The in/visible wombs of the market: the dialectics of waged and unwaged reproductive labour in the global surrogacy industry

Abstract

Since the early 2000s transnational surrogacy has emerged as a new capitalist frontier founded on the intensification of the commodification of women’s reproductive labours, bodies and biologies. This has resulted in academic and policy debates on whether to outlaw surrogacy altogether or to ban commercial surrogacy in favour of altruistic forms of surrogacy. Rather than tackling surrogacy in moralising terms of ‘altruistic’ gift-giving versus ‘greedy’ money-making, in this article we draw on feminist political economy literature on social reproduction to propose an integrative reproductive labour perspective that looks at the dialectics of waged and unwaged work involved in the process of (re)producing people. Drawing on empirical research data on commercial surrogacy in Georgia, we analyse how this dialectical relation between exploitation of waged work (surrogate) and appropriation of unwaged work (mother) operates on the workfloor. We explore Maria Mies’ concept of ‘housewifization’ to argue that processes of exploitation are deepened in the Georgian surrogacy industry, partially because surrogates refrain/are refrained from identifying as workers and as such are not afforded labour rights nor considered to produce value.