Since 2022, Georgia's surrogacy industry has boomed, with oversubscribed clinics now recruiting women from across Central Asia via Instagram and TikTok. New research conducted at the University of Oxford's Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) provides unprecedented insight into the hidden systems of emotional control sustaining Georgia's transnational surrogacy market.
Published in Mobilities, the new study by Oxford anthropologist Dr Polina Vlasenko comes at a time when Georgia's surrogacy laws are under intense scrutiny, with a draft law in 2023 to restrict commercial surrogacy to citizens and residents rejected.
The research documents how 'intermediaries' - agents, clinic coordinators, and often former surrogates - are at the centre of the industry, operating alongside legal frameworks and medical practices, yet remaining largely invisible in policy and public debate.
Beyond securing surrogates' entry into the market - coordinating contract terms, travel, finances, and accommodation – intermediaries employ forms of emotional control that can immobilise women once on site, regulating their social interactions, daily routines, and compliance with legal and clinical requirements. As a result, intermediaries exert considerable influence over surrogates' working and living conditions, as well as their health and wellbeing.
The findings also demonstrate how gaps in regulation and limited state oversight allows intermediaries to operate within ethical and legal grey areas to meet the demands of international clients, often to the detriment of migrant surrogate women.
Key findings include:
Recruitment via Instagram and TikTok: Most women interviewed entered surrogacy through advertising on social media platforms, primarily Instagram and TikTok, where clinics, agencies, and former surrogates recruit prospective candidates.
Surrogates become recruiters: Almost one in five women operating as surrogates become agents; incentivised to use their experience to recruit new participants.
A climate of surveillance: Most surrogates are required to remain in Georgia for the duration of their pregnancies, often living in communal, clinic-provided apartments. Clinics and intermediaries encouraged women to report rule violations by other surrogates through offering financial incentives, creating a culture of peer surveillance and mistrust.
Financial control and restricted mobility: The financial structure of surrogacy in Georgia reinforces control over surrogates' mobility through staged payments tied to compliance.
While Georgia has become a major surrogacy hub, the experiences of migrant surrogates and the infrastructures shaping their mobility are poorly documented. The research raises questions about how transnational surrogacy is regulated and the protections available to migrant surrogate workers operating in legally and ethically complex environments.
Dr Polina Vlasenko, University of Oxford Researcher, said: "Rising international demand and a shrinking local labour pool have produced a market in Georgia increasingly reliant on surrogate workers recruited across borders.
"Georgia's surrogacy hub operates through systems in which intermediaries do more than connect surrogates to clinics. They govern emotions, discipline conduct, and supervise communal living.Recognising the central role of these people makes visible the emotional control sustaining the industry and the entanglement of care and control in cross-border surrogacy."
The research draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Kazakhstan and Georgia between 2023 and 2024, including interviews with more than 100 surrogates, egg donors, medical staff, agents, and intended parents.
The study forms part of the research project Reproductive Mobilities , based at COMPAS and the University of Oxford's School of Anthropology. The project examines how responses to involuntary childlessness in Central Asia have been shaped by changing social and medical landscapes over the last two decades.
