A Pande
Biographic Data
| ID | 13822 |
|---|---|
| NAME | A Pande |
| GIVEN NAMES | A |
| FAMILY NAME | Pande |
| SIGNATURE | PANDE A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cape Town |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5613-5201 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 173 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Dirty Wombs and Cheap Whiteness
The hegemony of Western liberal feminism is best captured by the emphasis on individual self-determination and questions of autonomy and choice in any discussions around reproduction. This primacy given to choice and individual rights is fundamentally based on liberal conceptions of politics. In the past decade, feminists have cautioned against an excessive reliance on the rhetoric of choice because, first, it romanticizes people's ability to mak…
De(coding) ‘loose women’ in colonial archives
Loose women are those whose behaviour and lifestyles do not fit the gendered norm of dependency and male patronage. Despite the elusive nature of the adjective ‘loose’, loose women are often visualised as sexually unrestrained, who need to be codified andcontrolled. The looseness of this category, and yet its strategic and historical use to restrain women, is curiously under-analyzed. I compare the history of the codification ‘prostitutes’ in Bri…
Introduction to Special Issue
Mix or Match
Does the transnational process of gamete selection challenge ways of mobilizing race and whiteness? Based on a mobile ethnography of the transnational fertility industry, I argue that fertility experts and intended parents (IP) co-produce the desirability of whiteness through "racial matching" for white, heterosexual IP, and "strategic hybridization", or strategic mixing of gametes, for some same-sex IP who do not identify as white. Although disr…
Revisiting surrogacy in India
In this paper, I use a multi-scalar approach to understand the full repercussions of a national ban on the transnational practice of surrogacy in India. I use my ethnographic findings to analyse the effects of the ban on the local and the national. At the level of the local I revisit a surrogacy clinic and hostel in India, after a decade of my first ethnographic research, to argue that despite the legal upheavals, not much had changed for the ges…
Visa Stamps for Injections
In this article, I discuss cross-border egg provision by young South African women as a form of traveling biolabor that is critically about embodiment, and aspirations for mobility and cosmopolitanism. The frame of biolabor challenges the frames of altruism/commodification, and choice/coercion, and instead highlights the desires of egg providers, fundamental to the creation and maintenance of the global fertility market. When biolabor crosses bor…
Gendered bio-responsibilities and travelling egg providers from South Africa
Intimate Counter‐Spaces of Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon 1
This article examines new nodes of migrants' desire to disrupt the heteronormative focus on married mothers in the literature on migration and gender and the reification of normative notions of both gender and sexuality. It demonstrates that in the presence of intense raced and gendered surveillance of both private and public spaces in Lebanon, migrant domestic workers (MDWs) use public “counter‐spaces” to forge intimate and sexual ties. It offer…
Intimate Counter‐Spaces of Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon 1
Mobile Masculinities
In this ethnography of Bangladeshi men living and working in South Africa, I draw on the intersection of three sets of literatures-masculinities studies, mobility studies, and the emerging body of work on migrant masculinities- to argue that migrant mobility shapes and is shaped by relational performances of racialized masculinities. I analyze three particular moments of such 'mobile masculinities.' The first is in the home country wherein migrat…
Commercial Surrogacy
Surrogacy” is the commonly used term for the practice of assisted reproduction, in which a woman gestates and gives birth to a child for someone else to raise. If she receives monetary payment beyond the reimbursement of medical and other reasonable expenses, the arrangement is labeled commercial surrogacy or contract pregnancy; otherwise it is referred to as altruistic surrogacy. Surrogacy has been generating feminist, ethical, legal, and social…
Global reproductive inequalities, neo-eugenics and commercial surrogacy in India
India's commercial surrogacy market literally produces humans and human relationships while sustaining global racial reproductive hierarchies. The post-colonial state's aggressive anti-natalism echoes the broader global population control agenda framing the global South's high fertility rates as a 'global danger' to be controlled at whatever cost, but is at odds with the neoliberal imperative of unrestrained global fertility tourism. Womb mothers…
Wombs in Labor
Surrogacy is India's new form of outsourcing, as couples from all over the world hire Indian women to bear their children for a fraction of the cost of surrogacy elsewhere with little to no government oversight or regulation. In the first detailed ethnography of India's surrogacy industry, Amrita Pande visits clinics and hostels and speaks with surrogates and their families, clients, doctors, brokers, and hostel matrons in order to shed light on …
I prefer to go back the day before tomorrow, but I cannot’
In this paper I extend the literature on ‘illegal’ migrant workers by connecting the macro-level discussion on policies to the lived experiences of migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in Lebanon. I analyse two seemingly contrasting categories of ‘illegal’ migrant workers. First, the MDWs working illegally and desperate to return home, who are unable to return because of the system of migration in Lebanon. Second, MDWs banned by their state from migra…
The Paper that you Have in Your Hand is My Freedom”
A recent report on migrant domestic work in Lebanon has cited psychological disorder among Lebanese “Madams” as the leading cause of violence against their migrant maids (Jureidini, 2011, www.kafa.org.lb/StudiesPublicationPDF/PRpdf38.pdf ). This report typifies much of the existing scholarship on the experiences of migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in the Middle East, where the focus is on employer–employee relationships, especially the abusive Ara…
From 'Balcony Talk' and 'Practical Prayers' to Illegal Collectives
In this study I highlight the spatial exclusions that migrant domestic workers (MDWs) experience in Lebanon. I argue that migrant domestic workers constantly challenge such spatial exclusions by using the exact spaces that they are excluded from as the bases for a meso-level of resistances-strategic acts that cannot be classified as either private and individual or as organized collective action. I highlight three kinds of such resistive activiti…
Transnational commercial surrogacy in India
Commercial Surrogacy in India
Feminist analysts of women in global production have demonstrated that “good” labor is not found ready‐made. It is produced through the practices and rhetorics of the shop floor. In this ethnographic study of commercial surrogacy in a small clinic in western India, I argue that a good commercial surrogate, like a good laborer of global production, is not found ready‐made in India. She is produced, instead, in fertility clinics and surrogacy hoste…
Not an ‘Angel’, not a ‘Whore’
In this study of surrogate mothers in Gujarat, India, I introduce the concept of ‘sexualised care work’ to describe a new type of care work—commercial surrogacy—that is similar to existing forms of care work but is stigmatised in the public imagination, among other reasons, because of its parallels with sex work. I use the oral histories of the surrogates to examine the accounts they give, justifying their work and resisting stigma. I argue that …
Not an ‘Angel’, not a ‘Whore’
In this study of surrogate mothers in Gujarat, India, I introduce the concept of ‘sexualised care work’ to describe a new type of care work—commercial surrogacy—that is similar to existing forms of care work but is stigmatised in the public imagination, among other reasons, because of its parallels with sex work. I use the oral histories of the surrogates to examine the accounts they give, justifying their work and resisting stigma. I argue that …
From 'Balcony Talk' and 'Practical Prayers' to Illegal Collectives
In this study I highlight the spatial exclusions that migrant domestic workers (MDWs) experience in Lebanon. I argue that migrant domestic workers constantly challenge such spatial exclusions by using the exact spaces that they are excluded from as the bases for a meso-level of resistances-strategic acts that cannot be classified as either private and individual or as organized collective action. I highlight three kinds of such resistive activiti…
The Paper that you Have in Your Hand is My Freedom”
A recent report on migrant domestic work in Lebanon has cited psychological disorder among Lebanese “Madams” as the leading cause of violence against their migrant maids (Jureidini, 2011, www.kafa.org.lb/StudiesPublicationPDF/PRpdf38.pdf ). This report typifies much of the existing scholarship on the experiences of migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in the Middle East, where the focus is on employer–employee relationships, especially the abusive Ara…
Gendered bio-responsibilities and travelling egg providers from South Africa
Mobile Masculinities
In this ethnography of Bangladeshi men living and working in South Africa, I draw on the intersection of three sets of literatures-masculinities studies, mobility studies, and the emerging body of work on migrant masculinities- to argue that migrant mobility shapes and is shaped by relational performances of racialized masculinities. I analyze three particular moments of such 'mobile masculinities.' The first is in the home country wherein migrat…
Mix or Match
Does the transnational process of gamete selection challenge ways of mobilizing race and whiteness? Based on a mobile ethnography of the transnational fertility industry, I argue that fertility experts and intended parents (IP) co-produce the desirability of whiteness through "racial matching" for white, heterosexual IP, and "strategic hybridization", or strategic mixing of gametes, for some same-sex IP who do not identify as white. Although disr…
Global reproductive inequalities, neo-eugenics and commercial surrogacy in India
India's commercial surrogacy market literally produces humans and human relationships while sustaining global racial reproductive hierarchies. The post-colonial state's aggressive anti-natalism echoes the broader global population control agenda framing the global South's high fertility rates as a 'global danger' to be controlled at whatever cost, but is at odds with the neoliberal imperative of unrestrained global fertility tourism. Womb mothers…
Visa Stamps for Injections
In this article, I discuss cross-border egg provision by young South African women as a form of traveling biolabor that is critically about embodiment, and aspirations for mobility and cosmopolitanism. The frame of biolabor challenges the frames of altruism/commodification, and choice/coercion, and instead highlights the desires of egg providers, fundamental to the creation and maintenance of the global fertility market. When biolabor crosses bor…
I prefer to go back the day before tomorrow, but I cannot’
In this paper I extend the literature on ‘illegal’ migrant workers by connecting the macro-level discussion on policies to the lived experiences of migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in Lebanon. I analyse two seemingly contrasting categories of ‘illegal’ migrant workers. First, the MDWs working illegally and desperate to return home, who are unable to return because of the system of migration in Lebanon. Second, MDWs banned by their state from migra…
Revisiting surrogacy in India
In this paper, I use a multi-scalar approach to understand the full repercussions of a national ban on the transnational practice of surrogacy in India. I use my ethnographic findings to analyse the effects of the ban on the local and the national. At the level of the local I revisit a surrogacy clinic and hostel in India, after a decade of my first ethnographic research, to argue that despite the legal upheavals, not much had changed for the ges…
Intimate Counter‐Spaces of Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon 1
This article examines new nodes of migrants' desire to disrupt the heteronormative focus on married mothers in the literature on migration and gender and the reification of normative notions of both gender and sexuality. It demonstrates that in the presence of intense raced and gendered surveillance of both private and public spaces in Lebanon, migrant domestic workers (MDWs) use public “counter‐spaces” to forge intimate and sexual ties. It offer…
Intimate Counter‐Spaces of Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon 1
Not an ‘Angel’, not a ‘Whore’
In this study of surrogate mothers in Gujarat, India, I introduce the concept of ‘sexualised care work’ to describe a new type of care work—commercial surrogacy—that is similar to existing forms of care work but is stigmatised in the public imagination, among other reasons, because of its parallels with sex work. I use the oral histories of the surrogates to examine the accounts they give, justifying their work and resisting stigma. I argue that …
Commercial Surrogacy in India
Feminist analysts of women in global production have demonstrated that “good” labor is not found ready‐made. It is produced through the practices and rhetorics of the shop floor. In this ethnographic study of commercial surrogacy in a small clinic in western India, I argue that a good commercial surrogate, like a good laborer of global production, is not found ready‐made in India. She is produced, instead, in fertility clinics and surrogacy hoste…
Transnational commercial surrogacy in India
From 'Balcony Talk' and 'Practical Prayers' to Illegal Collectives
In this study I highlight the spatial exclusions that migrant domestic workers (MDWs) experience in Lebanon. I argue that migrant domestic workers constantly challenge such spatial exclusions by using the exact spaces that they are excluded from as the bases for a meso-level of resistances-strategic acts that cannot be classified as either private and individual or as organized collective action. I highlight three kinds of such resistive activiti…
The Paper that you Have in Your Hand is My Freedom”
A recent report on migrant domestic work in Lebanon has cited psychological disorder among Lebanese “Madams” as the leading cause of violence against their migrant maids (Jureidini, 2011, www.kafa.org.lb/StudiesPublicationPDF/PRpdf38.pdf ). This report typifies much of the existing scholarship on the experiences of migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in the Middle East, where the focus is on employer–employee relationships, especially the abusive Ara…
Wombs in Labor
Surrogacy is India's new form of outsourcing, as couples from all over the world hire Indian women to bear their children for a fraction of the cost of surrogacy elsewhere with little to no government oversight or regulation. In the first detailed ethnography of India's surrogacy industry, Amrita Pande visits clinics and hostels and speaks with surrogates and their families, clients, doctors, brokers, and hostel matrons in order to shed light on …
I prefer to go back the day before tomorrow, but I cannot’
In this paper I extend the literature on ‘illegal’ migrant workers by connecting the macro-level discussion on policies to the lived experiences of migrant domestic workers (MDWs) in Lebanon. I analyse two seemingly contrasting categories of ‘illegal’ migrant workers. First, the MDWs working illegally and desperate to return home, who are unable to return because of the system of migration in Lebanon. Second, MDWs banned by their state from migra…
Commercial Surrogacy
Surrogacy” is the commonly used term for the practice of assisted reproduction, in which a woman gestates and gives birth to a child for someone else to raise. If she receives monetary payment beyond the reimbursement of medical and other reasonable expenses, the arrangement is labeled commercial surrogacy or contract pregnancy; otherwise it is referred to as altruistic surrogacy. Surrogacy has been generating feminist, ethical, legal, and social…
Global reproductive inequalities, neo-eugenics and commercial surrogacy in India
India's commercial surrogacy market literally produces humans and human relationships while sustaining global racial reproductive hierarchies. The post-colonial state's aggressive anti-natalism echoes the broader global population control agenda framing the global South's high fertility rates as a 'global danger' to be controlled at whatever cost, but is at odds with the neoliberal imperative of unrestrained global fertility tourism. Womb mothers…
Mobile Masculinities
In this ethnography of Bangladeshi men living and working in South Africa, I draw on the intersection of three sets of literatures-masculinities studies, mobility studies, and the emerging body of work on migrant masculinities- to argue that migrant mobility shapes and is shaped by relational performances of racialized masculinities. I analyze three particular moments of such 'mobile masculinities.' The first is in the home country wherein migrat…
Gendered bio-responsibilities and travelling egg providers from South Africa
Intimate Counter‐Spaces of Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon 1
This article examines new nodes of migrants' desire to disrupt the heteronormative focus on married mothers in the literature on migration and gender and the reification of normative notions of both gender and sexuality. It demonstrates that in the presence of intense raced and gendered surveillance of both private and public spaces in Lebanon, migrant domestic workers (MDWs) use public “counter‐spaces” to forge intimate and sexual ties. It offer…
Intimate Counter‐Spaces of Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon 1
Visa Stamps for Injections
In this article, I discuss cross-border egg provision by young South African women as a form of traveling biolabor that is critically about embodiment, and aspirations for mobility and cosmopolitanism. The frame of biolabor challenges the frames of altruism/commodification, and choice/coercion, and instead highlights the desires of egg providers, fundamental to the creation and maintenance of the global fertility market. When biolabor crosses bor…
Mix or Match
Does the transnational process of gamete selection challenge ways of mobilizing race and whiteness? Based on a mobile ethnography of the transnational fertility industry, I argue that fertility experts and intended parents (IP) co-produce the desirability of whiteness through "racial matching" for white, heterosexual IP, and "strategic hybridization", or strategic mixing of gametes, for some same-sex IP who do not identify as white. Although disr…
Revisiting surrogacy in India
In this paper, I use a multi-scalar approach to understand the full repercussions of a national ban on the transnational practice of surrogacy in India. I use my ethnographic findings to analyse the effects of the ban on the local and the national. At the level of the local I revisit a surrogacy clinic and hostel in India, after a decade of my first ethnographic research, to argue that despite the legal upheavals, not much had changed for the ges…
De(coding) ‘loose women’ in colonial archives
Loose women are those whose behaviour and lifestyles do not fit the gendered norm of dependency and male patronage. Despite the elusive nature of the adjective ‘loose’, loose women are often visualised as sexually unrestrained, who need to be codified andcontrolled. The looseness of this category, and yet its strategic and historical use to restrain women, is curiously under-analyzed. I compare the history of the codification ‘prostitutes’ in Bri…
Introduction to Special Issue
Dirty Wombs and Cheap Whiteness
The hegemony of Western liberal feminism is best captured by the emphasis on individual self-determination and questions of autonomy and choice in any discussions around reproduction. This primacy given to choice and individual rights is fundamentally based on liberal conceptions of politics. In the past decade, feminists have cautioned against an excessive reliance on the rhetoric of choice because, first, it romanticizes people's ability to mak…
Political science (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Gender Studies (11 works) · Law (11 works) · Reproductive Health and Technologies (9 works) · Demographic Trends and Gender Preferences (8 works) · Economics (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Migration and Labor Dynamics (6 works)