ABSTRACT
This chapter reports the narratives of women working as surrogate mothers and argues for the inclusion of commercial surrogacy within the larger ambit of "work" so that the women are not merely recognised as "surrogate" or "replaced" mothers. It extends recent path towards documenting the experiences of reproductive labourers in order to elucidate the relationship between reproduction and labour, and to highlight the ways in which reproductive labourers navigate and re-work disruptions in the meanings of motherhood and work. The chapter argues that it is not enough to reveal the unsteadiness of the public/private binary, but instead urges the reader to consider what such a blurring does to the reproductive labourers in terms of empowering or disempowering them. It also argues that the efforts made by reproductive labourers in the process of commercial surrogacy must be understood as work so that they are not re-essentialised within patriarchal conceptions of motherhood and women's work.
