Searching for Love and Test-Tube Babies: Iraqi Refugee Men in Reproductive Exile on the Margins of Detroit

ABSTRACT

In this article, I explore the reproductive health problems faced by Iraqi refugees, one of America’s most rapidly growing immigrant populations. Based on anthropological research in “Arab Detroit,” the “capital” of Arab America, I explore the experiences of Iraqi refugee men seeking medical help for their infertility. Most required intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), a variant of in vitro fertilization (IVF). However, in America’s privatized medical system—where a single cycle can cost more than $12,000—few could possibly afford this assisted reproductive technology (ART). Although Iraqi refugees had diasporic dreams of making a test-tube baby, they were stuck in a situation of “reproductive exile”—forced out of their home country by war, but unable to access costly ARTs in the country that led to their displacement. I elaborate on the concept of reproductive exile, attempting to translate Iraqi refugee men’s reproductive agency and desires, but also their profound disappointments.

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KEYWORDS:

• Detroit
• Iraqi refugees
• assisted reproductive technologies
• male infertility
• reproductive exile
• structural vulnerability

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to the Iraqi refugees who shared their often painful stories with me at IVF Michigan. This study was made possible by the IVF Michigan staff, especially Dr. Michael Hassan Fakih and Hanaa Hijazi. Thanks also go to Linda Rae Bennett and Bregje de Kok for including me in this special issue and for their thoughtful editorial comments and advice. I also appreciate the editorial guidance of Medical Anthropology’s Editor Lenore Manderson and Editorial Assistant Victoria Team.

Funding

This research was funded by two generous grants from the Cultural Anthropology program of the US National Science Foundation.

Notes

1. I have written a great deal about the profound desire for children among Arab populations in a variety of Middle Eastern countries, including Egypt, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates (Inhorn 1996, 2012, 2015). In Arab Detroit, I found the same profound child desire among infertile couples who were often desperate to conceive. Those who did not often faced social scrutiny within the community.

2. The Middle East as a whole hosts a flourishing IVF industry (Inhorn 2003, 2012, 2015). However, the Iraqi IVF sector was destroyed by war, leaving only one functioning clinic in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by two generous grants from the Cultural Anthropology program of the US National Science Foundation.

Notes on contributors

Marcia C. Inhorn

Marcia C. Inhorn is the William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at Yale University and author of five books, including her most recent Cosmopolitan Conceptions: IVF Sojourns in Global Dubai (Duke University Press 2015).