The new global division of labor: Transnational surrogacy in India
Item
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Title
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The new global division of labor: Transnational surrogacy in India
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Identifier
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d_2009_2013:f3e58a957ba2:11904
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identifier
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12540
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Creator
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Deomampo, Daisy F.,
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Contributor
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Leith Mullings
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Date
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2013
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Cultural anthropology | Gender studies | South Asian studies | Globalization | India | Kinship | Medical anthropology | Reproduction | Surrogacy
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Abstract
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This dissertation examines the transnational surrogacy industry in India, in which would-be parents travel from around the globe to India in order to obtain assisted reproductive technology (ART) procedures such as in vitro fertilization, egg donation, and gestational surrogacy. While processes of human reproduction have become increasingly commodified and disaggregated, a new spatial division of labor has surfaced as laws in different countries facilitate or impede various fertility treatments. In recent years, India has emerged as a global "hub" of transnational surrogacy arrangements, in part because of lower costs but also due to minimal regulatory frameworks for the provision of ARTs. This dissertation details how these variables---the absence of laws governing ARTs in India, the relatively low cost of services, and the transnational clientele---influenced the expansion of ART services in India aimed specifically at global consumers, and the attendant implications for understanding kinship relations within global reproductive networks.;Based on thirteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Mumbai, India, this dissertation draws primarily on interviews and participant observation with surrogates, egg donors, commissioning parents, caretakers, and doctors. Across transnational and local socioeconomic hierarchies, how do these varied reproductive actors come together, and how do they understand and articulate their relationships with one another as they collaborate in the creation of babies? In addressing this question, this study focuses on the ways in which previously "inalienable" entities (such as sperm, eggs, and wombs) become alienable in the global reproductive market. In particular, it suggests that actors make sense of this process through concealment or, to use Bourdieu's term, "misrecognition" of the commodification of reproduction and family making. This dissertation argues that this process of misrecognition ultimately obscures broader patterns of stratification, while reinforcing hierarchies of ethnicity, class, gender, and nation, though in unexpected ways. The study illustrates the complexities and contradictions of stratified reproduction, as well as the constellation of relations embedded in transnational surrogacy, through several intersecting theoretical lenses: anthropology of kinship, critical race theory, feminist and urban geography, and theoretical analyses of agency and power.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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2009_2013.csv
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degree
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Ph.D.
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Program
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Anthropology
