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Paper short abstract

Anonymity acts as a key market device shaping Spain’s reproductive markets. It structures donor recruitment, gamete and embryo circulation, and clinic control, enabling commercialization in egg and embryo donation and supporting new reprogenetic services.

Paper long abstract

Often portrayed as the natural outcome of interactions between supply and demand, markets do not emerge spontaneously: they are socially constructed and stabilized through technological, normative, and organizational arrangements. Building on the concept of market devices (Muniesa 2007), this paper examines how such devices shape reproductive markets by structuring interactions among donors, recipients, clinics, and intermediaries. Market devices encompass not only material infrastructures—databases, matching systems, and laboratory technologies—but also regulatory and ethical instruments such as informed consent procedures and anonymity requirements. Focusing on anonymity, the paper explores its role beyond donor privacy or family‑making norms. While anonymity traditionally protected recipients’ narratives and obscured donors’ contributions, its function as a market‑shaping device has received limited scholarly attention. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in Spain, this paper analyzes how anonymity organizes and sustains reproductive markets by influencing donor recruitment, gamete and embryo mobilization, and the configuration of donor–recipient relationships. Three case studies illustrate these dynamics. In egg donation, anonymity facilitates commercialization by allowing clinics to aggregate, classify, and redistribute oocytes without relational involvement. In embryo donation, anonymity enables clinics to reclassify surplus embryos as “abandoned,” supporting clinical control and potential commercialization, while known embryo donation generates alternative markets mediated by specialized intermediaries. In reprogenetics, anonymity underpins the marketing of Expanded Carrier Screening (ECS) by framing genetic risk assessment as a premium, non‑relational service. Using Science and Technology Studies and feminist perspectives, the paper argues that anonymity structures market transactions, limits recipient agency, naturalizes assisted reproduction, and sustains the profitability of reproductive markets.