What we see instead is a continuum of resistance composed of discursive, individual, and collective actions that disrupt the production of a reified, unitary mother‐worker subject. The production of this mother‐worker subject, however, does not go unchallenged. It requires a disciplinary project that works discursively, one that works through the materialization of discourses in the form of enclosures or surrogacy hostels. When one’s mother identity is regulated and terminated by a contract, being a good mother often conflicts with being a good worker, which makes the mother‐worker identity a rather difficult one to produce. But she is simultaneously urged to be a nurturing mother for the baby and a selfless mother who will not negotiate the payment received. The surrogate in India is expected to be a disciplined contract worker who gives up the baby at the termination of the contract. However, unlike women in factories who have to be constituted as the perfect worker of managers’ dreams, surrogates have to be constituted as the perfect mother‐worker subject. She is produced, instead, in fertility clinics and surrogacy hostels. Wombs in Labor is an absorbing and meticulously researched work. This book is a valuable read for anyone interested in commercial surrogacy, global inequality and women's labor. 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. Wombs in Labor is an important book that sheds light on the workings of transnational commercial surrogacy in India.
It is produced through the practices and rhetorics of the shop floor. Abstract Feminist analysts of women in global production have demonstrated that “good” labor is not found ready‐made.
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