Abstract Title: Birth Tourism and Biopolitical Governance:Mainland Pregnant Women in Hong Kong
Author(s):
Tsung-Yi Michelle Huang, Prof.* - Dept. of Geography, National Taiwan University
Abstract:
This paper considers Hong Kong's governance of two types of mainland pregnant women (spouses of Hong Kong citizens and spouses of non-nationals of Hong Kong) in an attempt to understand the translocal governmentality and meanings of citizenship implicated in the phenomena of birth tourism and circular marriage migration. I will borrow Michel Foucault's concept of biopolitics to examine Hong Kong's governance of mainland pregnant women as an effect of biopolitics whereby the state regulates the conduct of subjects as a population and as individuals to ensure security and prosperity for the nation as a whole (Foucault 1978). Different narrative representations of mainland pregnant women will be juxtaposed in order to critically understand the government's and the market's hegemonic discourses of these women (both as tourists and as non-nationals). Accordingly, this paper will obtain different narratives and viewpoints through in-depth interviews and questionnaire survey conducted on related blogs: including translocal birth experiences provided by two types of mainland pregnant women and intermediary mechanism integral to mainland pregnant women's procreative right such as birth tourism agents, health care practitioners of both public and private hospitals, human rights activists, social workers, as well as protestors of mainland pregnant women's entry into Hong Kong. Through a comparison amongst different forms of narrating mainland pregnant women, this paper aims to foreground the subject experiences and social imaginations absent in the mainstream mainland pregnancy discourse constructed by the government and the market.
