| Abstrakt: |
This article explores the ways that fertility clinics in the Czech Republic and Spain create a cultural tool kit to signal to potential clients that they are places for fertility travel involving egg donation. While previous research has explained the structural ways that these markets developed, this article explores how these destinations have used cultural resources to successfully advertise their services to Canadian patients. The analysis is pertinent as not all countries with the same structural contexts (i.e., liberal legislation surrounding egg donation) have become destination sites for fertility travel. I draw upon 31 in-depth interviews with fertility professionals in the Czech Republic and Spain (n=23), and fertility patients who had traveled to the Czech Republic (n=8). I expand the concept of cultural health capital (CHC) to show how fertility clinics must mobilize their cultural resources including their web based presence, use of the English language, external professional memberships, doctor-patient interactional styles, and bioracial discourses to become destination sites. I also show how clinics rely on two types of cultural guides--the past fertility patient who speaks about her experiences online to potential fertility travelers, and the employee of the clinic who is responsible for the fertility travelers' navigation to and at the clinic. In analyzing how clinics in the Czech Republic and Spain mobilize CHC, I expand the concept of CHC to show how fertility clinics enter into the global market for egg donation by focusing on the underexamined role of how organizations use strategies in action to mobilize CHC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
