REPROCIT · The Biopolitics of Citizenship and Reproductive Law

Based on the pillars of traditional nuclear families and unassisted human reproduction, ius sanguinis as the oldest mode of citizenship transmission, has been devised to ensure the intergenerational continuity of political communities. As such, it is the most dominant mode of citizenship acquisition around the globe. Yet, what happens to citizenship transmission when reproductive law becomes a site of contestation? How does the regulation of reproductive rights shape the composition of the body politic (i.e., who and under what conditions can be recognised as future citizens)? REPROCIT addresses these questions through the lens of the biopolitics of citizenship, where the (fertile) body has been viewed by the state as a resource: for labor, for creating armies, and for defining who is recognised as a citizen. The increase in diverse families, (i.e., single-parent, same-sex married, or unmarried parents), rise in maternal age and declines in male fertility, combined with advances in assisted reproductive technologies, as well as the upsurge in the use of surrogates and adoption services, all highlight that debates on citizenship status transmission are inextricable from those on human reproduction and the legal and social parameters of the family. While previous research has occasionally touched upon these issues, so far, there has been no conceptual or empirical endeavour at studying them systematically.REPROCIT highlights the interconnections between reproductive law, establishment of parentage policy, and citizenship status attribution empirically and theoretically; by doing so, the project advances an important normative debate facing societies, whether and to what extent the state should provide a right to reproduction.