2025 Winner

Intimate Strangers: Commercial Surrogacy in Russia and Ukraine and the Making of Truth

by Veronika Siegl

Prize Committee:
Doreen Lee, Chair (Northeastern University), Eleana Kim (University of California, Irvine), Daniel Reichman (University of Rochester)

Intimate Strangers by Veronika Siegl is a fascinating ethnography of transnational surrogacy in Russia and Ukraine. Developing the notion of ethical labor, Siegl shows how intended parents and surrogates contribute to the moral economy of commercial surrogacy in unexpected and at times strategic ways. The book offers deep insights into the international infrastructure of transnational surrogacy, connecting distant clientele to commercial fairs, agencies, surrogates, and well-appointed birth clinics across multiple locations. Central to the surrogacy process is the delicate management of bodies, intentions, and emotions, which cover up the motivations of class and compensation. Siegl’s clear and composed writing delivers us straight into the complex emotional world of surrogacy, where neoliberal ideas and individual notions about freedom and choice run up against deep-seated cultural understandings of love, belonging, and responsibility.

From the Publishers:
Zooming in on commercial surrogacy in Russia and Ukraine, Intimate Strangers addresses market expansion into the intimate spheres of life that play out on women’s bodies as mothers and workers.Veronika Siegl follows the inner workings of a surrogacy market marked by secrecy, distrust, and anonymous business relationships. She explores intended mothers’ anxious struggles for a child in light of stigmatized infertility and the aggressive biopolitics of motherhood; the uncertain but pragmatic pathways in and out of fertility clinics as surrogates navigate harsh economic realities and resist being objectified or morally judged; and the powerful role of agents and doctors who have found a profitable niche in nurturing and facilitating other people’s existential hopes. Intimate Strangers discusses these issues against the backdrop of ultra-conservatism and moral governance in Russia, the rising international popularity of the Ukrainian surrogacy market, and the pervasiveness of neo-liberal ideologies and individualized notions of reproductive freedom.