Transnational Adoption and European Immigration Politics: Producing the National Body in Sweden

This article explores the role of transnational adoption in the production of a multicultural but Swedish national body during the second half of the twentieth and the first decade of the twenty-first century, when Sweden became a multiethnic, multicultural, and racially divided country. I examine the development of international adoption policies in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, emphasizing the erasure of the child\u27s connection to a preadoptive past, even as the child\u27s cultural difference was celebrated in adopting nations. In Sweden, which in the late 1970s and early 1980s had the world\u27s highest adoption ratio (number of transnational adoptions per 1000 live births), debates about the Swedishness of the adoptee and the difference of the immigrant child underscored the assumption that the former but not the latter could become completely Swedish, while hinting at the (in)significance of race in constituting Swedish identity. My research situates transnational adoption in the context of technologies of exclusion that regulate the national body and the complex position of the adoptee as an incorporated but excluded other in adopting nations. Globalization and Migration Symposium, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, Bloomington, Indiana, April 7-8, 201

Language, Audience, and the Transformation of Disputes

This article develops an analytic framework for comparing dispute processing within a single institution and across different cultures, by focusing on the transformation of disputes. Case studies from diverse nonwestern and western settings are examined to show how disputes change as they are processed in response to the interests of various participants. Disputants, supporters, third parties, and relevant publics seek to rephrase and thus transform a dispute by imposing established categories for classifying events and relationships (narrowing), or by developing a framework which challenges established categories (expansion). Disputes may be expanded by adding new issues, by enlarging the arena of discussion, or by increasing the number and type of active participants. Thus, how the dispute is defined (language) and the roles played by various participants are critical features of the dispute. We focus on the agent of transformation, with special attention to the degree of audience participation, particularly in dispute expansion. We suggest the importance of expansion as a mechanism through which new rules emerge in the legal process, and through which social change is linked to legal change

Alteridad, etnicidad y racismo en la búsqueda de orígenes de personas adoptadas. El caso de España

En España, la búsqueda de orígenes de las personas adoptadas, motivada por la necesidad de comunicar la historia previa a los/las menores provenientes principalmente de China, Rusia, Etiopía y Vietnam, transita entre lo biológico y lo cultural. Las adopciones internacionales introducen en el contexto de la adopción un replanteamiento de las nociones origen e identidad e incorporan las de etnicidad y raza. En este artículo, mediante el análisis crítico de discurso de un trabajo etnográfico, se subraya la importancia de repensar qué se está entendiendo por “orígenes”, tanto institucional como académicamente, y cuáles son las consecuencias —tanto teóricas como metodológicas y prácticas— de esta conceptualización en la construcción de otredad y diferencia en las personas adoptadas, en función de su procedenciaIn Spain, the search for the origins of adopted people, driven by the need to communicate the prior history of minors coming mainly from China, Russia, Ethiopia and Vietnam, moves between the biological and the cultural. International adoptions introduce a rethinking of the notions of origin and identity and incorporate those of ethnicity and race into the context of adoption. In this article, through the critical discourse analysis of an ethnographic paper, we highlight the importance of rethinking what is being understood as “origins”, both institutionally as well as academically, and what are the consequences —both theoretically as well as methodologically and practically— of this conceptualization in the construction of otherness and difference in adopted people, based on their provenance.El presente artículo se inscribe en el Proyecto I+D+i, “Menores migrantes en el arco mediterráneo: movilidad, sistemas de acogida e integración” (DER2017-89623-R), financiado por el Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad del Gobierno de España

Transnational Adoption, Technologies of Exclusion, and the Promise of ‘Hom

Petri Hautaniemi’s provocative essay focusing on Finland as a case study of European immigration politics illuminates the ways that the application of more exclusive understandings of household, home and family by the nation state work to limit the immigration of refugees who claim the right to do so on grounds of family reunification. Hautaniemi’s research contributes to a rethinking of approaches to kinship and nationhood by anthropologists over the past decade (Franklin and McKinnon 2001; Wade [ed.] 2007). A central thread in this research examines the potential connections between the ways kinship can be reworked using new reproductive technologies, and the ways national bodies can be reproduced or transformed through technologies that restrict or expand  understandings of who does or does not belong (Campbell 2007). As Campbell and others note, these various technologies tend to have ‘race effects’, even as race is publicly eschewed as grounds for immigration policy, for understandings of national identity, and/or for the construction of family

Colocando al niño/a-regalo en la adopción internacional

Este artículo se centra en los discursos sobre la libertad y la pertenencia exclusiva que estructuran las convenciones de la donación en la adopción internacional. Examino las prácticas estatales sobre la regulación de la producción y circulación de niños y niñas en la economía del mercado global. Argumento que el niño/a-regalo, como el vendido, son el producto de la lógica mercantilista, mientras que la donación y la recepción de un niño/a –y el hecho de ser un niño/a donado– están en tensión con las prácticas del mercado, produciendo contradicciones en el parentesco adoptivo, ambigüedades en la legislación sobre adopción y potencial creativo en la construcción de familias adoptivasIn this article I focus on discourses of freedom and exclusive belonging that structure the conventions of giving in transnational adoption, and I examine state practices for regulating the production and circulation of children in a global market economy. I argue that while the gift child, like the sold child, is a product of commodity thinking, experiences of giving a child, receiving a child, and of being a given child are in tension with market practices, producing the contradictions of adoptive kinship, the ambiguities of adoption law, and the creative potential in the construction of adoptive families

Placing the "Gift Child" in Transnational Adoption

Este artículo se centra en los discursos sobre la libertad y la pertenencia exclusiva que estructuran las convenciones de la donación en la adopción internacional. Examino las prácticas estatales sobre la regulación de la producción y circulación de niños y niñas en la economía del mercado global. Argumento que el niño/a-regalo, como el vendido, son el producto de la lógica mercantilista, mientras que la donación y la recepción de un niño/a –y el hecho de ser un niño/a donado– están en tensión con las prácticas del mercado, produciendo contradicciones en el parentesco adoptivo, ambigüedades en la legislación sobre adopción y potencial creativo en la construcción de familias adoptivasIn this article I focus on discourses of freedom and exclusive belonging that structure the conventions of giving in transnational adoption, and I examine state practices for regulating the production and circulation of children in a global market economy. I argue that while the gift child, like the sold child, is a product of commodity thinking, experiences of giving a child, receiving a child, and of being a given child are in tension with market practices, producing the contradictions of adoptive kinship, the ambiguities of adoption law, and the creative potential in the construction of adoptive families