CROSSING BORDERS: Remaking Gay Fatherhood in the Global Market A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of PhD Sociology in the Faculty of Humanities, School of Social Sciences. Adi Moreno 2016 Department of Sociology. CONTENTS Contents ............................................................................................................................................... 2 1. Orientation ..................................................................................................................................... 11 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 11 Introducing the Field ...................................................................................................................... 14 The state of Israel: Zionist history and state reproduction ideology .......................................... 14 LGBT Politics in Israel .............................................................................................................. 17 Israeli Surrogacy Regulations .................................................................................................... 19 Cross-Border Surrogacy ............................................................................................................. 20 Research Motivation ...................................................................................................................... 23 Research Questions and Method .................................................................................................... 26 Linguistic Considerations .............................................................................................................. 30 Dissertation outline ........................................................................................................................ 31 2. Manufacturing Families ................................................................................................................. 37 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 37 Social-Material Assemblages ......................................................................................................... 39 Doing Families ............................................................................................................................... 42 Remaking Reproduction ................................................................................................................ 48 The Politics of Life and Death ....................................................................................................... 58 Conclusion: Surrogacy Assemblages ............................................................................................. 62 2 3. Studying Gay Surrogacy ................................................................................................................ 63 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 63 Research Questions ........................................................................................................................ 64 Data and Method ............................................................................................................................ 65 Data Types and Modes of Inquiry.............................................................................................. 65 Method Boundaries and Potential Limitation ............................................................................ 69 Entering the Field ....................................................................................................................... 70 Collecting Documents ................................................................................................................ 73 Sampling and Recruitment ......................................................................................................... 74 Interviewing ............................................................................................................................... 79 Participant Observation .............................................................................................................. 82 Analysis .......................................................................................................................................... 84 A Note on Translation ................................................................................................................ 86 The Ethical and Political Dimensions of Doing Research ............................................................. 87 Summary ........................................................................................................................................ 90 4. Surrogacy Tales.............................................................................................................................. 92 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 92 Yuval .............................................................................................................................................. 93 Elad .............................................................................................................................................. 101 3 Understanding Surrogacy ............................................................................................................. 109 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 118 5. The Most Natural Family ............................................................................................................. 120 Paths to Fatherhood ...................................................................................................................... 122 Seeking Gender Equality ............................................................................................................. 127 Remaking Nature ......................................................................................................................... 134 Equality, Continuity and Belonging............................................................................................. 139 Conclusion: Surrogacy families ................................................................................................... 142 6. At the Border ................................................................................................................................ 145 Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 145 Globalization, Mobility and Borders ........................................................................................... 146 Bordered Reproduction: The case of Israel .................................................................................. 149 Stuck in India ............................................................................................................................... 155 Changing Routes .......................................................................................................................... 160 Between Objects and Subjects ..................................................................................................... 167 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 170 7. Reproducing the Nation ............................................................................................................... 172 Introduction .................................................................................................................................. 172 Normativity and the Nation.......................................................................................................... 174 Reproducing the Borders of the Nation ....................................................................................... 177 4 Assimilation and Exclusion ......................................................................................................... 186 Conclusion: Between Biopolitics and Necropolitics ................................................................... 188 8. Reproduction Markets .................................................................................................................. 190 Markets, Bodies and Relationships .............................................................................................. 192 Playing the Game ......................................................................................................................... 196 We Exchange Pain with Hope ..................................................................................................... 199 Intimate Strangers ........................................................................................................................ 203 Embodied Contracts ..................................................................................................................... 209 Conclusion: Kinship, Affect and Commodity Relations ............................................................