Neither Sacred nor Unholy, Just Workers: the Cyborg Work of Surrogates

Abstract

This paper analyzes the practice of surrogacy, in which a woman carries someone else’s baby, focusing on the gestational-labor process of these women, called “surrogates”. To present them as hybrid figures, I use Donna Haraway’s concept of cyborg as a heuristic resource. The stigma of the financial compensation for surrogates is analyzed through theoretical contributions about sex work – along with Goffman’s theatrical metaphors – to discuss how the idealized role of who a surrogate should be is linked to the ideal morality of a sacred woman. The gestational labor process is analyzed as a hybrid form of productive and relational work, demonstrating how surrogates negotiate limits between Zelizer’s hostile worlds of market and intimacy. The findings I have presented suggest that surrogates live between two worlds and, in different ways, negotiate their limits, while they live with the idealized role that people expect of them.