Transnational surrogacy in the post-Soviet sphere: Geographic and geo-political stratifications amongst migrant and commuting surrogacy workers in Russia

• In Event: Transgressive Markets in Assisted Reproduction: Queering family construction in the 21st century

Abstract

In this presentation I trace the trajectories of reproductive labour and delivery of migrant and commuting surrogacy workers in Russia. I explore how markets in surrogacy in Russia rest on and propel mobility amongst surrogacy workers, and how the women’s temporary reproductive migrations or regular commutes across Russia’s landmass and transnationally from the surrounding former Soviet states, leads to geographic and geo-political stratifications.
To do so, I introduce the categories ‘migrant surrogacy worker’ and ‘commuting surrogacy worker’ to explore and emphasise these women’s exceptional mobility and their different experiences of reproductive stratification amongst each other, and in comparison, to locally living surrogacy workers. Building on Colen’s (1995) conceptual framework of stratified reproduction, I draw attention to the inherent geographic and geo-political reproductive stratifications between local, migrant and commuting surrogacy workers in Russia. Depending on their geographic origin and place of residence before and during their commissioned gestational service, surrogacy workers in Russia experience two matrices of geographic and geopolitical stratification. The first matrix concerns how agencies and client parents select and remunerate surrogacy workers according to their origin or place of residence. The second matrix concerns migrant and commuting surrogacy workers’ geographically stratified experiences of their pregnancies. This research draws on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork with surrogacy workers, client parents, agency and medical staff in St Petersburg, Russia, in 2011-2012 and 2014-2015.

Author

• Christina Weis, Centre for Reproduction Research; De Montfort University, Leicester, UK.