Mobilizing mobilities

Birthright tourists as willful strangers in Canada

Bibliographic Data

ID5716655
AuthorsKristin Lozanski (0000-0001-9138-553X, King's University College, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume15
Issue2
Pages146-160
Publication date2020-03-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueMobilities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1745-0101 • E-ISSN: 1745-011X
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17450101.2020.1722557
OpenAlexW3008221135
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited34

A so-called birth tourist travels to a country with birthright citizenship to give birth so that her child will be a citizen of that country. In Canada, hostility towards birth tourism has simmered since 2012. Situating this hostility within a history of Sinophobia, I analyze birth tourism websites, arguing that those who can access Canadian citizenship via birth tourism already possess network capital, a position that is not enabled but enhanced by their child’s citizenship. I argue that public concern about birth-tourism in Canada turns on the willfulness of birth tourists as strangers who impose themselves upon the state. Birth tourists combine their reproductive capacity and their capacity for mobility to subvert the sovereignty of the Canadian state: their reproduction is inherently nationalized and produces citizens who have not been vetted by the Canadian state. In this way, birth tourists invoke mobility to access citizenship without commitments and without state sanction, creating strangers within the state

Business · Citizenship · Geography · Hostility · Immigration · Mobilities · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Sovereignty · Tourism · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Psychology · Sex work and related issues · Social Psychology