Who Gets to Form a Family? the Stratification and Governance of Reproduction

Across many societies, changing forms of family, delayed marriage and dwindling fertility have increasingly been framed as demographic crises requiring policy intervention. However, interpreting these developments in demographic terms risks overlooking how the conditions and possibilities of family building are being reconfigured amid rapid social transformations. Moving beyond narratives of demographic crises, this session shifts attention to inequalities in whom can form a family, under what conditions and with what forms of social recognition. It draws broadly on the concepts of stratified reproduction and reproductive governance in order to explore the inequalities in the ability of people to engage in intimate relationships, marriage and parenthood depending on their social positions; as well as how these imbalances are reproduced by states, markets, legal institutions, social movements, media and cultural norms.

We welcome theoretical and empirical contributions examining how class, gender, sexuality, citizenship, disability, and other social inequalities influence broadly defined family-building across different country contexts. Topics may include, but are not limited to, lived experiences of unequal access to intimacy, partnership or marriage, and parenthood; institutional arrangements and policy interventions that govern family building and reproduction; and cultural and digital discourses through which meanings of intimacy, partnership or marriage, and parenthood are constructed and contested. While the session welcomes contributions from all regions, we especially encourage research on East Asia, where rapid demographic change, persistent family norms, and evolving pronatalist welfare policies generate distinctive forms of reproductive governance and stratified reproduction.