GENDER AND NON-HETEROSEXUAL FAMILIES' TRANSNATIONAL REPRODUCTION IN SPAIN

Asymmetrical relationships between more industrialized countries (migrant receiving countries) and developing countries (migrant sending countries) have significantly increased in the last decades due to global capitalism. As a result, an increasing number of women from these last countries have maintain their children in transnational contexts while incorporating to the reproductive labor market in the first countries caring children and seniors. The development of transnational families and motherhood, as categorized by social scientists, contrast with the growth of women and men from more industrialized countries who also cross national borders to have their children-through intercountry adoption, Assisted Reproductive Techniques (ARTs) or gestational surrogacy in countries where this practice is allowed. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with non-heterosexual families in Spain, this paper analyzes these processes of family formation and reproduction, which emerged and developed as a consequence of changing structural conditions in current contexts of globalization, from a transnational and gender perspective. In doing so, intersection with global/local moral economy, national and international policies, sexuality, ethnicity, class, citizenship, and legitimacy are considered.