Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I examine the shaping of citizenship, social reproduction, and "integration" to Canada through programs targeting immigrant parents.

Paper long abstract:

In Canada, immigration is a central means for securing its population. Along strict immigration policies, securing desirable immigrants is further pursued through several civic enterprises. Sexuality, health, and reproduction are core aspects in these social enterprises. In this paper, I turn to "parenting programs" targeting immigrants to Canada to examine childrearing practices promoted by state-sponsored institutions, and consider how they shape new Canadian citizens. These interventions are proposed as a solution to the "problems" post-settlement poses to newcomer families to Canada. Based on my ethnographic inquire into sexuality education as the cultural spaces where parents and their family practices are interpellated and "integrated" into the social fabric of a mid-sized Canadian prairie city. Through my fieldwork in parent-management education I heard from settlement "experts" and newcomers. I explore the ways in which parents become active in their own governance, responsible for their reproductive practices, and also re-define desirable citizenship by raising "proper" or "good" reproductive actors.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic research in the field of maternity care for refugee women in Lower Saxony, Germany, I will show how these women's diverse reproductive hopes challenged local infrastructures, raised moral debates and shed light on the highly stratified access to reproductive health care.

Paper long abstract:

During the past years, significant numbers of refugees have come to Germany - among them a large number of women of child-bearing age. In my paper, I will draw on ethnographic research I carried out in the field of maternity care for refugee women and give insights into negotiations about the desire to have children within this context.

First, I will introduce a group of young women who tried to get pregnant because they (mistakenly) thought their legal status and chances to settle might become safer with a child born on German soil. Second, I will talk about several women who by the time of my research already did have a safe legal status, but who were not able to conceive. Now, knowing they'd be able to stay, they wanted to begin or resume an ART treatment.

As I will show, both of these groups with diverse reproductive ambitions had to face similar major challenges within the confining German medico-legal nexus of maternity care for refugee women. But the challenge was mutual, as these women also significantly disconcerted the local structures of reception: their struggles raised moral debates in municipal reception politics and shed light on the highly stratified access to the sector of reproductive health/maternity care, depending on status and race.

My paper thus will contribute to the debate around reproductive aspirations from the context of migration- and border-studies and will show how the legitimacy of pursuing the desire for children is mediated and negotiated in this specific context.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I focus on the making of kinship through "grey zone" practices of private adoption in Greece.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I focus on the making of kinship through practices of private adoption in Greece. Private adoption is legal and is taken place under the direct collusion of perspective adoptive parents and genitors or an inter-mediator without the involvement of a state social service. The last ten years 550 children are adopted annually and a number of 90-95 % of these adoptions are private. Private adoption is a highly criticised practice on behalf of the social workers and the local media, which reproduce a discourse about "buying and selling babies". This discourse is even more emblematic in the cases of biological mothers from Bulgaria that come to Greece only for giving birth and deliver the child to the perspective parents. But at the same time that we hear of this critic we perceive from the same media and from the law makers a discourse of compassion and an understanding of the infertile couples for their involvement in these practices because of their desire to have a child. Here I focus on a case-study of a mother who has adopted privately and I am trying to see how kinship is made in the "grey zones" of private adoption and how a possible discourse of illegality and monetisation is being transformed.

Paper short abstract:

There's an evacuation policy in place for expectant women in remote communities in Canada prior their due dates. The paper is looking into experiences of Indigenous Wemindji Cree women in southern boarding homes while waiting for births.

Paper long abstract:

I will present preliminary results of my ethnographic study on Wemindji Cree childbirth concentrating on the experiences of expectant Cree women in southern boarding homes while waiting for births.

Since time immemorial, Cree children were born in the bush, surrounded by family and community. Colonization and eventually medicalization of Cree life resulted in the policy (~1980) of evacuating all expectant Cree women to southern hospitals to birth. The waiting times in boarding homes can vary from a few days to a few months, depending on pregnancy's biomedical risk factors and the due dates.

How do women make temporary homes away from home? What arrangements do they make for the evacuation period? How do they organize their space and time while temporarily settled? How do they cope with uncertain waiting periods, separation from their family and community?

I argue that elements of Cree knowledge and practices of birth in the bush persist and evolve in a new environment and help women go through their final stages of pregnancy away from home.

Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at how tourism mobilities affect Euro-American women's ideas around cross-border interracial conception, pregnancy, childbearing, and kinship in a ecotourism destination, Costa Rica. Place mobilizes the championing of natural conception over assisted reproduction technologies.

Paper long abstract:

While the draw of affordable and accessible reproductive technologies in the global south providing fertility and procreative solutions for consumers in the global north has been well documented, the draw of non-medically assisted reproduction has not yet received much attention. ARTs can be thought of as reproduction outcomes that generate mobilities, that is, ART clients travel to locales where reproductive care service is available. But in a "mobility era," the mobility of women tourists has also generated new reproductive practices. This paper looks specifically at how touristic travel to particular destinations in the global south affect ideas around cross-border interracial conception, pregnancy, childbearing, and kinship. I examine Costa Rica through the lens of reproductive mobilities to raise questions about links between destination imaginaries and reproductive imaginaries. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, stories of never imagining having children or only wanting children related through "blood" are situated in narratives about an ecologically utopic destination where it became possible to conceive naturally. Here, place moves or mobilizes the championing of natural conception over assisted reproduction technologies. Furthermore, complications over staying in Costa Rica rather than returning to home in the global north emerge, complications that are linked to privilege of nationality and whiteness but also illusory aspirations for the perfect family.

Paper short abstract:

This paper deals with pregnancy and childbirth experiences of migrant women living in the Czech Republic. It aims to examine their situational vulnerabilities in the context of health care provision, resulting from their specific experiences with migration, mobility and reproductive trajectories.

Paper long abstract:

Childbirth is the most frequent reason why migrants in the Czech Republic use health care services. It is a peak event of human reproduction and a crucial point of entry into the Czech health care system. This paper deals with pregnancies and childbirths of migrant women living in the Czech Republic who have given birth in Czech maternity hospitals. I examine these women's care pathways throughout the Czech health care system in the context of their reproductive trajectories that are distinctly shaped by their experience of migration and mobility. I am interested in these women's experiences, expectations and changing understandings, as well as in misunderstandings that occur in their interactions with Czech healthcare providers. My particular goal is to grasp situational vulnerabilities within the context of a maternity and birth care provision that result from these women's specific experiences with migration and mobility as well as from their individual reproductive trajectories. Numerous studies indicate that migrant women are one of the most vulnerable groups in the society, especially if pregnant or about to give birth. This paper contributes to this field of scholarship by providing insights from a Central Eastern European state known for its anti-migration sentiments in a public and political sphere.

In this paper I build on an ethnographic research of migrant women's care pathways, conducted since spring 2017, and 18 semi-structured interviews with migrant women of various migration status, age, country of origin, a length of stay, education and with various number of children.

Paper short abstract:

Based on interviews with sperm donors in Denmark and participant observation at Danish sperm banks, this presentation gives insights into how reproductive politics and governance become part of sperm donors' ways of being men through regimes of intimate (im)mobility.

Paper long abstract:

While the semen of Danish sperm donors is very mobile - Danish sperm banks export donor semen globally - the donors themselves are rather immobile. In fact, for donor semen to be globally mobile health regulations restrict donors from being mobile to minimize the risk of disease transmission from sperm donor to donor semen recipient. Regulations, for example, mark certain regions and countries as unsafe due to calculated possibilities of contracting sexually transmitted diseases or other illnesses when travelling there. In addition, the global mobility of donor semen relies on the intimate immobility of sperm donors as they are asked to restrict themselves sexually - both in terms of the number of potential partners as well as the frequency of sexual contacts. Living up to this regime of intimate (im)mobility in order to secure the global mobility of donor semen, sperm donors continuously (re)construct themselves in terms of reproductive masculinity, that is, ways of being men that aspire to biomedically accountable and biopolitically responsible modes of reproduction. This presentation will explore the making of reproductive masculinity by giving an ethnographic account of how regimes of intimate (im)mobility at Danish sperm banks lead men to aspire to the norms and logics of contemporary reproductive biomedicine. Based on interviews with sperm donors in Denmark and participant observation at Danish sperm banks, this presentation gives insights into how reproductive politics and governance become part of sperm donors' ways of being men through regimes of intimate (im)mobility.