MRG Seminar: Babies and passports: How Mobile Women Tackle Global Citizenship Inequalities Through Childbirth

Seminar 2-4pm.

In this presentation, I unfold the practice of "birth mobility" and the motivations of women who engage in it. Birth mobility refers to the international mobility undertaken by pregnant women intending to give birth in a foreign country to obtain birthright citizenship for their children, themselves, and other family members. Drawn on qualitative research combining a multi-sited multi-lingual ethnography, in-depth interviews and digital ethnography with Russian women in Brazil, I address the concept of “strategic citizenship” and a unique way to obtain it by giving birth in a jus soli country.

Dr Svetlana Ruseishvili is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil, and a Visiting Fellow at the Department of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences. Her research primarily centres on migration and mobility, strategic citizenship, and Russian-speaking migration to Latin America.