Reproductive mobilities

Abstract

This special issue brings reproduction into a critical mobilities framework. We extend scholarship in cross-border reproductive care and medical mobilities into new theoretical and empirical directions. Reproductive mobilities articulates the mutual constitution of reproduction and mobilities. Human (and nonhuman) movement not only shapes reproduction but produces reproductive imaginaries, desires, futures, trajectories, as well as the subjectivities and ‘becoming-ness’ of diverse reproductive subjects. Through the lens of reproduction, we examine how contemporary mobilities—and immobilities—intersect with gendered, racialized, sexually expressive, nation-inscribed, fertile, infertile, young, aging, pregnant, surrogate, and/or otherwise non/reproductive bodies and persons. Can human reproduction be analyzed without noticing all things mobile and immobile that converge to construct reproductive (and non-reproductive) desires and practices? Can mobility and immobility be considered without thought to how worlds and worlding comes about? Mobility facilitates reproduction, and new possibilities for reproduction; reproduction is mobile at scales from the molecular to the transnational. This effort to bring the fields of reproduction and mobilities into dialogue does not introduce a new sub-field but rather creates the opening for a trajectory of empirical work and theoretical ideas that invigorates mobilities with newfound attention on the matter and becoming-ness of reproduction.