Undiagnosed Lives: Structural Vulnerability and Infertility Among Romani Migrant Women in France

Academic and media accounts have neglected Romani women's issues with infertility. Historically, they have been discriminated against and stereotyped as hyperfertile, which excluded them from narratives on women's struggles with reproductive health. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in France, this article makes visible the neglected issue of infertility. It argues that structural vulnerability dramatically restricts Romani women's access to health care and makes reproductive technologies unattainable. The article shows how structural vulnerability is felt and lived and how precarious living conditions, bureaucratic obstacles, and limited access to health care intersect to produce "undiagnosed lives" among rightful migrants and European Union citizens.