From intimate industry to rotten trade: reproductive travel in Southeast Asia

Intimate processes of conception and reproduction have become increasingly global in expectation and practice. They have become the focus for a new form of global commercialized reproductive trade, often termed ‘reproductive tourism’ whereby people travel to seek reproductive health services in other countries. This can involve the movement of patients, but also of service providers, ova donors and surrogates, as well as ova or embryos across the region. In this paper I concentrate upon the intimate industry of cross border IVF involving the movement and in some cases trafficking of women for reproductive services. The social and medical realities in many parts of the region compromise attempts at ‘regulation’ of the trade. Examples of the internet advertising for Thai surrogates and testimonials of commissioning parents illustrate the ways in which Thai surrogates are marketed and constructed as willing and available to service the needs of foreigners. Implicit presumptions of race privilege are woven through exchanges between farang and Thai often glossed within the discourse of ‘Asian service values’. In parallel to the legal circulation of these bodily commodities has arisen an unregulated market, a ‘rotten trade’, in which ‘bioavailable’ women and their body parts are trafficked to feed the demand for their reproductive capacities.