Thinking with reproduction: Maternal time, citizenship, migration and political subjectivity

This article thinks with reproduction (what Baraitser and Tyler call ‘natal thinking’ (2013, p. 3)) to conceptualise its role as both an empirical and theoretically rich site through which to further develop thinking about citizenship as fluid (in flux). Focusing on the mother-child (born and unborn) subject, the article considers the manner in which thinking with the cyclical and eternal time of reproduction reconfigures the possibility of political community and political identity through the idea of repetition which undoes at the same time as it repeats. The article reflects upon how actions by migrant mothers undo (exceed) at the same time as they repeat understandings about the role of inclusion (commonality) versus exclusion (otherness) in citizenship. It argues that such acts can be seen as that which invoke excess and otherness in political subjectivity as another starting point for/of political possibility rather than just as an exception.