Transnational Commercial Surrogacy and the (Un)Making of Kin in India

Abstract

Billed as an emerging transnational industry, the commercial surrogacy arrangement is more than mere commerce. It involves the birth of kin and relationships that include cross-cultural dialogues and conflicts between forms of reproduction and birthing. The process of making kin is fraught with different forms of negotiations regarding biology, nurture, pregnancy, and parenthood. This book engages with the idea of emerging forms of families and meanings of kinship in a transnational world through ethnographic research, kinship, gender studies, and science and technology studies. The ethnography draws from a context that is enmeshed in the local–global politics of reproduction, and the engaging and ongoing debate regarding ethics and morality in the sphere of reproductive rights. Drawing from conversations with foreign couples coming to India to hire Indian surrogates through Indian fertility clinics, lawmakers, and clinicians, this book looks at the politics of foreign gay couples seeking families through surrogacy in India, identity giving processes to the babies born to foreign couples, the clinicians understanding of kinship, the networks of commerce and agents, and the ways in which the surrogate and her husband positions itself within the arrangement. The mapping of transnational commercial surrogacy in its processual, dynamic representation—from the choice of the arrangement, to the pregnancy and finally to the birth of the child—is done in broad stages. This book aims to present an important ethnographic picture of a complicated, controversial practice such as commercial surrogacy by focusing on its relevance for kinship and our understanding of interpersonal relationships at large.