By Silvia De Zordo, Diana Marre and Marcin Smietana
This double special issue sheds light on the “demographic anxieties” provoked by the articulations of major social and political-economic processes that have affected reproductive politics (Ginsburg and Rapp 1991) and practices over the last decades around the world, in particular: fertility decline, the simultaneous development of sophisticated prenatal and assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs), and the austerity policies adopted after the 2008 economic crisis on a global scale, in a context of rising nationalism. The authors explore demographic anxieties concerning, on the one hand, fertility decline, the postponement of motherhood and population aging, and, on the other hand, the reproductive behavior of specific social groups (e.g., religious/ethnic minorities and low-income populations). They illustrate how these anxieties emerge and are mobilized as mechanisms of reproductive governance across the global North and South (Fonseca et al. 2021; Morgan and Roberts 2012), in contexts marked by growing social inequalities resulting from the application of neo-liberal policies and austerity measures, which make reproductive choices, and futures, increasingly difficult and precarious.
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Decolonising Global Health Archive 