Matching Colours and “Genetic Countries of Origin”: On Race, Nation and Biopolitics in Scandinavian Queer Donor Conception

This article explores how the practice of “matching” sperm donors and recipients is interpreted and negotiated among fertility clinic staff and queer parents in Scandinavia. Drawing on qualitative research, we frame donor conception in Scandinavia as a technology of race that requires and relies on careful documentation of colours and origin whereby parents and donors are assigned national, racial and familial belonging. Furthermore, we show how matching naturalizes, universalizes and privileges whiteness as a range of hues, whilst racialised donors, imagined as carrying “dominant” colours are understood as both particular and “scarce”. We then discuss how queer parents of colour extend, rework and resist the idea of matching within and beyond normative state regulations. As gametes become charged with promises of affective and intimate attachments to race and nation, we argue that Scandinavian donor conception both invokes historical legacies and actively (re)produces race through idioms of colour and origin. Adding to literature on global fertility markets, we show how welfare state regulations of donor conception, when put into (public) practice, are increasingly entangled with the logics of the market. To conclude, we discuss how restrictions around state-regulated donor conception illuminate the eugenic and biopolitical dimensions of queer assisted reproduction.