Multiple mobilities in Mexico’s fertility industry

Abstract

How can we conceptualize travel in search of fertility treatment? While current research on transnational reproduction mostly conceptualizes mobility as horizontal movement from A to B, this article shows how horizontal mobilities converge, contradict, and are interdependent with other forms of mobility; namely vertical mobilities in terms of social upward and downward mobility, representational mobilities in form of imaginative geographies, and the actual embodied experiences of mobility. Based on ethnographic research on the reproductive tourism industry in Mexico, the article explores the multiplicity of mobilities that constitute transnational reproduction. The article evaluates how the concept of multiple mobilities contributes to the study of medical tourism from a critical mobilities' perspective.

Reproductive mobilities

“…As editors, Kasper, Walton-Roberts, and Bochaton suggest that 'therapeutic mobilities foregrounds and draws attention to the beneficial, salutary and restorative qualities and effects of movement' (2019, 3) and in this way 'mobility is a means, an instrument, a strategy to facilitate therapeutic impacts or to unfold therapeutic powers' (2019, 4). With specific attention to the articulations between reproduction and mobilities, Schurr's (2019) piece in the issue focuses on the fertility industry in Mexico. She finds that the tourism industry and the fertility industry together create 'all kinds of positive emotions and experiences, which encourage consumers to travel to a certain destination' for the purposes of both vacation and kin-making (2019, 111).…”

Doing and undoing nation through ART: a Franco–American comparison

“…In addition to the actual structural ties that clinics operating in Mexico have with US-based clinics, Schurr, who applies a critical mobilities approach to the study of Mexico’s fertility industry, documents heavily used representational strategies in marketing fertility sites in Mexico as equivalent to the USA. In addition to comparable fertility expertise, success rates and technologies, one medical agent interviewed by Schurr touted that Cancún offers ‘like any other Southern American City’, a Wal-Mart and Starbucks on every corner ( Schurr, 2019: 111 ). For me, the ‘Americanness’ of the site was made apparent when, after explaining my plan to conduct research in English at sites owned and operated by US clinics in Mexico to the institutional review board at my home institution, I was not required to submit additional documentation normally expected in international research to ensure compliance with the regulatory and cultural norms of the host country.…”

The baby business booms: Economic geographies of assisted reproduction

“…So far, research has focused on the circulation of technoscience (Parry, ; Schurr & Verne, ), consumers, laborers, fertility experts, body parts involving gametes, frozen embryos, and other biological substances (Bergmann, ; Kroløkke, ; Parry, Greenhough, Brown, & Dyck, ), and systems of administration and business models (Müller & Schurr, ). The circulations of each of these human and non‐human actors thereby follow very different logics and practices and embody different experiences of mobility and immobility (Müller, ), resulting in “multiple reproductive (im‐)mobilities” (Schurr, forthcoming).…”

“…Moreover, even though surrogacy agencies suggest in their promotion material that global surrogacy is an effortless endeavor in a world where borders have dissolved, numerous challenges emerge when it comes to the capacities of different human and non‐human agents to cross borders (Schurr, forthcoming). Gametes and embryos can travel across borders with a special permit and the necessary cryopreservation technology to keep embryos and gametes in good shape in their travels.…”