The Conundrum of Birth Tourism and American ‘Jackpot Babies’: Attitudes of Ghanaian Urban Dwellers

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.