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Based on research on French couples resorting to surrogate mothers in North America, this article analyses how individuals compromise with legal bans, administrative hold-ups, and moral reprobation to successfully realize family plans externalizing pregnancy outside the parental couple. These kinship practices that lead hopeful fathers and mothers to resort to assisted pregnancy techniques abroad raise questions about the porosity of borders and reveal numerous political and moral adjustments. In-depth interviews with would-be parents thus reveal that having one or two French parents is not enough for a child to obtain French citizenship. The legal and administrative treatment in France of children born of surrogacy is such that being placed in a line of descent and acquiring French nationality are completely disconnected.