Mobilizing mobilities: birthright tourists as willful strangers in Canada

ABSTRACT

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.

KEYWORDS:

• Reproduction
• mobilities
• birth tourism
• birthright citizenship
• Sinophobia
• Canada

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Canadian passport holders are not entitled to work in the United States, nor do they have the same rights as Americans. Through NAFTA, Canadian (and Mexican) citizens may qualify for a non-immigrant NAFTA Professional (TN) visa to work in a designated profession, tied to their employer, if the position requires a NAFTA professional (US Department of State Forthcoming).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Science and Humanities Research Council Insight Development Grant [430-2014-00240]; Social Science and Humanities Research Council Connection Grant [611-2017-0280]; and funding from King’s University College at University of Western Ontario.