The Conundrum of Birth Tourism and American ‘Jackpot Babies’: Attitudes of Ghanaian Urban Dwellers
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AHMR African Human Mobilty Review
Abstract
Some contemporary international migration literature highlights the practice of the
acquisition of privileged citizenship by temporary migrants who give birth in a country
other than their home country (birth tourists) and the inherent benefits that accrue
to this category of migrants. However, scholars tend to rely solely on the subjective
accounts of birth tourists to measure attitudes toward the practice of deliberately
migrating to a preferred destination country at an advanced stage of pregnancy to
secure citizenship rights for the child. This study employed concurrent triangulation
design – a survey and semi-structured in-depth interviews – to collect data from 260
urban dwellers in three metropolises in Ghana – Accra, Cape Coast, and Kumasi – who
were yet to give birth in the United States and 15 parents who already had a total of
25 American ‘jackpot babies’, to measure a broader spectrum of attitudes toward this
phenomenon. This paper records a nuanced continuum of attitudes to the concept of
American ‘jackpot babies’, ranging from favorable, to neutral/indifferent, to objection
to this phenomenon among Ghanaian urban dwellers.
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Research Article