The Biopolitical Corporeality of the White Female Body: Exploring the Experiences of Women Descended from Central and Eastern Europe Residing in the United States

Abstract

This study draws upon twelve interviews with women of Central and Eastern European descent currently residing in Los Angeles County, California. It utilizes the concepts of “biopolitics” and “empire” to explore how various scales of power generate the ideology of white moral motherhood and connotations of race in the socio-political context of the participants’ places of origin and the United States. The findings show that reproductive measures, policies, and regulations deracialize by default, reinforcing the hierarchy of motherhood experiences with the top belonging to the white, heterosexual, middle-class women. By identifying race-blind and institutionalized descriptions of the female body and the way women explain reproductive politics, the study achieves three goals. It revisits women’s constructs of the ideal motherhood, explores why race is removed from their paradigm of thinking, and illustrates how white supremacy lives in and among the transnational female residents.