Geopolitics of reproduction: Investigating technological mediation of maternity tourism on the Russian web

Abstract

Investigating maternity tourism to the United States from Russia through the lens of technological mediation, this study foregrounds the geopolitical patterns of human reproduction that shape, and are shaped by, individual choices of maternal healthcare in a neoliberal healthcare market. Following the history of a highly popular Russian-language forum, I demonstrate how this online community gets imbricated into communicative biocapitalism – a neoliberal logic that commodifies the voice of an online user, turning networked publics into markets for medical services. Adding to the literature on data colonialism, I explore a case in which data-driven algorithms effectively alter geographical distribution of reproductive bodies, outsourcing the production of new generations of neoliberal subjects through regimes of technological mediation.