A shift from home to the market : The marketization of reproductive labor in India

Abstract

Commercial surrogacy marketizes life's work. In the era of neo-liberalism, women's work, which is often intimately performed within a heterosexual marriage in exchange of support, now remains a principal avenue to earn money. This form of feminization of labor has led to the emergence of markets for women's reproductive capacities. The present study stems from my ethnographic journey into the lives of the women who work as surrogate mothers in India. The narratives presented in the paper emerge from my prolonged fieldwork in Anand, Gujarat. It engages with the experiences, understandings, and the voices of these women, who I term reproductive laborers, in order to examine the notion of putting one's reproductive capacities in this intimate market for money.

Keywords

Surrogacy social reproduction precarious work precarious lives reproductive laborer

Introduction

In 2015, I met 27-year-old Sarita, during one of my field visits to Anand, a small town in the state of Gujarat, India. She intended to work as a surrogate mother; however, Sarita was forced to leave the surrogate house as her pregnancy report came out negative. I saw her packing her bag while tears kept crawling down her cheeks. Upon asking her if the hospital had compensated her for the period that she was there, Sarita says,

Why will they pay me now? I am of no use to them. I have been told to leave this place. I wasted three months here, did everything they asked me to. My body went through a lot. But everything was a waste. I should not have come here in the first place. (March 2015)

It was distressing that the efforts of Sarita before the pregnancy starts are unpaid and ignored. As expressed by almost all the reproductive laborers I interviewed, the period from the embryo transfer till the pregnancy test is the most painful period for them, both physically and emotionally. They must follow a regime of injections and medicines, often involving heavy dosages, including strict instructions on what position to sit or lie in. The women working in this industry belong to the lowest strata of the society and experience untold amounts of uncertainty and pain to make ends meet. Having the opportunity to earn money that can help them send their children to schools, or, buy a house of their own, becomes difficult to ignore, even if the employment is precarious in nature. Hence, the women accept the precarious and sometimes unfree surroundings of work in the urge to secure the conditions of their everyday lives.

This paper emerges from my ethnographic fieldwork in a famous infertility clinic in India, located in Anand, Gujarat. By juxtaposing the lack of economic opportunities and social security and dignity in the lives of these women, the paper traces the continuities and ruptures in ways that the women experience precarity as a human condition of vulnerability and interdependence (Butler, 2009). It highlights the stories of women like Sarita who agree to work as surrogate mothers, in order to understand how the reproductive laborers in the Indian market for gestational surrogacy sustain themselves outside of the formal categories of paid labor. Drawing on feminist scholarship that analyses surrogacy as a form of reproductive labor and a conscious meaningful social activity (Lewis, 2017, 2019; Pande, 2014; Rudrappa, 2015; Vora, 2015, 2019), I refer to the women working in this market for reproductive labor as “reproductive laborers,” and challenge the boundaries between productive and reproductive labor in a capitalist society and economy.

Reproductive work has largely been precarious, invisible, and generally without any kind of remuneration beyond the fulfillment of an ideological normative idea of women as beings to serve others. Surrogacy is an industry that runs with similar patriarchal ideologies which do not acknowledge women's gestational labor as a form of paid employment, undermining the hard work performed by these reproductive laborers. Surrogacy requires labor that is into play all hours of the day: diet, sleeping patterns, and even a simple bodily movement determine the success of the production process. In this sense, surrogacy is a perfect example of the appropriation of reproduction for production. In the era of neo-liberalism, intimate labor, which is often intimately performed within a heterosexual marriage in exchange of support, now remains a principal avenue to earn money, especially in the Global South (Boris and Parreñas, 2010; Hofmann and Moreno, 2016). I argue that the reproductive laborers in India perform intimate and emotional labor, which is exploitative, poorly paid, and unregulated; hence precarious, mainly because the labor in pregnancy and motherhood is not considered valued.

This article makes both theoretical and methodological contributions to labor geographies. Firstly, drawing from the literature on social reproduction, and, precarious work (Bhattacharya, 2017; Federici, 2012; Meehan and Strauss, 2015; Strauss, 2018; Vosko, 2010; Waite, 2009; Winders and Smith, 2019), I argue that in case of surrogacy, social reproduction is not simply a condition to the relations of production, but rather it itself is a part of the whole laboring process. It is a terrain where capitalist production regimes are worked through and altered. Mies’ (1982) definition of “housewifization” as the devaluation of women's reproductive labor due to their unpaid and unvalued activities in the home, works against them even beyond the boundaries of the household. Further, in developing countries like India, the widespread presence of informal labor challenges strongly the binaries between productive and reproductive labor when it comes to value creation and extraction (Mezzadri, 2019), magnifying the devaluation of women's reproductive labor.

I use the conceptual lens of precarity to examine the context-specific meanings of unfreedom and uncertainties for the reproductive laborers in India, both in their lives and working conditions, not as contrasting positions, but as mutually constituted. I argue that the experiences of precarity in the Global North alone cannot be universalized. The material and social conditions of these women's lives are entangled with interwoven subjugations (gender, caste, and class) that have both discursively and corporeally marked their labor as natural, therefore, considering them suitable for surrogacy work. It will be useful to understand precarity not merely as a line separating precarious jobs from non-precarious ones; but as a complex web of lived realities embedded in various contexts in which precarity is understood in continuity.

Labor geographers have redefined labor beyond formal workplaces in the Global North, to include labor in informal settings, particularly in care economies that are gendered, raced, and discriminatory (Lawson, 2007; McDowell, 2008; Mezzadri, 2016; Mullings, 2021; Pratt, 2012). I work to expand labor geography further to include reproductive labor geographies to recognize the porous boundaries between production and reproduction in the market for gestational surrogacy and the ways in which the reproductive laborers use the highly discriminatory and precarious capitalist market to improve the precarious conditions of their own lives. In particular, my study sheds light on surrogacy's risks, the lack of legal and health safeties, and, disposability that is perpetrated both by the market forces and the government. Commercial surrogacy was banned in India in March 2020, while allowing only its altruistic form for married heterosexual infertile Indian couples. As claimed, the prime reason behind the law has been to prevent the exploitation of women since India has emerged as a global commercial surrogacy hub. The government's attempt shows a limited understanding of the conditions of everyday lives of the women who agree to work as reproductive laborers. During my fieldwork, most of the reproductive laborers stated: “We don't do it out of choice, but compulsion.” Furthermore, this law, if passed, might lead to the emergence of an extremely dangerous underground market for surrogacy, hence, precarizing the lives of the reproductive laborers and their families more than ever.

Secondly, while capturing the precarities as a defining feature in the lives of the reproductive laborers, the paper, at the same time, provides an understanding of women's agency and experiences, and the politics of their struggles in order to offer a vantage point to focus on the geographies of precarities of paid pregnancy. Scholars have argued that it is important for labor geography to pay attention to laborers’ lives and the spaces they inhabit (Dutta, 2016; McDowell, 2015). As McDowell (2015) argues, the collection of such narratives, by listening to workers’ stories will provide labor geography a “rich detail to support arguments about, inter alia, new gender regimes … or new form of capitalism, if these are identifiable” (McDowell, 2015: 19). The methodological contribution of this paper responds to this call by engaging with the experiences, understandings, and voices of the reproductive laborers in India, in order to highlight how their everyday experiences are shaped by relations of gender, caste, class, education, and access to resources. This opens up a vantage point for labor geography to theorize agency within the micro-scale everyday struggles encountered by the laborers in a precarious capitalist market.

The paper is organized as follows: first, I build a framework rooted in theories of social reproduction and precarity to understand how commercial surrogacy amounts to a form of precarious work entangled in the precarious lives of the reproductive laborers. I then present the narratives of reproductive laborers, which have been categorized under three aspects, each discussing a particular feature of the precarious market: insecurity due to pregnancy termination; health conditions; and, disposability. I end with a discussion and conclusion, analyzing how social reproduction becomes a part of the capitalist market which unsettles the precarities of the everyday lives of the reproductive laborers.

Social reproduction and precarious work

Feminist political economists have used the concept of social reproduction to analyze how both paid and unpaid reproductive labor builds productive labor and value. Since the 1990s, social reproduction has been the target for stringent policies and marketization of daily life. This has increased precarities deepening along the lines of race, class, and gender (McDowell et al., 2009; Mezzadri, 2017). Surrogacy, too, has emerged as a billion-dollar industry in the past few decades, blurring production and reproduction, such that the commodification of women's reproductive labor has become an empirical reality in a capitalist market economy.

Looking into the domain of social reproduction has broadened the focus of the field and challenging the hegemonic definitions of work, deconstructing the binaries between production and reproduction, and, waged and unwaged work. “Life's work,” as analyzed by Mitchell et al. (2003: 429), includes a range of activities that might be conventionally understood as “non-work.” Broadening of the definition of work leads to a focus on a more geographically and socially global history, where work is indicated by informality and unfreedom (Mezzadri, 2016; Reid-Musson et al., 2020). Global capitalism has reorganized social reproductive labor, which has been “enabling intensification of capital accumulation and exacerbating differences in wealth and poverty” (Katz, 2001: 710). The labor of social reproduction is usually contract-based and privatized, performed by women workers in the front lines of public services including healthcare, education, and childcare, as well as intimate services with an expansion of private-consumer services (Peck, 2018). The concentration of workers not fitting into the conventional mainstream labor force (mainly migrant racialized minorities and women), performing marginalized bodywork are more prone to vulnerability in the capitalist market.

The age of globalization has witnessed a surge of informal labor relations, where stable and formal labor has been replaced by precarious work (Mezzadri, 2016). Geographers have construed precarity as an employment marked by instability and insecurity and theorized precarious work through examining the flexible nature of the labor markets, change in employment relations, conditions of low-wage and low-paid migrant workers (Lewis et al., 2015; Strauss, 2018; Vosko, 2010; Waite, 2009). Such approaches talk about the social and political contexts in which the conditions of the workers are embedded; and, on the other hand, explore the embodied ways in which precarity is experienced and made sense of (Strauss, 2018). Further, scholars have classified precarity by increasing unemployment (Standing, 2011); diversified labor force through migration (Reid-Musson, 2014); and vulnerabilities across different classes and gender (Rigg et al., 2016).

The concept of precarity has been used more extensively in European countries (including France, Italy, and Spain), the USA and developed countries in Asia, where social protections were prominent and standard work retained its normative meaning (Cranford et al., 2003; Kalleberg, 2009; Kalleberg and Vallas, 2018). However, recently, a more heterogeneous literature on precariousness and precarity has been developed (Armano et al., 2017; Strauss, 2017). Scholars have critiqued the Western perspective on precarity as the foundation for capital accumulation mainly in the post-Fordist employment relations (Munck, 2013; Neilson and Rossiter, 2008; Paret and Gleeson, 2016). Precarity has a longer history in terms of affecting employment relations in the Global South. Moreover, in these countries, the experiences of workers differ greatly along the dimensions of caste, race, gender, sexuality, and class. Thus, not all lives experience precariousness in the same way. There are strong variations across nations, regions, and sectors when it comes to articulating precarious work (Betti, 2018), which is noted in recent research on precarity (Buckley et al., 2017, Deshingkar, 2019). In India, the size of the precarious market (both formal and informal) has grown during economic liberalization in the 1990s (Maiti, 2013). Sapkal and Sundar (2017) show that there is a substantial variation in the extent of precarious work in India, affecting youth, women, non-union members, people with unstable financial backgrounds, and people belonging to the minority and socially deprived communities having limited exposure to education more than others.

My research suggests that precarity becomes a condition in the lives of the reproductive laborers in which the labor market, the social support system, and the state together determine the entry and exit into the market for commercial surrogacy. While in most studies (Kalleberg, 2011; Standing, 2011) it has been observed that precarious lives are shaped through experiences of precarious employment, my research suggests that it is the precarious lives that remain the driving force for the workers to engage in precarious work. The lives of the reproductive laborers in India are socially and economically constrained by inequality, poverty, insecurity, and precarity, where surrogacy work is opted for as a survival strategy to alter such vulnerabilities.

Commercial surrogacy and precarious lives

Debates around commercial surrogacy range from liberal, to legal, to ethical; with many scholars highlighting the exploitative nature of the practice and debating ethical aspects of such services (Bailey, 2011; Ragoné, 1994; Raymond, 1993). There has been an ethnographic turn to understand the process of surrogacy, deliberating upon aspects of ethics and motherhood (Franklin and Roberts, 2006; Markens, 2007; Teman, 2010). In the same context, some scholars have contributed towards an analysis of the Indian commercial surrogacy and entered into debates surrounding outsourcing, labor, and kinship (Deomampo, 2016; Hochschild, 2012; Pande, 2014; Rudrappa, 2015, Vora, 2015). My research extends the scholarship that conceptualizes surrogacy in India as labor, while revealing the exploitative and precarious nature of the industry (Majumdar, 2017; Pande, 2014; Rudrappa, 2015). By understanding surrogacy as a form of labor, I move away from equating the reproductive laborers in the Global South as mere “carriers of wombs,” to highlight the interconnections between precarity, everyday lives, and paid reproductive labor. Commercial surrogacy is “exemplary of the ways in which the extension of capitalist relations deepens the social hierarchies and the colonial structuring of the global economy, with the further racialization of the activities considered to be of least value, beginning with the process of procreation itself” (Federici, 2019: 57). Acknowledging surrogacy as labor brings attention to the precarities experienced by the women participating in the informal labor force in the Global South with limited or no economic opportunities. The reproductive laborers are generally migrant women from deprived socio-economic backgrounds with limited or no educational backgrounds. Further, the inequalities in the labor market can be seen in the contracts and working conditions which restrict their mobility, bargaining capacity, and autonomy, while rendering all the power to other stakeholders in the arrangements. The reproductive laborers in my study become the ready-made target of the medical markets. These women resist the dehumanizing logic of neoliberal capitalism in their attempts to shape even the most hostile economic settings in ways that carry out their capacity to reproduce themselves. This can be conceptualized as a form of agency enabling reproductive laborers to transform power inequalities (Harvey, 2006; Rai, 2018). I argue that despite the stigma attached with surrogacy work and the risks associated with it, deciding to work as surrogate mothers itself can be understood as exercising agency.

Methodology

My article draws on my ethnographic fieldwork in Nishaan Infertility Clinic in Anand over a span of 6 months, in four visits between 2014 and 2017. Being the best-known place for commercial surrogacy in India, Anand is popularly identified as the global hub of commercial surrogacy. I pitch the stories of the reproductive laborers into academia so that they are recognized as participants in the process of knowledge production. I believe that it is significant to follow this route because, “stories are a form of ‘situated thinking’ that brings philosophy down to earth, working within the everyday life-world of human struggle, encompassing a plurality of perspectives, in order to gain an enlarged view of human experience” (Jackson, 2013: 246). Furthermore, in this work, with reflexivity, ethnography has proven to be working for feminist methodologies that emphasize women's voices, experiences, and their resisting capacity, and the socio-cultural and economic contexts in which they are situated (Harrison, 2007). Thus, this research is an exploration of a careful understanding of precarious employment, which can be achieved through a dialogue between theory, methodology, and empirical realities to explore the nature and results of its expansion (Vosko, 2006).

Respondents include 40 reproductive laborers, three intended parents, two doctors, one nurse, and the hostel matron. I have deliberately used pseudonyms for all the people interviewed, including the names of the medical director and the clinic. The participants have been generous enough to let me into their personal lives. The fact that I belonged to the same Indian patriarchal society, sharing the same traditions and norms with the participants, facilitated the research process. I was also able to grasp the local language (Gujarati), body space, and gestures of the participants. These factors allowed the participants to share their ideas, concerns, and life stories with ease and comfort.

Geographies of precarity and resistance in the surrogacy market in India

The following paragraph provides a small ethnographic insight into Nishaan Infertility Clinic, to understand the geography of the spaces of the surrogate house in order to better contextualize the experiences of surrogate motherhood.

Nishaan Infertility Clinic

Nishaan Infertility Clinic in Anand has been undergoing rapid development since my first visit in 2014 and my last visit in early 2017. The small clinic located in the busiest marketplace of the town is now being transformed into a multistoried hospital on the outskirts of the city. The surrogate housing facility is established in the basement of the hospital building: a centralized air conditioning area, with big rooms, one room occupied by four women. Each room has one big LCD screen television and an attached washroom with a hot water tank and laundry facilities. The food is prepared by trained cooks, under strict instructions of the dietician, who regularly visits the women at meal timings. There is a big common space with tables and chairs, which is also the dining space. One corner has an altar that has pictures of Hindu and Christian gods and goddesses. There is a cabin occupied by an elderly woman, the hostel matron, who keeps a watch on every move of the reproductive laborers. Thus, the surrogate house acts as a closed monitored space, with the presence of the doctors, dieticians, and matron extending the “medical gaze” over the reproductive laborers in their care. The reproductive laborers inhabiting this space express a deep sense of dissatisfaction with the ways in which they are made to live under the vigilance of the authorities. They cannot move out of the surrogate house; nor are they allowed to be sexually involved till the baby is born. Their family members can come to visit them, but cannot stay overnight. These conditions make their living conditions no less than a challenge.

Insecurity related to pregnancy termination

By arguing that the reproductive laborers earn a sense of accomplishment by being able to secure a better financial stability for their families, I do not mean that the women get fair terms of trade. At the beginning of this paper, I presented the predicament experienced by Sarita who did not receive any money from the hospital because her pregnancy report turned out negative. Even after signing the contract with the commissioning couple and working so hard for three months, she had to return home empty-handed. She echoed the voices of several other reproductive laborers I interviewed. As reported by many of them, the fear of going back home empty-handed because of a failed pregnancy constantly haunts them. Seema, a 27-year-old woman, is working as a reproductive laborer in order to send her 8-year-old daughter to school. She says:

I have promised my daughter that I’ll come home only when I am able enough to send her to school. She is a very bright kid and wants to study like you. I am praying day and night that this implantation succeeds. I don't want to go back home and kill my daughter's dreams. This is the second embryo transfer. I hope I get pregnant this time. I have already spent more than a month here. They won't pay me anything if I fail. (January 2015)

Seema's feelings of hope and courage are tempered by a fear of loss. In the absence of job opportunities for the “unskilled” in the country, it takes a great deal of intentionality for the reproductive laborers to accept the unjust conditions of their work. The journey from getting the body ready for the embryo transplant to actually becoming pregnant is quite complicated; one that is not taken into account while exploring the process of surrogacy. Therefore, it is important to highlight that even before the actual labor starts, the reproductive laborers go through a lot of changes in their bodies which also often take a toll on their health. The intimate dimensions of the labor involved in surrogacy work involve working conditions and consequences marked by insecurity, squeezing or no wage, uncertainty, and risk. This makes surrogacy bio-precarious mainly because the success or failure of the labor is based on the bodily functions of the reproductive laborers (Nilsson, 2020).

Further, the reproductive laborers often talk about their worry regarding any mishap that might endanger their pregnancy. Upon asking if they had witnessed any such adversity happening to anyone; they shared a tragic story with me. Sometime back, a reproductive laborer had lost her life to swine flu on the operating table at the time of delivery. The child had died with her too. In their deepest sense of despair and disappointment, the commissioning couple chose not to provide any compensation to the reproductive laborer's family. Both the hospital and the couple held the reproductive laborer responsible because it was her “careless deed” which shattered their dream of having a child. Mezzadri (2017), in her research on factories, workshops, and homeworkers in Delhi show that in an informal workspace, employers in both factories and other settings, leave immediate illness and long-term health effects on their livelihoods to the workers and the relatives of the workers in a global production regime. The surrogacy industry too, aims at maximizing profits, and the biggest consequence it entails is that the reproductive laborers bear the risks (economic and bodily) associated with the labor, as opposed to the employers.

Talking about the above-mentioned accident, Anita, a 28-year-old reproductive laborer says,

I get really scared when I think about these things. My husband is abusive. He consumes too much alcohol. He also beats me up and our son. I left my son at my mother's place before coming here. I know he’ll be safe there. My mother loves him. But she is also not very well to do. I want the best for my son. He is only 7 now. I want to earn money for him … to raise him better. Every day I pray to God that the child inside me should live. It is the only way my son gets a better life. I don't care if I live or die; my mother will take care of him. But the baby must live. That's all I ask for. (February 2014)

Anita hails from Vadodara, a city only 43 kms from Anand. She used to work as a domestic help before coming to Anand. Her husband works as an auto-rickshaw driver. But he spends all his money on alcohol. Therefore, under such circumstances leading a decent life and having a secure future for Anita's son becomes almost impossible. Anita prepares herself for the worst consequence that might happen, however, praying that the baby comes out alive and healthy. Here, the common voice running across the narratives in my study is that the reproductive laborers put their lives on line, while hoping for a successful delivery. When the women talk about their everyday struggles, they reveal how the intimate experiences of stress and exhaustion are related to the pressures of working in the capitalist market. The dependence on the racialized and classed form of labor exposes the bodies of the laborers to risk (physical, monetary and emotional), while maintaining the profit at the hands of those who manage such commercial trade (Banerjee, 2014; Rudrappa, 2015). As prior research also suggests, the reproductive laborers in India, get little or no pay for miscarriages, and also there is no compensation offered to them in case of any long-term bodily harm (Bhattacharjee, 2016; Rudrappa, 2015; Sama, 2010). Framing surrogacy as a form of paid labor has important implications with respect to the rights of the reproductive laborers to claim their wage; along with their capacities to fight to ameliorate their working conditions including health and social securities (Cooper and Waldby, 2014; Lewis, 2017; Pande, 2017; Rudrappa, 2015; Schurr, 2018).

Following from the above discussion which focuses on the experiences of the reproductive laborers dealing with insecurities to lose their chances in the surrogacy market, the next section explores the various manners in which surrogacy brings untold health issues to these women, both physically and emotionally.

Health conditions

Basanti was 31-year-old when I met her in 2017. She was based out of Vadodara. She was already 6 months into her pregnancy and was ecstatic it would be over soon. Like most women there, Basanti was also wearing a big loose gown and a long scarf around her neck, which was falling downwards to cover her belly. While twirling the end of the scarf with her fingers, she said that she had worked there once in 2012. “How was your experience the first time you were here as a surrogate mother and how did you decide to come again?” to which she replied,

The first time I was here I used to be really scared all the time. My in-laws didn't know that I was doing this surrogacy job. They are not very nice people and made me work all day and also didn't let my daughter eat properly because she is a girl. They wanted a boy from me. They used to torture me and my daughter all the time. But my husband's support made it a little less painful for me and my daughter. We spent the money I got here the first time on getting a house of our own. We moved out of that place towards the outskirts of the city. But that was the first step towards having a better life for our daughter. My husband works as a security guard in a school and doesn't earn a very good salary. I really want my daughter to receive a proper education and stand in her own feet one day. That is why I decided to come here again. My husband didn't approve of this in the beginning because I had a terrible experience the last time, both physically and emotionally. It took me a really long time to recover. (February 2017)

This incited a curiosity in me and I couldn't hold myself back to know more, thus leading to my second question: “Why did you have a terrible experience?” Basanti took a deep sigh and continued to speak:

As you know, the whole process is based on medicines and injections. This makes the pregnancy a very different experience. They also control our food habits and movements. Also, the medical attention that I received was very new to me. I had given birth to my daughter at my home only, like the other surrogates here. We don't go to hospitals for delivery or treatments. So, I was a little scared when they told me that they only do C-Section in surrogacy. But I was very happy to know that Doctor Madam decided to go for a normal delivery for me. However, while I was almost on the completion of my term, one day she decided to perform a C-section on me. I think she was going to go on a vacation or something. After the delivery was over, I had really horrible infection developed all over my private parts. I was in bed for more than two months. My husband had to look after our daughter all by himself. I felt betrayed by the doctor. (March 2017)

The intrusion into Basanti's body during C-section makes surrogacy a process in which performing action onto the bodies of the reproductive laborers becomes the only job that the doctors deliver, without taking their comfort into account. Further, the feeling of betrayal, as stated by Basanti, adds to an emotional vulnerability. The pregnancies of the reproductive laborers leave traces on their bodies and impact their everyday lives. In surrogacy, C-section is the mandatory means of delivery for all the reproductive laborers I interviewed. In addition to the bodily harm as evident in the above narrative, it can have a negative bearing on the future fertility of the reproductive laborers. Further, the fact that even after a horrific experience, Basanti had to come back again the second time tells us about how surrogacy acts as a temporary resort addressing only immediate concerns that the women have. Their lives continue to be marked by hardships and uncertainty, pushing them to this precarious terrain as long as they are able and allowed to.

The physical discomfort experienced by the reproductive laborers runs through my interviews with many of the respondents. On a similar account, Diksha, a 30-year-old reproductive laborer and one of my key respondents, shares her experience of the first trimester of her pregnancy. She says,

The process of [embryo] transfer was quite painful for me. Some of the women here find it very painful. I was like in a physical shock for quite some time after the process was over. Sometimes I cannot believe I am still alive. I am six months pregnant now. The initial three months were hell for me. Especially till the time I conceived. I developed a terribly sore back and it took me weeks to finally recover. It was the most painful experience ever. (January 2016)

Such experiences have been discarded by the medical industry by deeming them “natural.” I went to a doctor in the clinic to inquire about it, to which she said: “These women cannot take any pain. They always have something or the other to complain about. You don't worry, it is completely natural.” As also discussed by Rudrappa (2021), the medical practices involving hyper-ovulation, caesarian surgeries, preterm deliveries, and lack of postnatal care for the reproductive laborers have brutal health impacts. Discarding these embodied experiences as unimportant is a masculinist project that does not pay any heed to the material discomforts that the reproductive laborers feel. These hidden stories reveal how the degradation of women's bodies becomes a prerequisite for the success of capitalism. Bringing these experiences of micro-scale struggles to the forefront becomes very important to understand the conflict between laboring and capital accumulation. Prentice et al. (2018), in their study on the everyday health and well-being of workers in global supply chains, reinforce workers’ own understandings and narratives as central to labor geography informed by a deeper concern with health and well-being. Hence, a focus on these everyday narratives can extend labor geographies to capture the less visible effects and experiences of such precarious labor and health.

Disposability

Feminist literature has generated an analysis of the global assembly line that grapples with complex features of gendered labor control and disposability (Bair, 2010; Wright, 2006). These studies show how global industries lead to constant reproduction of this form of work as precarious, poorly paid, and depleting. Mezzadri and Majumder (2020) argue that temporariness is an intrinsic characteristic of the global assembly line. The commercial surrogacy industry, too, has been flourishing through the exploitation of reproductive laborers. In a conversation with the clinic director, she said to me that it is important to remind the reproductive laborers that they are only used as carriers for the babies because, in her words, “they might get attached to the baby and also ask for more money from the intended parents repeatedly.” As a part of the predefined process, the reproductive laborers are reminded repeatedly to believe that they are solely the carriers of the wombs owned by some other people who have a genetic relation to the child. The disciplining mechanisms have been designed to sculpt the reproductive laborers in a manner which portrays that surrogacy brings (financial) development for them and their families, as well as, brings prosperity to the lives of an infertile couple. As also reported by Vertommen and Barbagallo (2020), in their analysis of the surrogacy industry in Georgia, these logics emphasize on “being a good mother” which supports the discipline and control over women's bodies and the conditions of their work. The hospitals internalize the neocolonial logic of development, by using narratives like “development of the women and their families,” in order to maintain discipline in the labor process.

Nikita, a 28-year-old reproductive laborer, was hired by a couple from New Delhi. She shares her experiences of staying in the surrogate hostel which she equates with the idea of being imprisoned. She says:

Initially, when I came here, I was a little scared … as I didn't know much about surrogacy. But this place has taught me everything. Now I can also console the newcomers who join us. Doctor Madam and the hostel in-charge give us enough training on how to be a surrogate. They told me that I was only providing my womb for rent in similar ways as a house is given for rent. We are just like machines and this is a jail. Though I do not fully agree with this view, I am happy to accept it as long as it gives me money [laughs]. (January, 2014)

I have documented similar accounts during conversations with other reproductive laborers. The narratives make it clear that the disciplining process depicts the reproductive laborers barely as gestational carriers who have no role to play in the mothering of the children. The reproductive laborers constantly negotiate with this dominant discourse in their own ways. For women like Nikita, surrogacy is a survival strategy or temporary livelihood against the structural constraints they encounter, often coerced.

Sita was 33-years-old when I met her in 2016. She was working there for the second time and was hired by a couple from the United States. Sita's quote negates the image of being disposable. After the delivery of the baby, the intended parents requested her to stay with them in a hotel for a month to breastfeed the baby. Sita says,

I don't see myself as a machine only. I have deeper connections with the baby. I love her like my own daughter. I have breastfed her and this has itself increased the bond. When the baby was born, Jennifer [the US intended mother] congratulated me and introduced me to the baby saying, “Have a look at your angel daughter.” They also send me photographs of her on her every birthday. She is three years old now. I miss her so much. I feel it is the blood connection [referring to breast milk] that makes me feel like her real mother. (February 2016)

The above narration denies the discourse of disposability on the basis of deeper connections established through breastfeeding. Some other women stress on the fact that they have endured enough pain and it was their sweat and blood that has led to the successful delivery. Thus, the body materials of the women, in cases like these, make them feel empowered enough to shape the discourse that treats them as disposable. Some interviews I conducted tend to downplay the genetic connection which is considered as the primary factor behind the birth of the child. In such scenarios, the reproductive laborers keep themselves at the forefront, and understate the disposable aspect as portrayed in dominant discussions around commercial surrogacy. They exercise their agency in their efforts and narratives to resist the dehumanizing logic of the precarious capitalist market regime.

Gestational commercial surrogacy, whether in terms of labor, or need, is a profoundly feminized sphere of political economy, which remains a significant factor that the reorganization of social reproduction and reproductive labor are often ignored on accounts of policy change. Furthermore, the process of regulating the bodies of women is exercised by the state more heavily. Feminist scholars have expressed their views regarding the recent ban on commercial surrogacy in India regarding its abolition or regulation by the state (Banerjee and Kotiswaran, 2021; Pande, 2017; Rudrappa, 2021). These studies reveal that what is required is a profound regulation of the industry which may prevent a black market for gestational labor, hence, protecting the little bargaining rights that the reproductive laborers still have in the present contract-based arrangements, improving the working conditions and providing post-natal care, health insurance, and safety measures. My study suggests that the reproductive laborers feel neglected as the government proceeds to completely ban commercial surrogacy in India. I visited Anand in 2017 when the Bill was considered in the Parliament for the final nod. The reproductive laborers I interviewed seemed extremely disappointed with the Bill. Voicing her deep sense of dissatisfaction, Gita, a 31-year-old reproductive laborer, says,

The government has gone mad. Are they going to give us any job? Even educated people do not get jobs these days. We stand nowhere! How is this exploitation? We choose to become surrogate mothers. And Doctor Madam is no less than a God to us. There are so many bad things in this country like alcohol and cigarettes. Why not ban them? Why touch us? I have been a surrogate mother twice. But I am really worried about the women who really need this job. Can you please tell the government that this shouldn't be stopped? They don't know how it feels to live without food and shelter. (January 2017)

Like Gita, several of the women felt that the government has turned completely deaf towards their affairs. Sharing similar frustration, Ayesha a 29-year-old reproductive laborer opines, “I have chosen to be a surrogate mother. This is my decision! The government does not care about us. It has taken its decision without even asking us what we want.”

Both the quotes presented above highlight that the people responsible for framing such laws pay scant attention to what the reproductive laborers have to say about the situation. Most reproductive laborers I interviewed questioned the policy decision as biased, ignoring their concerns. Women like Gita and Ayesha fear the uncertainty of not having a source of livelihood for themselves and others. Further, they express their anxiety of continuing to live in the state of precarity, without any future scope to work as reproductive laborers. Given the current state of precarity, they only desire to get paid and return home after the childbirth. These women struggle with corporeal and emotional challenges at work including stigma, secrecy, surveillance, boredom, resentment, separation from their own children and families, absence of post-natal care, and financial constraints. As stated by Lewis (2018), surrogacy in this sense, demands to be comprehended as a restricted site of struggle. I too argue that the study of embodied experiences and signs of exploitation and agency in the lives of the reproductive laborers involve at the least resilience and perseverance, if not always resistance.

Discussion and conclusion

Global capitalism shapes social reproduction worldwide, intensifying differences in wealth and poverty (Katz, 2001). In this process, women's unpaid reproductive labor and exploitation in the private sphere determine how “the degradation of women [and their bodies] are necessary conditions for the existence of capitalism in all times” (Federici, 2004: 13). Social reproduction accounts for both labor power and worker (Bhattacharya, 2017; Federici, 2004). It bridges production and reproduction; capitalism and life; precarious work and precarious lives. In this paper, social reproduction and precarity have been used to highlight the multiple ways in which the reproductive laborers in India experience precarity as an intrinsic part of not only their gestational labor in the market, but also their lives. The reproductive laborers belong to the lowest economic strata of the society and receive an amount of 300,000–400,000 rupees (around US$5400) for each pregnancy—an amount otherwise impossible as “unskilled” labor. Hence, they make use of whatever the market has provided them with in pursuit of fulfilling their dreams of buying a house or sending their children to schools. Recognizing commercial surrogacy as a form of paid reproductive labor, producing “value” highly determined in a precarious capitalist market economy, through unconventional working hours (24*7), opens up possibilities for negotiation and challenges to these structures, with potential for social and economic transformation. In agreement with Lewis (2018), I suggest that the reproductive laborers go through painful experiences of gestational surrogacy and become important figures in the process of childbearing. She is a laborer in the whole arrangement and hence, I choose “reproductive laborer” to acknowledge her hard work, as it enters the market from the “privacy” of the household.

Women in the Global South are enmeshed in an international division of labor stratified along the lines of region, gender, race, and class. A body of feminist literature in South Asia has highlighted a complex web of socio-economic processes engendering women's entry into the global factory sites (Dutta, 2016; Mezzadri, 2016; Ruwanpura and Hughes, 2016). These studies have talked about the “varying degrees of urgency” (Kabeer, 2000: 86), which guide the choices to work in factories and achieve “more complex social goals” (Mills, 1999: 9). The reproductive laborers in India leave their homes and stay in the surrogate houses for the entire gestation period in order to change their life situation, even if such a step meant precarizing themselves through paid reproductive labor. The spaces of the surrogate house informally created by and for the reproductive laborers both ease some of their problems, and, at the same time, deepen their precariousness. Thus, economic opportunity, when embedded in relations of power and control, inequality and disadvantage, is barely a remedy for vulnerability and precarity.

Through the narratives of the reproductive laborers, the paper has brought into sharp focus the various modalities of precarity faced by them, from insecurities related to their labor, health hazards, to discourses of disposability and neglect. Moreover, the hyper-medicalization of pregnancy in private hospitals is something the women in the Global South have never experienced in their prior unpaid pregnancies. Hence, reproductive laborers are likely to not know ahead of time the medical processes that will be required for their paid pregnancies. Constructed as docile and ideal to accommodating to the capitalist requirements of a good mother and worker, reproductive laborers describe getting extremely bored in the settings of the surrogate house. Further, along with the stigma they face in the society, and the intense surveillance at the workplace, the women talk about melancholy and missing their friends and families in a terrible manner. These lived realities have shown how different ways of subjugation and struggle interact to shape particular social experiences. Although precarity has become the norm for the most working populations under neo-liberal capitalism worldwide, precarity has different meanings for different subjects (Garrido, 2020). The paper has captured the precarities faced by the historically precarious subjects, the women workers in the Global South, to understand the different situations they encounter because of the embedded precarity in their lives and work, and their own dynamics and struggles to survive. In this manner, the paper demonstrates how precarious work and precarious lives are inextricably intertwined with respect to the marketization of social reproduction in the Global South. It is significant to note here that despite the nature of transnationality of the markets for the third party assisted reproduction in the present times, feminist economic and labor geographers have not rigorously attended to surrogacy as a focus of research. Commercial surrogacy in the Global South has proven to be a successful arena because of the flow of medical information and technologies from the Global North; and, the “availability” of poor and marginalized women willing to work in this informal market guided by neoliberal market principles. This article makes a contribution to labor geographies, by calling for the need to develop reproductive labor geographies to seep into the everyday lived experiences of the reproductive laborers throughout the gestation period, in order to grapple with the everyday complexities of this market.

By locating agency in the everyday struggles of the reproductive laborers to survive and rework their positions in the labor market, the paper also contributes to the understanding of workers' agency and experiences in labor geography (Strauss, 2017). In the case of surrogacy, entering into this market as an attempt to rework one's personal circumstances, is filled with agency. I argue that agency must be understood as different from freedom of choice. The stories presented in the article offer a vantage point into the often-overlooked everyday micro-scale struggles that shape the reproductive laborers’ geographies of labor. Such an approach to agency can be used as a starting point for theorizing the different ways in which labor geography can intervene, both intellectually and politically, to attend to processes of systemic oppression (Strauss, 2018). In my approach to highlight the personal stories of the reproductive laborers, the paper has attended to the call made by labor geographers (Dutta, 2016; McDowell, 2015) to pay attention to women's lives and spaces inhabited by them. These personal stories, will “uncover the multiplicity of meanings embodied” (Kabeer, 2000: 87), in the decisions of the reproductive laborers to engage in this precarious market for reproductive labor; and, recognize their everyday struggles for survival and respectability.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am ever grateful to all the women who poured their hearts out to me. I thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions that helped me greatly to clarify my arguments and shape the paper in its present form. I wholeheartedly thank the special issue editors Tom Baker, Jessa Loomis, Emily Rosenman, and Dan Cohen for the opportunity and for inviting me to the Symposium: “Bringing life's work to market: Practices and spaces of marketized social reproduction,” at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, held in December 2019, where I presented the initial draft. Thank you, Sara H. Smith, for your detailed rounds of feedback on this paper and constant help and support. I thank Anu Sabhlok for guiding me throughout my research, and Yogesh for being a constant supporter.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Dalia Bhattacharjee

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