Reproductive Racism

Susanne Schultz is a private university lecturer at the Institute of Sociology/Goethe University Frankfurt. She is a member of the queer-feminist editors collective Kitchen Politics and researches on bio- and necropolitics, population policies and reproductive relations. Daniel Bendix is a professor for global development at Friedensau Adventist University and author of Global Development and Colonial Power. German Development Policy at Home and Abroad (2018). He is active with the transnational network Afrique-Europe-Interact.

“This book makes a compelling case for the centrality of population policies and ideologies to racism, coloniality and global capitalism. Crucially, it demonstrates how the openly Malthusian agendas of today’s ascendant far-right are inextricable from a long and complex history of neoliberal populationism. Yet the book also offers reasons to hope, through listening to feminist activists in Brazil who are reimagining concepts of reproductive justice”—Kalpana Wilson, Department of Geography, Birkbeck, University of London."In this exceptional book, Susanne Schultz offers an unsparing analysis of the specter of population, and how it shapes conjunctures of nationalism, reproductive racism, migration, and border regimes, as a method of neoliberal capitalism. This is an invaluable call against and beyond the logics of population, for anyone struggling towards building local and global eco-feminist, anti-racist, and anti-capitalist futures" —Vanessa E. Thompson, Distinguished Professor in Black Studies and Social Justice, Queen’s University, Canada“Susanne Schultz brings to light the processes through which statistic and demographic rationalities have become central to government policymaking in Germany and beyond. This illuminating case exemplifies how population knowledge, racism, border policy and family planning are deeply entangled and how they structure local, transnational and ultimately global political systems” — Jade S. Sasser, Gender & Sexuality Studies, University of California, Riverside.“Drawing on extensive empirical fieldwork and a rich theoretical apparatus, Susanne Schultz follows the manifold trajectories of demographic rationalities, investigating how they inform governmental strategies and intersect with matters of race, gender and class. This book is not only an essential contribution to critical state theory but also offers important insights into how to question and oppose practices of demographization” —Thomas Lemke, Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main.“This timely book reveals the dangerous reach of reproductive racism. Schultz carefully analyzes how it distorts reproductive politics, migration policies and projections of population aging. Drawing from feminist praxis, she counters reproductive racism with reproductive justice articulations of hope and struggle"—Anne Hendrixson, Senior Policy Analyst, Collective Power for Reproductive Justice.b

• Introduction; Acknowledgments; Part I Blaming ‘Population’ for Multiple Crises; 1.Exploring the Multidimensional Concept of Demographization: The Case of Germany; Part II Projecting Migration: Dangerous Statistical Narratives; 2.Demographic Futurity: On the Power of Statistical Assumption Politics; 3.‘Too High’ or ‘Too Low’? Segregated Migrants’ Birth Rates as Common Ground for Völkisch and Utilitarian Nationalisms; Part III Averting Births: Political Economy and Statehood; 4.Transnational Antinatalism : Simplistic Narratives and Big Pharma Interests 99 in Collaboration with Daniel Bendix; 5.Theorizing processes of NGOization and the State :The Case of the Cairo Consensus; Part IV Resisting: Reproductive Justice; 6.Intersectional Convivialities : Brazilian Black and Popular Feminist Approaches to the Justiça Reprodutiva Framework; Epilogue: Opposing the Malthusian Matrix; Notes on Author and Collaborator; Index