Carolin
Schurr

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Carolin Schurr is professor of Social and Cultural Geography at the University of Bern. She is the principal investigator of the SNSF project "Reproductive Geopolitics" project. MORE

Laura
Perler

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Laura Perler is a postdoctoral researcher in Social and Cultural Geography at the University of Bern. In her research she investigates inequalities in relation to reproductive technologies and the Swiss asylum system.  MORE

Nora
Komposch

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Nora Komposch is a PhD student and assistant in Social and Cultural Geography at the University of Bern. She researches about migrant workers in Spain's strawberry industry. MORE

Mirko
Winkel

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Mirko Winkel is the coordinator of the mLAB. The artist and curator teaches at the University of Bern and other places with the aim of synthesizing art with scientific research and socio-political concerns.

Yolinliztli
Pérez-Hernández

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Yolinliztli Pérez-Hernández is a PostDoc in Social and Cultural Geography. She researches the experiences of sterilization (tubal ligation and hysterectomy) of low-income, rural, peasant, and indigenous Mexican women as part of national family planning and global birth control policies in developing countries. MORE  

Milena
Wegelin

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Milena Wegelin is a social anthropologist and research associate at the Department of Perinatal and Maternal Health of the Bern University of Applied Sciences. Sie is collaborating with Laura Perler in her subproject “Governing and Contesting In/fertility within the Swiss Asylum Context”

Susanne
Schultz

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Susanne Schultz is lecturer at the Department of Sociology at the Goethe University Frankfurt a.M. She is a visiting researcher who collaborates with the team of the project „Reproductive Geopolitics“ with a SNSF Scientific Exchange Grant in 2023. MORE

Veronika
Siegl

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Veronika Siegl, holding a PostDoctoral position in Social and Cultural Geography, is a social anthropologist and gender researcher. Her research focuses on ethics, inequality and self-determination in the context of reproductive medicine.   MORE

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From Biopolitics to Bioeconomies: The ART of (Re-) producing White Futures in Mexico's Surrogacy Market

Carolin Schurr

 

 

Abstract

Reproduction has been the privileged site of post-colonial eugenic politics through which the future national body is regulated in racial terms. Nikolas Rose argues that new forms of liberal eugenics have replaced traditional state biopolitics. In the current bioeconomy, it is no longer the state but active consumers that make (racialized) reproductive choices. The market of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) in Mexico serves as an empirical case to argue that the liberal eugenics practiced in this market recasts rather than replaces traditional state biopolitics. This becomes evident in (1) the racialized access to surrogacy programs in Mexico and (2) in giving higher value to white sex cells, while (3) devaluing the genetic traits of non-white women through the selection and classification processes of reproductive laborers. Analyzing the transnational geographies of surrogacy markets in Mexico, the article investigates how future bodies are whitened through biomedical practices and consumer choices that are shaped by and simultaneously reinforce (post-)colonial imaginaries of white desirability.

 

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