scholarly journals Outsourcing problems or regulating altruism? Parliamentary debates on domestic and cross-border surrogacy in Finland and Norway

2021 ◽  
pp. 135050682110099
Author(s):  
Lise Eriksson
Keyword(s):  
Welfare States ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Surrogate Mothers ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
Commercial Surrogacy ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Unwanted Consequence

This article employs the concept of respectability and the discursive representation of gender equality policies to discuss how surrogacy is represented in Nordic parliamentary debates and policy documents. The article’s objective is to study how respectability, problems and equality are represented and discursively and rhetorically produced through a comparative study of Finnish and Norwegian political discourses on domestic unpaid surrogacy and cross-border commercial surrogacy. The article uses rhetorical and discursive analysis to analyse the Finnish and Norwegian Parliaments’ bills, members’ initiatives and proceedings from 2002 to 2018. Finland’s policy on surrogacy has evolved from an unregulated and permissive approach towards a more restrictive one, with discourses focusing on medicalisation, equality, altruism and safety concerning domestic surrogacy and problems and risks concerning cross-border surrogacy. Norway’s policy on surrogacy has been restrictive consistently, with discourses focusing on surrogacy as a transnational social problem involving exploitation of women and children, and biocentrism. Analysing surrogacy regulation in Nordic welfare states, the author concludes that policies and parliamentary debates in both countries have expressed expectations for inclusive health policies and social security for families. Cross-border surrogacy is characterised as an unwanted consequence of globalisation and marketisation of reproduction. Surrogate mothers’ respectability is constructed through rhetoric on differences in terms of nationality, class and binary representations of female caring and instrumentalism.

scholarly journals Surrogatarrangemang, moderskap och nationalitet. Finlands riksdags debatter om legaliseringen av surrogatarrangemang

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (113) ◽  
pp. 27-44
Author(s):  
Lise Kanckos
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Assisted Reproduction ◽  
Small Extent ◽  
Discussion Forum ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Medical Article ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
Cross Border

Surrogacy, motherhood and nationality | Surrogacy arrangements were allowed in Finland, and were practiced to a small extent at four clinics, before the Act on Assisted Reproduction took effect on 1 September 2007. The political debate on surrogacy was at times lively during the preparations of the law. This article is based on a rhetoric and discourse analysis of discussions on surrogacy, maternity and nationality in the Finnish parliamentary debates concerning the legalisation of surrogacy. The material consists of three debates in 2002, 2006 and 2007, newspaper articles, a medical article and the website of a discussion forum. Surrogacy arrangements in Finland were often constructed in these debates as safe and controlled, and the Finnish surrogate was described as altruistic, while surrogates in other countries were constructed as rented wombs. These political discourses on surrogacy are also discussed in relation to a wider context of cross-border reproductive care and consumption.

scholarly journals Non-for-Profits and EU Citizens’ Cross-Border Social Rights in Different Welfare States

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 601-621
Author(s):  
CECILIA BRUZELIUS
Keyword(s):  
Welfare States ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
Non Profit ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Welfare Mix ◽  
Provision Of Services

AbstractThis paper looks at rights in practice to understand how migrant EU citizens’ formal social rights translate into substantive ones. It highlights a factor thus far overlooked in the literature on welfare states and migrants’ social rights: namely, the actors involved in welfare delivery. The argument is based, first, on non-profit organisations’ (NPOs) function as ‘rights intermediaries’; and second, on the distinct make-up of the ‘welfare mix’ across countries, with which NPO’s role in the provision of services, and hence their capacities and autonomy, varies. Focusing on EU citizens’ cross-border social rights, and drawing on in-depth research in Germany and Sweden, the paper reveals how NPOs defend and facilitate access to rights in both countries. Yet NPOs’ extensive role in the German welfare sector generates greater capacities for NPOs to pursue inclusive objectives than what is available to their Swedish counterparts, which occupy a much more limited position as welfare providers. This, it is argued, can be important for understanding how boundaries of social citizenship are drawn in each country.

scholarly journals Regulating the international surrogacy market:the ethics of commercial surrogacy in the Netherlands and India

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 621-630
Author(s):  
Jaden Blazier ◽  
Rien Janssens
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Ethical Analysis ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
International Treaty ◽  
International Context ◽  
Case Examples ◽  
Safety Standards ◽  
Middle Income Countries ◽  
Commercial Surrogacy ◽  
Cross Border

Abstract It is unclear what proper remuneration for surrogacy is, since countries disagree and both commercial and altruistic surrogacy have ethical drawbacks. In the presence of cross-border surrogacy, these ethical drawbacks are exacerbated. In this article, we explore what would be ethical remuneration for surrogacy, and suggest regulations for how to ensure this in the international context. A normative ethical analysis of commercial surrogacy is conducted. Various arguments against commercial surrogacy are explored, such as exploitation and commodification of surrogates, reproductive capacities, and the child. We argue that, although commodification and exploitation can occur, these problems are not specific to surrogacy but should be understood in the broader context of an unequal world. Moreover, at least some of these arguments are based on symbolic rhetoric or they lack knowledge of real-world experiences. In line with this critique we argue that commercial surrogacy can be justified, but how and under what circumstances depends on the context. Surrogates should be paid a sufficient amount and regulations should be in order. In this article, the Netherlands and India (where commercial surrogacy was legal until 2015) are case examples of contexts that differ in many respects. In both contexts, surrogacy can be seen as a legitimate form of work, which requires the same wage and safety standards as other forms of labor. Payments for surrogacy need to be high enough to avoid exploitation by underpayment, which can be established by the mechanisms of either minimum wage (in high income countries such as the Netherlands), or Fair-Trade guidelines (in lower-middle income countries such as India). An international treaty governing commercial surrogacy should be in place, and local professional bodies to protect the interests of surrogates should be required. Commercial surrogacy should be permitted across the globe, which would also reduce the need for intended parents to seek surrogacy services abroad.

scholarly journals Economic arguments in migrant health policymaking: proposing a research agenda

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora Gottlieb ◽  
Ursula Trummer ◽  
Nadav Davidovitch ◽  
Allan Krasnik ◽  
Sol P. Juárez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Healthcare Access ◽  
Migrant Health ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Health Policies ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Public Healthcare ◽  
Excess Costs ◽  
Health Policymaking

AbstractWelfare states around the world restrict access to public healthcare for some migrant groups. Formal restrictions on migrants’ healthcare access are often justified with economic arguments; for example, as a means to prevent excess costs and safeguard scarce resources. However, existing studies on the economics of migrant health policies suggest that restrictive policies increase rather than decrease costs. This evidence has largely been ignored in migration debates. Amplifying the relationship between welfare state transformations and the production of inequalities, the Covid-19 pandemic may fuel exclusionary rhetoric and politics; or it may serve as an impetus to reconsider the costs that one group’s exclusion from health can entail for all members of society.The public health community has a responsibility to promote evidence-informed health policies that are ethically and economically sound, and to counter anti-migrant and racial discrimination (whether overt or masked with economic reasoning). Toward this end, we propose a research agenda which includes 1) the generation of a comprehensive body of evidence on economic aspects of migrant health policies, 2) the clarification of the role of economic arguments in migration debates, 3) (self-)critical reflection on the ethics and politics of the production of economic evidence, 4) the introduction of evidence into migrant health policymaking processes, and 5) the endorsement of inter- and transdisciplinary approaches. With the Covid-19 pandemic and surrounding events rendering the suggested research agenda more topical than ever, we invite individuals and groups to join forces toward a (self-)critical examination of economic arguments in migration and health, and in public health generally.

‘TALKING POLITICS’: TYRANNY, PARLIAMENT, AND CHRISTOPHER BROOKE'S THE GHOST OF RICHARD THE THIRD (1614)

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHELLE O'CALLAGHAN
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Print Culture ◽  
Parliamentary Debates ◽  
Political Discourses ◽  
The Third ◽  
Literary Forms ◽  
Inns Of Court ◽  
Literary Cultures ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definition Of

The career of the MP and poet Christopher Brooke, in particular his The ghost of Richard the third (1614) and his activity in the 1614 ‘addled’ parliament, forms the basis of this study of Jacobean political culture. Brooke's career foregrounds the close interaction of political and literary cultures in the period; he was a leading member of the political circle, the ‘Sireniacs’, which had strong parliamentary ties, and was one of the Inns of Court-based ‘oppositional’ Spenserian poets. Together with his fellow ‘Sireniac’ MPs, Brooke vehemently opposed the definition of impositions as the domain of absolute rather than ordinary powers of the crown because of the threat this posed to the rights of parliament and the subject. The ghost of Richard the third provides an example of parliamentary debates entering a wider print culture, where impositions merged with broader civic issues. Political language in this period was not confined to the realms of high theory and Brooke's poem illustrates the complex mediation of political discourses through literary forms. A humanist discourse of tyranny provided Brooke with a coded language, enabling him to articulate his concern for the health of the commonwealth and to address areas of ideological conflict in early Stuart political culture.

scholarly journals The Human Capital of Scandinavia?: Citizenship Dilemmas in the Cross-Border Øresund Region

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Toni Lucia Grace
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Border Region ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
National Citizenship ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Secondary Information ◽  
The Øresund Region

<p>The Øresund Region of Eastern Denmark and Southern Sweden is an ambitious cross-border integration project, aiming to make the region “The Human Capital of Scandinavia”. Integration has deepened to include cross-border social rights, with regional proponents heralding the emergence of “Øresund citizens”. Yet the two welfare states, despite their common attributes, have developed dissimilar attitudes towards the rise of a multicultural society in recent years, establishing divergent national citizenship policies in response. This thesis uses the Øresund region as a critical case study, which contributes to wider European debates about the tension between regional freedom of movement and national determination over citizenship. To explore this regional integration — national citizenship nexus, this thesis asks; to what extent do divergent national citizenship models inhibit deeper cross-border integration and prospects for regional citizenship? Drawing on a range of primary and secondary information sources, including interviews with regional political actors, this thesis reveals how divergent national citizenship policies rouse political debate about belonging and entitlement of foreigners in the cross-border region. Discordant national citizenship policies have reinforced organisation and conceptual borders along national lines, revealing that the cultural proximity of these Nordic neighbours is no guarantee of seamless cross-border movement and integration. This thesis demonstrates that citizenship policies not only have a domestic impact but can also become a point of tension between member states, with implications for regional integration and citizenship.</p>

scholarly journals The Human Capital of Scandinavia?: Citizenship Dilemmas in the Cross-Border Øresund Region

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Toni Lucia Grace
Keyword(s):  
Human Capital ◽  
Regional Integration ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Border Region ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
National Citizenship ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Secondary Information ◽  
The Øresund Region

<p>The Øresund Region of Eastern Denmark and Southern Sweden is an ambitious cross-border integration project, aiming to make the region “The Human Capital of Scandinavia”. Integration has deepened to include cross-border social rights, with regional proponents heralding the emergence of “Øresund citizens”. Yet the two welfare states, despite their common attributes, have developed dissimilar attitudes towards the rise of a multicultural society in recent years, establishing divergent national citizenship policies in response. This thesis uses the Øresund region as a critical case study, which contributes to wider European debates about the tension between regional freedom of movement and national determination over citizenship. To explore this regional integration — national citizenship nexus, this thesis asks; to what extent do divergent national citizenship models inhibit deeper cross-border integration and prospects for regional citizenship? Drawing on a range of primary and secondary information sources, including interviews with regional political actors, this thesis reveals how divergent national citizenship policies rouse political debate about belonging and entitlement of foreigners in the cross-border region. Discordant national citizenship policies have reinforced organisation and conceptual borders along national lines, revealing that the cultural proximity of these Nordic neighbours is no guarantee of seamless cross-border movement and integration. This thesis demonstrates that citizenship policies not only have a domestic impact but can also become a point of tension between member states, with implications for regional integration and citizenship.</p>

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