Indian “Native Companions” and Korean Camptown Women: Unpacking Coloniality in Transnational Surrogacy and Transnational Adoption

Abstract

The article argues that transnational adoption and surrogacy from South Korea and India are shaped through US and British imperial and colonial histories in Korea and India respectively. We focus on the reproductive labor of “native companions” in early British India and kijich’on (camptown) women in post–World War II Korea. The management of native women’s sexuality was crucial for maintaining social order, political stability, and for consolidating capitalism through the commodification and devaluation of colonized reproductive labor. The configuration of historical legacies is unpacked through the idea of coloniality, the constitutive dark side of modernity, which reproduces subalternity and exploitation of racialized bodies. The reproductive labour of Korean birth mothers and Indian surrogate mothers is formed and shaped by the colonial and imperial formations of gender, sexuality, kinship and family, in which white supremacy and exploitation of Indian and Korean women was at the core. We argue that these formations are re-configured in the present through three mechanisms that enable contemporary practices of adoption and surrogacy: the transformation of waste into profit, the erasure of non-white mothers, and the trope of the white savior.

“There are two sides to everything”: Re (locating) vulnerability in the surrogacy industry in India

“…This form of philanthropism is a common narrative within commercial surrogacy, as Pande (2011) highlights how surrogacy agencies and IVF doctors continue to create a sense of superiority amongst IPs by positioning them as “saviours” of the poor disadvantaged surrogates. This resonates with our work on transnational surrogacy and adoption, where we suggest that the trope of the “White saviour” is central to both practices (Gondouin & Thapar-Björkert, 2022), an understanding which “obscures the historical and political context … and positions white citizens as rescuers and racial others as beneficiaries, making … the attitude towards the other a question of mercy and compassion” (Gondouin, 2015, p. 106). Such a narrative retains superior–inferior class/caste hierarchy between IPs and surrogate by further conditioning the surrogate to be indebted to her IPs.…”

“…Vora (2015) reads Indian surrogacy through the prism of colonial history, arguing that it offers the conditions of possibility for the present international division of reproductive labour. Imperial/colonial regimes of exploitation inform contemporary practices of globalized reproduction and underscore “the centrality of raced, sexed, classed, and ethnicized bodies as sites through which imperial/colonial power was imagined and exercised” (Gondouin & Thapar-Björkert, 2022, p. 18).…”

“…This results in a view of surrogates as mere bodies in which genetic material is matured into babies, where new reproductive technologies reinforce processes of invisibility and devaluation. We contend that changing biomedical expectations have created a "prosthetic language of socialisation," which operates at the interface of local intersectional realities such as gender, caste, and religion, and the globalized market of transnational commercial surrogacy (Gondouin & Thapar-Björkert, 2017). The aim is to facilitate detachment of the mother and the surrogate-child (prostheses), which renders invisible the labour(s) of the surrogate mother.…”

COVID-19 and Swedish exceptionalism

“…At the heart of this exceptionalism is the widely held belief that the country is a neutral actor in international affairs, and stands alone in Europe as a country without a colonial or racist past (or present, for that matter) (Gondouin, 2012;McEachrane, 2018;Pred, 2000). Olof Palme, one of the most prominent early advocates and symbols of Sweden as a globally good nation, invoked the idea of this national exceptionalism in his Christmas speech as Prime Minister in 1965: 'Democracy is firmly rooted in this country.…”

“…Race hygiene ideologies and policies were seen as being required to 'create a sound and healthy people' (Broberg & Tydén, 1996, p. 136). What is imagined as 'good, progressive Sweden' to this day, was built on traditions of race biology and a shared belief in a superior Nordic/Swedish race, and the most extensive sterilization programme imposed on a populace the world has ever seen (Gondouin, 2012). Despite obvious links to German Nazism, Swedish race science and eugenics was not an extreme project of the far right: from the outset it was supported by actors across the political spectrum: Social Democrats, Agrarians, Liberals.…”