Unmade in America: The gendered politics of birth tourism in the United States

Abstract

This paper interrogates the discursive production of the “birth tourist” and associated opposition to jus soli birthright citizenship in the United States. I trace the intersecting axes of heteropatriarchy and racism that underpin history of opposition to jus soli citizenship, and position contemporary media and political attention to “birth tourism” as an extension of those axes. Through a critical discourse analysis of popular media coverage and public commentators, I position the “birth tourism” category within a broader national discourse of white supremacy, before linking this discursive production to national-level regulatory efforts. Interrogating the “birth tourist” categorization as a discursive tool of white, patriarchal ethnonationalism, I advance the study of political geographies of fertility and argue that contradictions embedded within the “birth tourism” discourse ultimately work to fuel fears of white supremacy's collapse. Keywords: birth tourism, birthright citizenship, white supremacy, intersectionality, feminist geopolitics.