Unruly Fertility: Race, Development, and Decolonial Reproductive Politics

As sexual and reproductive repression increases around the world, engaging with reproductive politics has become acutely urgent.This reproductive repression exists alongside pervasive economic precarity, untenable costs of living, and pressing demands for higher labor productivity.What feels like the emergence of a novel reproductive and economic dystopia, however, is a long-lasting reality for poor Black women globally.Comparing Senegal and North Carolina, T.D. Harper-Shipman shows how states and markets turn to poor Black women's fertility to assuage economic and social crises that would otherwise expose the failings of modern political economy.Moving through formative moments that draw reproductive health, gender, race, and labor into closer proximity-from the transatlantic slave trade through to the present-Harper-Shipman argues that reproductive health policies are instruments for national and international elites to regulate resource distribution and recreate future stores of dif