear on surrogacy’s justifiability: Is providing gestational services a permissible way of employing a woman’s body—is it a legitimate form of work? And are children born out of surrogacy wronged by surrogacy agreements? Christine Straehle proposes that surrogacy is legitimate work—a way for women to realize certain goals through the fruit of their labour. She defends a right to become a surrogate as necessary to protect women’s autonomy. Anca Gheaus argues that surrogacy always wrongs children—whether or not it also harms them—by disrespecting them; gestational services are therefore impermissible. In her response to Gheaus, Straehle questions that surrogacy wrongs children; besides a genetic, she also defends aintentional model of parental rights, which indicates that having a child through surrogacy should count as a ground to assign parental rights. In her response, Gheaus objects that Straehle’s view fails to properly account for the interests of either surrogates or children. However, Gheaus accepts that women may gestate without the intention to have custody over the newborn, and is therefore open to some kind of post-surrogacy practice that, in the allocation of legal parenthood, would radically depart from any historical or currently proposed form of surrogacy.
In 2022, the global commercial surrogacy industry was valued at approximately US$14 billion. This paper explores the issue of surrogacy to reveal how international human rights standards and labor laws treat reproduction as work, building on previous scholarship analyzing similar framing at the grassroots level in Mexico. I argue that the failure to recognize surrogacy as labor is rooted in three lacunae: (1) contemporary policies and practices around surrogacy globally pay little attention to the well-being and rights fulfillment of surrogates themselves, particularly the economic rights of surrogates; (2) the stigma of surrogacy as sexualized care work results in neglect of the labor rights of surrogates in mainstream economic rights discourses; and (3) relevant international rights law has not yet addressed the economic rights of surrogates, nor has it effectively articulated the interdependent relationship between economic rights and reproductive rights. Lastly, I discuss where reproductive rights and economic rights overlap in existing human rights conventions and standards and what possibilities these offer for articulating the interdependence of reproductive and economic rights and for advancing the labor rights of surrogates.
This paper provides an analysis of the complex global reproduction networks driving the rapidly expanding cross-border surrogacy industry in Asia’s reproductive bioeconomy. It sheds light on the unique features of informal surrogacy networks, notable for their flexible business ties and non-standardized surrogate mother recruitment. These factors contribute to heightened vulnerability for surrogate mothers operating within these networks. While previous literature has underscored the merits of labor law in regulating the surrogacy industry, its application in informal cross-border surrogacy remains under-examined. To address this gap, this research delves into innovative labor law strategies with potential to better regulate the surrogacy sector. Drawing inspiration from progressive labor regulations and supply chain strategies in Bulgaria and Australia, the proposed model aims to redefine the traditional employment relationship. This shift is aimed at bolstering protection for surrogate mothers and enforcing accountability throughout the surrogacy business network. The model further advocates for a collective framework that fosters collaboration and mandates the documentation and registration of surrogacy contracts. Moreover, it underscores the critical significance of international collaboration in bridging regulatory gaps and distributing accountability across consumer and supply states.
Commercial surrogacy mainly occurs in underdeveloped nations, and when local women carry children for affluent foreigners, commercial surrogacy is a controversial issue in feminist literature. Surrogacy is a contentious topic, primarily when prominent celebrities have utilized it. Particular surrogate moms experience complications by assisted reproduction techniques; Ectopic pregnancy, ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, and psychological stress are the primary ones. It benefits couples unable to conceive normally but may also be exploited for profit. In December 2018, the Indian Government approved surrogacy legislation that modified the previous regulations. Specifically, it outlaws commercial surrogacy and restricts the eligibility of Europeans to seek surrogacy in India. The companies that organized surrogacy for foreigners have suffered a severe hit. This law's passage was primarily motivated by the discriminatory practices of surrogacy providers. They often did not receive the money the expecting parents paid to the company, and their living conditions were poor. Commercial surrogacy is permitted in various nations, such as the United States of America, Russia, Poland, and many others. Surrogacy is banned in Saudi Arabia,. In these countries, surrogacy is mainly banned due to religious beliefs, i:e, Islam does not allow this practice, which is unethical. It is unclear what the acceptable reimbursement for surrogacy is in other nations where any surrogacy is considered banned. Both commercial and altruistic surrogacy have unethical consequences, and several nations disagree and have banned it. These moral disadvantages are even worse by cross-border commercial surrogacy. Their many objections against commercial surrogacy are addressed, along with the justifications for why it is banned in many countries. Examples include the commercialization and exploitation of surrogates, reproductive capabilities, health risks, unfair marketing, a lack of legal protection for surrogate mothers, ethical and legal issues, and the issue of stateless children. Despite the possibility of commercialization and exploitation, we suggest that these issues are not exclusive to surrogacy and instead need to be seen from the larger perspective of an unequal civilization. Furthermore, some of these arguments lack an understanding of actual experiences or are based on metaphor. Surrogates need to be compensated well, and rules should be in place. Commercial surrogacy is a complicated topic that is impacted by various variables, such as high infertility treatment costs, the accessibility of international travel, and especially the economic fragility of Indian SMs and their families. There are issues surrounding the surrogate mother's decision making process, especially concerning gender disparities, power imbalances, and a lack of proper legal support for surrogate mothers. To fully comprehend commercial surrogacy, further study is required, mainly research considering the perspectives of Indian women and families participating in these arrangements.
Starting from the early 2000s, India was one of the most sought-after destinations for commercial surrogacy. However, in 2015 the government decided to ban transnational commercial surrogacy, and recently “The Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2021,” which bans commercial surrogacy altogether and confines it to its altruistic form, has been enacted. Our article makes a philosophical intervention into the policy debate around this move by analyzing various draft versions of “The Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill” which culminated in the ban. We argue that the Bill fails to realize its ethical potential since it is vitiated by a number of conceptual fallacies. We expose the conceptual fallacies by unpacking the concept of care in gestational surrogacy through the lens of care ethics. The robust conceptualization of care serves as a critical vantage point for analyzing the Bill's distorted understanding of care (and especially the affect–care–labor link) in gestational surrogacy. Consequently, we conclude that regulation of commercial surrogacy with fair compensation and due consideration for the agency of surrogates holds far greater ethical potential than a blanket ban on commercial surrogacy and mandating that it be practiced only in its altruistic form.
In 2019, Spanish fertility clinics reached a historical record of ova extractions. A total of 14,521 surgeries were performed to serve the growing egg demand internationally. Here I show how bringing a cycle to completion is not an easy task for egg donors. Selecting a clinic, understanding their own biocapital in the industry and how to invest it, fitting the cycle into their lives, and managing pain and emotions become crucial parts of their work. I argue that these activities constitute a vast amount of labor that, although essential for the generation of value in reproductive bioeconomies, remains invisible and undertheorized.
Feminists have long demonstrated the invisibility of women's reproductive labor, performed in bearing and raising children, maintaining households, and socially sustaining male labor. Every wave of feminist struggle from the late nineteenth century onward has actively queried the inequalities that characterize women's performance of such work, variously referred to as unpaid domestic and care work, domestic labor, or care work. Robust traditions of scholarship on women's unpaid work animate various disciplines, often spilling into political struggles for adequate recognition of this work. As the pandemic has rendered visible once again the reproductive labor of women the world over, this article offers an overview of social reproduction theory, feminist legal theorizations of reproductive labor, and how we might recuperate a rich tradition of theorizing on social reproduction to develop a robust materialist approach to law's regulation of reproductive labor across the marriage-market spectrum with a view to social and economic justice.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Volume 19 is October 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
Methodological questions in social science research have always been central to an understanding of the analytical frameworks that define a research problem. However, the relationship between research and the choice of methodology to address, conduct or represent it suffers from the problem of sequentially setting precedence in terms of mapping the epistemological scope of the research question or in selecting the methodological structure that should facilitate the study. The question is one of assessing what comes first or which aspect determines the process and outcome of the research, as it is also about ascertaining if what we know can be independent of how we know it (Fierke 2004). This chapter deals with similar methodological concerns that were experienced as part of intensive multi-sited field research on Indian surrogacy in the cities of Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune, Anand and Howrah between 2014 and 2017. The phased nature of the field research and the academic, interpretive exercise that followed it necessitated consistent methodological improvisations and involved a good deal of theoretical disengagement and re-engagement in keeping with the changing narratives that emerged on the field. The discussion would thus offer an insight into the challenges and processes of accumulating diversified qualitative data from the principal stakeholders in three different phases as the surrogacy law in India was constantly undergoing radical shifts and was transitioning from a commercial to a kin-based altruistic model. Family creation through assisted reproductive technology (ART) has more or less been a contested issue, but the insistence on the feasibility or appropriateness of using the surrogacy services of poor Indian women with socio-economic vulnerabilities changed the entire discourse of artificial reproduction in the country. Consequently, it added to the moral contingency and legal precariousness of surrogacy procedures following the periodic evolution of its legislative mandate in India. This had immense significance in the context of research accessibility and data collection on surrogacy as perceptions of confidentiality and legal immunity were reconfigured given the transformative guidelines.
This article utilises feminist technoscience studies’ notions of bodily ‘materialisation’ and ‘ontological choreographies’, offering a cyborg feminist account of ‘bioavailability’ as embodied becomings, rather than a fixed ontological state of being. Drawn from 2 years’ ethnographic study in in vitro fertilisation clinics in Spain with migrant women who provided eggs to the cross-border in vitro fertilisation industry, this work explores how global understandings of race and inequalities, clinical practices and women’s own emotional and physical labours collectively produce bioavailability. Through examples from observations and interviews in in vitro fertilisation clinics, we examined women’s embodied stories to understand the ways in which bioavailability becomes. The article demonstrates a novel way in which to think about ‘bioavailability’, a concept which has already been of enormous use to the social sciences since its introduction by Lawrence Cohen. We examine recent configurations of bodily extraction in the reproduction–migration nexus that help us rethink the concept of bioavailability.
Transnational Feminist Itineraries brings together scholars and activists from multiple continents to demonstrate the ongoing importance of transnational feminist theory in challenging neoliberal globalization and the rise of authoritarian nationalisms around the world. The contributors illuminate transnational feminism's unique constellation of elements: its specific mode of thinking across scales, its historical understanding of identity categories, and its expansive imagining of solidarity based on difference rather than similarity. Contesting the idea that transnational feminism works in opposition to other approaches—especially intersectional and decolonial feminisms—this volume instead argues for their complementarity. Throughout, the contributors call for reaching across social, ideological, and geographical boundaries to better confront the growing reach of nationalism, authoritarianism, and religious and economic fundamentalism.
Contributors. Mary Bernstein, Isabel Maria Cortesão Casimiro, Rafael de la Dehesa, Carmen L. Diaz Alba, Inderpal Grewal, Cricket Keating, Amy Lind, Laura L. Lovett, Kathryn Moeller, Nancy A. Naples, Jennifer C. Nash, Amrita Pande, Srila Roy, Cara K. Snyder, Ashwini Tambe, Millie Thayer, Catarina Casimiro Trindade
Transnational Feminist Itineraries brings together scholars and activists from multiple continents to demonstrate the ongoing importance of transnational feminist theory in challenging neoliberal globalization and the rise of authoritarian nationalisms around the world. The contributors illuminate transnational feminism's unique constellation of elements: its specific mode of thinking across scales, its historical understanding of identity categories, and its expansive imagining of solidarity based on difference rather than similarity. Contesting the idea that transnational feminism works in opposition to other approaches—especially intersectional and decolonial feminisms—this volume instead argues for their complementarity. Throughout, the contributors call for reaching across social, ideological, and geographical boundaries to better confront the growing reach of nationalism, authoritarianism, and religious and economic fundamentalism.
Contributors. Mary Bernstein, Isabel Maria Cortesão Casimiro, Rafael de la Dehesa, Carmen L. Diaz Alba, Inderpal Grewal, Cricket Keating, Amy Lind, Laura L. Lovett, Kathryn Moeller, Nancy A. Naples, Jennifer C. Nash, Amrita Pande, Srila Roy, Cara K. Snyder, Ashwini Tambe, Millie Thayer, Catarina Casimiro Trindade
Transnational Feminist Itineraries brings together scholars and activists from multiple continents to demonstrate the ongoing importance of transnational feminist theory in challenging neoliberal globalization and the rise of authoritarian nationalisms around the world. The contributors illuminate transnational feminism's unique constellation of elements: its specific mode of thinking across scales, its historical understanding of identity categories, and its expansive imagining of solidarity based on difference rather than similarity. Contesting the idea that transnational feminism works in opposition to other approaches—especially intersectional and decolonial feminisms—this volume instead argues for their complementarity. Throughout, the contributors call for reaching across social, ideological, and geographical boundaries to better confront the growing reach of nationalism, authoritarianism, and religious and economic fundamentalism.
Contributors. Mary Bernstein, Isabel Maria Cortesão Casimiro, Rafael de la Dehesa, Carmen L. Diaz Alba, Inderpal Grewal, Cricket Keating, Amy Lind, Laura L. Lovett, Kathryn Moeller, Nancy A. Naples, Jennifer C. Nash, Amrita Pande, Srila Roy, Cara K. Snyder, Ashwini Tambe, Millie Thayer, Catarina Casimiro Trindade
Transnational Feminist Itineraries brings together scholars and activists from multiple continents to demonstrate the ongoing importance of transnational feminist theory in challenging neoliberal globalization and the rise of authoritarian nationalisms around the world. The contributors illuminate transnational feminism's unique constellation of elements: its specific mode of thinking across scales, its historical understanding of identity categories, and its expansive imagining of solidarity based on difference rather than similarity. Contesting the idea that transnational feminism works in opposition to other approaches—especially intersectional and decolonial feminisms—this volume instead argues for their complementarity. Throughout, the contributors call for reaching across social, ideological, and geographical boundaries to better confront the growing reach of nationalism, authoritarianism, and religious and economic fundamentalism.
Contributors. Mary Bernstein, Isabel Maria Cortesão Casimiro, Rafael de la Dehesa, Carmen L. Diaz Alba, Inderpal Grewal, Cricket Keating, Amy Lind, Laura L. Lovett, Kathryn Moeller, Nancy A. Naples, Jennifer C. Nash, Amrita Pande, Srila Roy, Cara K. Snyder, Ashwini Tambe, Millie Thayer, Catarina Casimiro Trindade
Transnational Feminist Itineraries brings together scholars and activists from multiple continents to demonstrate the ongoing importance of transnational feminist theory in challenging neoliberal globalization and the rise of authoritarian nationalisms around the world. The contributors illuminate transnational feminism's unique constellation of elements: its specific mode of thinking across scales, its historical understanding of identity categories, and its expansive imagining of solidarity based on difference rather than similarity. Contesting the idea that transnational feminism works in opposition to other approaches—especially intersectional and decolonial feminisms—this volume instead argues for their complementarity. Throughout, the contributors call for reaching across social, ideological, and geographical boundaries to better confront the growing reach of nationalism, authoritarianism, and religious and economic fundamentalism.
Contributors. Mary Bernstein, Isabel Maria Cortesão Casimiro, Rafael de la Dehesa, Carmen L. Diaz Alba, Inderpal Grewal, Cricket Keating, Amy Lind, Laura L. Lovett, Kathryn Moeller, Nancy A. Naples, Jennifer C. Nash, Amrita Pande, Srila Roy, Cara K. Snyder, Ashwini Tambe, Millie Thayer, Catarina Casimiro Trindade
Transnational Feminist Itineraries brings together scholars and activists from multiple continents to demonstrate the ongoing importance of transnational feminist theory in challenging neoliberal globalization and the rise of authoritarian nationalisms around the world. The contributors illuminate transnational feminism's unique constellation of elements: its specific mode of thinking across scales, its historical understanding of identity categories, and its expansive imagining of solidarity based on difference rather than similarity. Contesting the idea that transnational feminism works in opposition to other approaches—especially intersectional and decolonial feminisms—this volume instead argues for their complementarity. Throughout, the contributors call for reaching across social, ideological, and geographical boundaries to better confront the growing reach of nationalism, authoritarianism, and religious and economic fundamentalism.
Contributors. Mary Bernstein, Isabel Maria Cortesão Casimiro, Rafael de la Dehesa, Carmen L. Diaz Alba, Inderpal Grewal, Cricket Keating, Amy Lind, Laura L. Lovett, Kathryn Moeller, Nancy A. Naples, Jennifer C. Nash, Amrita Pande, Srila Roy, Cara K. Snyder, Ashwini Tambe, Millie Thayer, Catarina Casimiro Trindade
Transnational Feminist Itineraries brings together scholars and activists from multiple continents to demonstrate the ongoing importance of transnational feminist theory in challenging neoliberal globalization and the rise of authoritarian nationalisms around the world. The contributors illuminate transnational feminism's unique constellation of elements: its specific mode of thinking across scales, its historical understanding of identity categories, and its expansive imagining of solidarity based on difference rather than similarity. Contesting the idea that transnational feminism works in opposition to other approaches—especially intersectional and decolonial feminisms—this volume instead argues for their complementarity. Throughout, the contributors call for reaching across social, ideological, and geographical boundaries to better confront the growing reach of nationalism, authoritarianism, and religious and economic fundamentalism.
Contributors. Mary Bernstein, Isabel Maria Cortesão Casimiro, Rafael de la Dehesa, Carmen L. Diaz Alba, Inderpal Grewal, Cricket Keating, Amy Lind, Laura L. Lovett, Kathryn Moeller, Nancy A. Naples, Jennifer C. Nash, Amrita Pande, Srila Roy, Cara K. Snyder, Ashwini Tambe, Millie Thayer, Catarina Casimiro Trindade
Transnational Feminist Itineraries brings together scholars and activists from multiple continents to demonstrate the ongoing importance of transnational feminist theory in challenging neoliberal globalization and the rise of authoritarian nationalisms around the world. The contributors illuminate transnational feminism's unique constellation of elements: its specific mode of thinking across scales, its historical understanding of identity categories, and its expansive imagining of solidarity based on difference rather than similarity. Contesting the idea that transnational feminism works in opposition to other approaches—especially intersectional and decolonial feminisms—this volume instead argues for their complementarity. Throughout, the contributors call for reaching across social, ideological, and geographical boundaries to better confront the growing reach of nationalism, authoritarianism, and religious and economic fundamentalism.
Contributors. Mary Bernstein, Isabel Maria Cortesão Casimiro, Rafael de la Dehesa, Carmen L. Diaz Alba, Inderpal Grewal, Cricket Keating, Amy Lind, Laura L. Lovett, Kathryn Moeller, Nancy A. Naples, Jennifer C. Nash, Amrita Pande, Srila Roy, Cara K. Snyder, Ashwini Tambe, Millie Thayer, Catarina Casimiro Trindade
Transnational Feminist Itineraries brings together scholars and activists from multiple continents to demonstrate the ongoing importance of transnational feminist theory in challenging neoliberal globalization and the rise of authoritarian nationalisms around the world. The contributors illuminate transnational feminism's unique constellation of elements: its specific mode of thinking across scales, its historical understanding of identity categories, and its expansive imagining of solidarity based on difference rather than similarity. Contesting the idea that transnational feminism works in opposition to other approaches—especially intersectional and decolonial feminisms—this volume instead argues for their complementarity. Throughout, the contributors call for reaching across social, ideological, and geographical boundaries to better confront the growing reach of nationalism, authoritarianism, and religious and economic fundamentalism.
Contributors. Mary Bernstein, Isabel Maria Cortesão Casimiro, Rafael de la Dehesa, Carmen L. Diaz Alba, Inderpal Grewal, Cricket Keating, Amy Lind, Laura L. Lovett, Kathryn Moeller, Nancy A. Naples, Jennifer C. Nash, Amrita Pande, Srila Roy, Cara K. Snyder, Ashwini Tambe, Millie Thayer, Catarina Casimiro Trindade
Transnational Feminist Itineraries brings together scholars and activists from multiple continents to demonstrate the ongoing importance of transnational feminist theory in challenging neoliberal globalization and the rise of authoritarian nationalisms around the world. The contributors illuminate transnational feminism's unique constellation of elements: its specific mode of thinking across scales, its historical understanding of identity categories, and its expansive imagining of solidarity based on difference rather than similarity. Contesting the idea that transnational feminism works in opposition to other approaches—especially intersectional and decolonial feminisms—this volume instead argues for their complementarity. Throughout, the contributors call for reaching across social, ideological, and geographical boundaries to better confront the growing reach of nationalism, authoritarianism, and religious and economic fundamentalism.
Contributors. Mary Bernstein, Isabel Maria Cortesão Casimiro, Rafael de la Dehesa, Carmen L. Diaz Alba, Inderpal Grewal, Cricket Keating, Amy Lind, Laura L. Lovett, Kathryn Moeller, Nancy A. Naples, Jennifer C. Nash, Amrita Pande, Srila Roy, Cara K. Snyder, Ashwini Tambe, Millie Thayer, Catarina Casimiro Trindade
Transnational Feminist Itineraries brings together scholars and activists from multiple continents to demonstrate the ongoing importance of transnational feminist theory in challenging neoliberal globalization and the rise of authoritarian nationalisms around the world. The contributors illuminate transnational feminism's unique constellation of elements: its specific mode of thinking across scales, its historical understanding of identity categories, and its expansive imagining of solidarity based on difference rather than similarity. Contesting the idea that transnational feminism works in opposition to other approaches—especially intersectional and decolonial feminisms—this volume instead argues for their complementarity. Throughout, the contributors call for reaching across social, ideological, and geographical boundaries to better confront the growing reach of nationalism, authoritarianism, and religious and economic fundamentalism.
Contributors. Mary Bernstein, Isabel Maria Cortesão Casimiro, Rafael de la Dehesa, Carmen L. Diaz Alba, Inderpal Grewal, Cricket Keating, Amy Lind, Laura L. Lovett, Kathryn Moeller, Nancy A. Naples, Jennifer C. Nash, Amrita Pande, Srila Roy, Cara K. Snyder, Ashwini Tambe, Millie Thayer, Catarina Casimiro Trindade
Transnational Feminist Itineraries brings together scholars and activists from multiple continents to demonstrate the ongoing importance of transnational feminist theory in challenging neoliberal globalization and the rise of authoritarian nationalisms around the world. The contributors illuminate transnational feminism's unique constellation of elements: its specific mode of thinking across scales, its historical understanding of identity categories, and its expansive imagining of solidarity based on difference rather than similarity. Contesting the idea that transnational feminism works in opposition to other approaches—especially intersectional and decolonial feminisms—this volume instead argues for their complementarity. Throughout, the contributors call for reaching across social, ideological, and geographical boundaries to better confront the growing reach of nationalism, authoritarianism, and religious and economic fundamentalism.
Contributors. Mary Bernstein, Isabel Maria Cortesão Casimiro, Rafael de la Dehesa, Carmen L. Diaz Alba, Inderpal Grewal, Cricket Keating, Amy Lind, Laura L. Lovett, Kathryn Moeller, Nancy A. Naples, Jennifer C. Nash, Amrita Pande, Srila Roy, Cara K. Snyder, Ashwini Tambe, Millie Thayer, Catarina Casimiro Trindade
Transnational Feminist Itineraries brings together scholars and activists from multiple continents to demonstrate the ongoing importance of transnational feminist theory in challenging neoliberal globalization and the rise of authoritarian nationalisms around the world. The contributors illuminate transnational feminism's unique constellation of elements: its specific mode of thinking across scales, its historical understanding of identity categories, and its expansive imagining of solidarity based on difference rather than similarity. Contesting the idea that transnational feminism works in opposition to other approaches—especially intersectional and decolonial feminisms—this volume instead argues for their complementarity. Throughout, the contributors call for reaching across social, ideological, and geographical boundaries to better confront the growing reach of nationalism, authoritarianism, and religious and economic fundamentalism.
Contributors. Mary Bernstein, Isabel Maria Cortesão Casimiro, Rafael de la Dehesa, Carmen L. Diaz Alba, Inderpal Grewal, Cricket Keating, Amy Lind, Laura L. Lovett, Kathryn Moeller, Nancy A. Naples, Jennifer C. Nash, Amrita Pande, Srila Roy, Cara K. Snyder, Ashwini Tambe, Millie Thayer, Catarina Casimiro Trindade
Cross-border reproductive care is a complex issue of the modern world that also impacts the Russian Federation. The main reasons for engaging in cross-border reproductive care are various legal, social, cultural, economic and religious factors, as well as national healthcare quality. In many countries, reproduction involving third parties, i.e., their sperm, eggs and embryos, is prohibited by law. This is why gamete donation is one of the main causes of pursuing CBRC in a foreign country, with Russia holding leading positions in this industry. Current stage of healthcare development makes Russia a major surrogate tourism destination, due to its common European culture and improved public health standards. Besides, Russia, as a multiethnic state where all religions are represented, has the most liberal legislation concerning infertility treatment. Fertility tourists have the same rights as Russian citizens in terms of assisted reproduction procedures, including obtaining the birth certificate regardless of biological relation to the child.
Through examining cases of cross-border surrogacy in Israel and the United States, we offer the concept of genetic kinning defined as the narratives deployed by individuals that give prominence to genetic relatedness between offspring and parents to highlight immutable similarities between parents, and by extension, grandparents and ancestors. The deployment of genetic kinning narratives does not happen in a vacuum; instead, nation-state bodies emphasize genetic relatedness within the family unit, especially accentuated in cases of cross-border surrogacy where intended parents need to receive travel documents, including passports, and subsequently citizenship, for their children birthed through surrogacy. Genetic kinning is more emphasized for queer couples, where only one (or neither) of the fathers, or mothers as the case may be, is genetically related to the infant. We examine cases in Israel and the United States that we selected due to their wide media coverage and studied through their press presentations. We show that far from becoming less relevant, genetic relatedness becomes increasingly salient because of assisted reproductive technologies, including gamete donation and surrogacy, especially when families move across borders, presenting states bodies with the need to parse out descendance, family status/parentage, and national membership/citizenship. 2
Through examining cases of cross-border surrogacy in Israel and the United States, we offer the concept of genetic kinning defined as the narratives deployed by individuals that give prominence to genetic relatedness between offspring and parents to highlight immutable similarities between parents, and by extension, grandparents and ancestors. The deployment of genetic kinning narratives does not happen in a vacuum; instead, nation-state bodies emphasize genetic relatedness within the family unit, especially accentuated in cases of cross-border surrogacy where intended parents need to receive travel documents, including passports, and subsequently citizenship, for their children birthed through surrogacy. Genetic kinning is more emphasized for queer couples, where only one (or neither) of the fathers, or mothers as the case may be, is genetically related to the infant. We examine cases in Israel and the United States that we selected due to their wide media coverage and studied through their press presentations. We show that far from becoming less relevant, genetic relatedness becomes increasingly salient because of assisted reproductive technologies, including gamete donation and surrogacy, especially when families move across borders, presenting states bodies with the need to parse out descendance, family status/parentage, and national membership/citizenship.
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