Modes of Mobility: Tracing the Routes of Reproductive Travel in the Asia-Pacific Region

Reproductive technologies and services have impinged profoundly on the

relations between—and constitution of—individuals, groups, and nations.

This has occurred amid the uncertainties arising in an industry in which

human beings and human emotion are both the “means of production” and

the intended final product. As the human reproduction industry expands, we

increasingly need to think of it in a regional and global frame. Globalization

is “a process of intensifying global social inter-relatedness, whereby space

and time are compressed and previously separated locations [are] brought

into a new proximity” (Eschle 2002, 316).1 Technologies such as gamete or

embryo freezing and ease of air travel mean that reproductive relations are no

longer (if they ever were) “domestic,” either in the sense of the family home

or of the home country (Franklin 2013, 271).