Citizenship after surrogacy

Citizenship after surrogacy examines how ‘heteronormative imaginaries of kinship’ shape the recognition of legal status at birth. Taking international surrogacy as a lens, the book conceptualises the weaponisation of citizenship in the policing of what counts as ‘legitimate’ family life. Cases of children born through international surrogacy who are denied legal recognition illuminate deep fractures in how citizenship is conferred at birth. These children often find themselves caught between conflicting national laws and bureaucratic systems that fail to accommodate the complex realities of cross-border reproduction. Because states rely on narrow definitions of parenthood, children born via international surrogacy can struggle to be granted the rights and protections typically afforded at birth. Citizenship after surrogacy argues that these legal and bureaucratic impasses expose an ‘institutionalised disorder’ at the heart of contemporary citizenship regimes. Drawing on case studies, legal analyses and interviews with families from across Europe and North America, the book examines how states mobilise ‘heteronormative imaginaries of kinship’ to govern who counts as a parent – and thus who qualifies as a citizen at birth. It reveals how entrenched assumptions about gender, biology and the ‘natural’ family underpin the legal production of identity, sanctioning certain forms of family-making while casting others into legal ambiguity.By exposing the foundational role of kinship in the governance of legal status at birth, the author delivers a groundbreaking intervention which conceptualises the weaponisation of citizenship in the policing of what counts as ‘legitimate’ family life. Differences in how states regulate surrogacy underpin an international market through which ‘intended parents’ commission a surrogate in another country to have a baby for them. The babies born through these arrangements often enter a legal grey area where their right to citizenship is contested. In this book, Katie Tonkiss examines the acquisition of citizenship after surrogacy, and in so doing addresses fundamental questions about the relationship between kinship, bordering, and what it terms the ‘institutionalised disorder’ of citizenship in an age of assisted reproduction. By engaging with case studies, legal analyses and original research with affected families in Europe and North America, the book subjects to critical scrutiny the heteronormative ideals which continue to shape the recognition of legal identity at birth. In so doing, the book conceptualises the weaponisation of citizenship in the policing of what counts as ‘legitimate’ family life.

Pagina's: 176, Hardcover, Manchester University Press