14.10.2021Brown Bag Lunch with Prof. Dr. Carolin Schurr & Dr. Veronika Siegl

The brown bag lunch by Prof. Dr. Carolin Schurr (University of Bern) & Dr. Veronika Siegl (University of Cologne) on "Reproductive Mobilities: Reproduction across borders" will take place on 14 October 2021 from 12:15 to 1:30 p.m.

Location: KOL-G-212

Reproduction and birth no longer take place only within the intimate spaces of the home or the nearby maternity ward but have turned into a transnational project when intended parents travel abroad in search for IVF treatment, sex cells or surrogacy processes. This talk first seeks to conceptualize reproductive mobilities by looking at how the horizontal movement from A to B converge with other forms of mobility; namely vertical mobilities in terms of social up- and downward mobility, representational mobilities in form of imaginative geographies and the actual embodied experiences of im/mobility. It does so by drawing on the transnational surrogacy industry in Mexico. In a second step, we show that reproductive mobility is also an increasing phenomenon in Switzerland, discussing the results of a recent study on the reproductive mobility of Swiss residents in search for IVF, gamete donation and surrogacy. Lastly, we reveal how a geographical perspective helps to unravel the the ambivalent role national bordering and debordering processes play in cross-border reproduction.