Paper short abstract:

The paper presents the intersubjectivities between the communist past and the postcommunist present in terms of politics of reproduction and reproductive health practices in taking contemporary Romanian (women) migrants to France as a case study.

Paper long abstract:

From 1966 to 1989, the communist regime imposed extreme policies of controlled demography in Romania, as it was imputed, for 'the good of the socialist nation'. Pro-family measures were developed in parallel to the banning of abortion on request and the making of contraception almost inaccessible. Women, forced to seek alternative methods of family planning, rediscovered old fashioned methods of contraception or created new ways of terminating unwanted pregnancies. The consequences of Ceausescu's pronatalism continue to affect Romanian women's reproductive health to this day. Although the legacies of the past are not being debated publically in post-communist Romania, their negative effects become visible at both national and international level when Romanian citizens migrate. Romanian women who migrate to France (to study or work, legally or illegally) are forced to assimilate into and embody another public health system. Intersubjectivities are thus developed between old practices and new places, in terms of reproductive health. The analysis is based on a long term oral history fieldwork on the memory of abortion in communist Romania, as well as related documentation and archives, and an anthropological fieldwork in progress on the Romanian immigrants in South-West France and their reproductive health practices and health-care access.