Repro-Migrants

Abstract

Transnational trade in human eggs has led to many moral and ethical debates around the mode of these exchanges and their definitions. The experiences and process of becoming an egg recipient, personal histories of migration, race, borders and ‘repro-migrations’ are the focus of this chapter. The desire for discretion in the pursuit of egg donation is well documented.¹ But the plea of the woman quoted above, to be invisible, was also about not having to go through the egg donation at all. The Israeli women whom I interviewed did not want to have to go through what they often referred to euphemistically as ‘this thing’. The technological availability meant that, eyn berira (‘there’s no choice’, which in Israel is often used with reference to military and security measures; Handelman, 2004). In Israel I got the sense that one is impelled to use technology if it is available. And because of a lack of available ova ‘back home’, women felt compelled to travel or buy eggs imported transnationally. Their own personal histories of migration to Israel and the racial politics of their settlement and ‘inclusion’ into the collectivity are enmeshed with the desire for a child and the contemporary narratives of border defence. Border defence and egg recipient narratives are not always or necessarily linked, this connection is an ethnographic interference.

I’ve been travelling almost all over the world, really. And I am a very open person […] I am a very friendly person, I am not afraid to speak any language that I don’t know. I find my way. I did not want to go to Bucharest; I just did not want to go. I had to go. […] I wanted to be […] non-seen […] invisible […] like I’ve never been there.

Dorit, Ashkenazi Jewish Israeli, interview, Israel, 6 March 2002