Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on Mozambican couples resorting to assisted reproduction technologies (ARTs) in South Africa and on the importance personal, local and transnational, social networks have as trust building mechanisms regarding foreign clinical sites and global ARTs.

Paper long abstract:

In Maputo, Mozambique, reproduction is often at the core of marriage relationships and parenthood is highly valued. When facing a situation of involuntary childlessness women, or couples, are active agents in the quest for a wanted pregnancy and willing to make numerous emotional, economical and therapeutic efforts. If they can afford it, couples frequently engage in reproductive travel to the neighbouring South Africa. These are journeys with an undisclosed and uncertain reproductive outcome, through therapeutic pathways paved by the interaction with often bewildering biomedical technologies.

Trust in the clinical site and confidence on a positive outcome is at the core of every couple's therapeutic navigation. Therefore, transnational ART patients strategically plan the reproductive travel destination. This planning is always done according to informal social networks involving close (trustable) relationships and word-of-mouth information coming from extended social networks of previous ART users. These national and transnational prospection and support networks are activated while seeking treatment but also throughout couples' therapeutic pathways. While in treatment in South African clinics, Mozambican patients (women) often assemble as informal support groups through which they share information and experiences. These peer (bio)social relations are not only triggered by shared affliction but also by a shared navigation through the realm of global biomedical technology, such as ARTs, on a foreign clinical site.

This paper builds on empirical and theoretical insights into trust strengthening mechanisms travelling Mozambican couples put into practice while prospecting for assisted reproduction (ART) in South Africa as well as during their navigation throughout those treatments.