For political geographies of fertilities

Abstract

Debates ranging from parental leave within universities to abortion rights, ‘anchor babies,’ racialized maternal mortality, and the continued disproportionate role of indigenous children within foster care systems demonstrate the wide range of politics informed by fertility. In this paper, I aim to prompt further academic research and personal reflection about the politics that underpin questions about fertility and the life course. There is an analytic potential and political urgency to understand these debates under the conceptual umbrella of ‘political geographies of fertility,’ as matters of fertility cross disciplinary and subdisciplinary boundaries and are – literally – matters of life and death. In this paper, I argue for framing fertility as a continued state of being, an anticipatory weight, that influences lives, behaviors, and politics at a variety of scales, from the border and the nation-state to academic workplaces and the body. By considering the range of spaces and scales where the politics of fertility take shape, I hope to encourage future researchers to devote attention to what gets made political through fertility – including but not limited to the biological events of reproduction.