Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific 9780472074518, 978047226811

Citation preview

Adoption and Multiculturalism

Adoption and Multiculturalism Europe, the Americas, and the Pacifc

Jenny Heijun Wills, Tobias Hübinette, and Indigo Willing, Editors

University of Michigan Press Ann Arbor

Copyright © 2020 by Jenny Heijun Wills, Tobias Hübinette, and Indigo Willing All rights reserved For questions or permissions, please contact [email protected] Published in the United States of America by the University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data has been applied for. First published September 2020 ISBN: 978-0-472-0745 -8 (Hardcover : alk paper) ISBN: 978-0-472- 268 - (ebook)

Contents

Acknowledgments

vii

Introduction Section 1. Negotiating Everyday, Familial, and National Multiculturalism Embodying Multiple Selves: Korean Australian Adoptees’ Experiences of Being and Belonging Jessica Walton Cosmopolitanism, Transnationalism, and Racialized Belongings: A Study of Transnationally Adoptive Parents in Multicultural Australia Indigo Willing, Patricia Fronek, and Zlatko Skrbiš Reunions with Siblings in Search Memoirs across Cultures Margaret Homans

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44 69

Section 2. Interrupting Myths of Postraciality and Autochthony Shared and Divergent Landscapes of Transnational Adoption Politics and Critique: Newspaper Reporting and Transnational Adoptee Interventions in Denmark and Minnesota Kim Park Nelson and Lene Myong Civilizing Missions and Mimicry in Sweden’s Colonial Present: Exploring the Construction of the Transnational/-racial Adoptee as a Mimic Swede Richey Wyver

99

26

From Adoptee to Trespasser: Te Female Asian Adoptee as Oriental Fantasy Kimberly McKee

50

Section 3. Exposing Discrepancies: Racial Purity in the “Multicultural Adoptive Land” Black and White Strangers: Adoption and Ethnic Hierarchies in Finland Riitta Högbacka and Heidi Ruohio Black Identity-Making in Flanders: Discourses and Cultural Practices among Transracial Adoptive Families and Black Native Speakers of Flemish Katrien De Graeve and Sibo Kanobana Transnational Adoption and the Emergence of Sweden’s Progressive Reproduction Policy: A Contribution to the Biopolitical History of Sweden Tobias Hübinette

77

99

223

How to “Kin” the Transnational Adoptee in the Québécois Nationalist Family Romance? Jenny Heijun Wills and Bruno Cornellier

239

Coda

259

Contributors

265

Index

269

Digital materials related to this title can be found on the Fulcrum platform via the following citable URL: https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Acknowledgments

Jenny Heijun Wills: My gratitude goes to all the many people involved in this project. Foremost, working with my coeditors has been an absolute pleasure, and I thank our many dedicated and brilliant contributors. Research assistants who have been so helpful over the years are Dunja Kovacevic, Emily Wilson, and Nina Singh. I also thank all the wonderful people at the University of Michigan Press, especially LeAnn Fields; my friends at the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture; and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Tobias Hübinette: I extend big thanks to my coeditors for an always enthusiastic and smooth collaboration, to the University of Michigan Press, and to all the contributors and authors. Indigo Willing: It was a great honor to work with my coeditors, who equally value intellectual rigor, international insights, teamwork, adoptee solidarity, and interdisciplinary leadership in adoption scholarship. I thank them, the University of Michigan Press, and our main contact there, LeAnn Fields. My coauthors Patricia Fronek and Zlatko Skrbiš, both nonadoptees, brought important research expertise to our collaborative essay, and I thank all the book’s contributing authors for their time, vision, and belief in this collection. I also thank the research and administration staf at the Grifth Centre for Social and Cultural Research at Grifth University and the Humanities Travelling Fellowships program at the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Introduction

As scholars in the past decade have turned the attention of their critical studies to the efects of transnational adoption, challenging the celebratory and idealized tone that dominated conversations on the topic in the twentieth century, we have ofen relied on binary frameworks as a way to demarcate the power imbalances between birth (or sending) countries and adoptive (or receiving) countries. Indeed, economic discrepancies alone separate these spaces, and alongside former and present colonial and imperial relationships that also tend to distinguish sending nations from receiving nations, to deny the objective reality of this dichotomy would be disingenuous. With this collection, we hope to address one of the problems that have arisen from this formulation: a relative homogenization of these entities and, particularly, a reduction of the receiving country as a uniform Western adopting nation. Just as more work could and should be done to think about birth nations as multifarious and unique, we must also resist the urge to imagine a monolithic West and a homogenized Global North, uniform in its motive, history, and current policy on adoption specifcally and on immigration in a more general sense. Te concept of “the West” as the unifed perpetrator of transnational adoption relies on an aggregate simplifcation of receiving nations as all being liberal, multicultural(leaning), progressive, and secular, despite, for example, the highly religious motivations fuelling transnational adoption in some countries, the notably “antiracist” political motives in others, and the elements of colonial nostalgia that seem to be present elsewhere. Te present collection seeks to unpack this simplifcation and to consider the diversity of adoptive lands, many of which approach liberalism, social welfare ideologies, and globalization from incomparable approaches and think about nationalism and belonging through metaphors of kinship. To undertake this purpose and challenge, the authors showcased here

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

2 | Adoption and Multiculturalism

focus on one concept that is ofen used interchangeably in our discussions of transnational adoption but that is contentious and context-specifc and reveals the variances of the diferent national adoptive settings: multiculturalism. Commonly evoked in scholarship about transnational adoption, multiculturalism has become a thematic mainstay in the feld, but as occurs with many globalized topics, scholars discussing multiculturalism seem to be speaking the same language but talking about diferent things. Jenny Heijun Wills argues that “transnational . . . adoption is encouraged by and perpetuates through its continued existence of the belief that the United States is a multicultural . . . and now ‘post-racial’ space,”1 and Catherine Ceniza Choy “challenges the popular notion that international adoption in America is the newest face of U.S. multiculturalism,” by outlining its long history predicated on racial and cultural intolerance.2 Both authors have a specifc American iteration of multiculturalism in mind. Comparatively, Barbara Yngvesson considers transnational adoption in places like Sweden, which was only in the throes of developing a multicultural selfimage in the early 990s. “Multicultural, for Swedish policymakers at this time [mid- 990s],” she says, “meant pizza places, kebab bars, ethnic markets, and immigrant associations. None of these were imagined as disturbing the taken-for-granted, the deep and unchanging level of cultural values [of Swedishness].”3 Tobias Hübinette likewise considers the particularities of transnational adoption in the contemporary context of what he calls “the Swedish crisis of multiculturalism,” wherein national identity is “putatively equivalent with being antiracist” and where “ofcial colour-blind antiracism comes from the conviction that race is not a relevant category in Swedish society.”4 Hübinette encourages us to think about the signifcance of transnational adoption in a country prompted by ontological multiculturalism to be “the frst country in the world to remove the word race itself from its language.” Te essays in this collection consolidate the reality that multiculturalism is diverse and distinct in each country receiving transnationally adopted people. Many contributions confront topics of post-racial thinking, racial hierarchy, and assimilation, as iterations of national specifcity. In other words, transnational adoption impacts and is impacted diferently across “multicultural” spaces. For instance, in the setting of Australian settler colonialism and in the afermath of policies forcibly removing Indigenous children from their families, “racism [is] readily dismissed as an issue of the past, not relevant to adopted children, despite the contemporary Australian political climate concerning refugees, asylum seekers, and First Australians.”5 Te view of transnational (and transracial) adop-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Introduction | 3

tion is diferent in Australia than in, for example, Denmark, where multiculturalism is increasingly described as being “failed.” By considering the diverse contexts in which transnational adoption occurs and the varied ways that multiculturalism is imagined, enacted, and even rejected, the essays in this book dismantle the image of a monolithic Western “receiving country” and, in the process, decenter the dominant conversations about transnational adoption from the US perspective or, at least, reveal the complexities of these practices in other receiving nations as well. Te authors of the following essays come from diferent disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, from diferent countries around the world, and from diferent positions in relation to the issue of transnational adoption. Together, we are pushing forward conversations about transnational adoption, highlighting the diferences while acknowledging the similarities, and addressing the particularities that impact the lives and experiences of transnationally adopted people and their signifcant others around the world. As the essays demonstrate, not only do birth nation and culture of origin impact and infuence how adoptees understand their positions in the world, but adoptive lands and environments shape, narrate, and afect adoptees in unique ways. In some cases, contributors to this book show the uniqueness of the transnational adoptee experience, for subjects welcomed diferently from typical immigrants are ofen used as exemplars of multicultural success. In other words, the authors demonstrate the many similarities and parallels to nonadopted migrants and minorities in the receiving countries, but also the undeniable diferences in their experiences. Some essays discuss the diferences between multiculturalism and interculturalism, while others explore autochthonic ideologies and their impacts on transnational adoption. Finally, some contributors think through transnational adoption issues in relation to critical themes, such as mimicry, (neo)colonialism, and ideas of racial or cultural purity. Put together, the book’s authors force us to reconsider the numerous iterations and interpretations of “multiculturalism” by unpacking the term and exposing its multifarious (and sometimes contradictory) meanings and practices. In the Northwestern European setting exemplifed by the adopting countries of Belgium, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland (one focus of study in this book), multiculturalism can be attributed partly to the bilingual and multilingual situation of countries (Belgium and Finland) and partly to immigration (Sweden and Denmark), while Belgium and Denmark also had overseas colonies in the 900s in Central Africa and in the Caribbean and North Atlantic, respectively. Among the three Nordic countries,

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

4 | Adoption and Multiculturalism

Finland has been an ofcial bilingual nation ever since its independence from Russia in 9 7– 8, when the Swedish speaking minority and the Finnish speaking majority gained equal language rights. Even if Finland is a latecomer to both adoption and immigration of children and adults from non-European countries, starting only in bigger numbers in the 990s, the long history of having been a multilingual nation makes that Nordic country diferent from the others.6 Whereas Finnish society has institutionalized linguistic diversity to a much higher degree than the other Nordic countries, Finland was arguably one of the most white and homogenous countries in Northwestern Europe until recently. Denmark received its frst transnational adoptees already in the 960s and today is home to around twenty thousand foreign-born adoptees. While that country previously was a multicultural and multilingual empire (with colonies in both India and the Caribbean) and still keeps Greenland as an autonomous region, it has recently become one of the Western world’s most antimulticultural societies (perhaps together with the Netherlands), due to the heavy infuence of the right-wing populist and antiimmigration Danish People’s Party. Tis means that in everyday life, Denmark might well be among the European societies that are more hostile toward immigrants and minorities, while it is still one of the countries adopting the most foreign-born children proportionally. Its antiimmigration stance has not been turned into an anti-adoption policy. On the contrary, Denmark is as pro-transnational adoption as the rest of the Nordic countries. Sweden was the second country in the world afer Canada to declare itself as a multicultural society, in 975 and more or less at the same time as Australia. Sweden’s multicultural line has translated itself into some of the most progressive minority and migrant policies in the Western world, and Sweden is widely seen as perhaps the world’s most antiracist and multiculturalist society today. Swedish people started to adopt children from non-European countries in the 950s and therefore shares the same long history of transnational adoption as the United States and neighboring Norway. At the same time, Swedish multiculturalism has not been able to deconstruct a national identity and Swedishness still very much based on the normal demographic makeup until the 960s, before which time Sweden was a predominantly white country. Today, Sweden is one of the Western world’s most diverse societies, due to decades of non-European immigration as well as adoption. Even as its multiculturalism and antiracism is still celebrated and praised, it is also an extremely segregated and stratifed country, particularly along racial lines.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Introduction | 5

Te last European country featured in this book, Belgium, has a long and troubled history, with serious conficts between the previously dominant French-speaking population and today’s wealthier Flemish-speaking (or Dutch-speaking) one. Since the 960s and 970s, the country has evolved into a multilingual federal state divided between French-, Flemish-, and the German-speaking regions and communities, making the country probably the most extreme case in Europe in terms of institutionalizing multilingualism.7 Because small Belgium once ruled over vast Central Africa (Belgium’s principal colony there, the former Belgian Congo, became independent in 960), one of its bigger minorities (although not the biggest one) is the Afro-Belgian minority, which might number half a million inhabitants and includes adoptees. Flemish Belgium shares the Dutch traditional division between so-called autochthonen (native) and so-called allochtoonen (nonnative) inhabitants, and even if this division originally was about citizenship, it has become heavily racialized in everyday life. Because the national antagonism between the French-speaking and Flemish-speaking parts of the country is still the overarching political issue, concern over the situation of minorities, including Afro-Belgians and Afro-Belgian adoptees in Belgium, is seen as less important and is at risk of being invisibilized. In the settler colonial states of Canada and the United States, multiculturalism is ofen imagined dichotomously, though both spaces, and like Australia and New Zealand, are shaped by immigration”8 that share, to a point, historical context. What came to be known as the American cultural “melting pot,” a whole model where immigrants and ethnically marginalized subjects would (and should) become incorporated into the larger cultural body, has been compared, for over half a century, to the Canadian “mosaic,” a cultural pluralist structure that is also idealistic and diferently hegemonic. In recent years, critics have challenged both models, revealed obvious similarities, and reiterated how both reinforce mainstream, white settler selfood in naturalized ways. Historically, Canadians followed a similar assimilationist model as their American counterparts but, in the years following World War II, broke of in a different direction, led by liberal idealist Pierre Elliot Trudeau. Te moment when US and Canadian multicultural models became a topic for intense political conversation coincides with the time period in which transnational adoption began to gain momentum in both countries. Both frameworks, the melting pot and mosaic, play out in the kinship experiences of transnationally and transracially adopted young people in meaningful ways.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

6 | Adoption and Multiculturalism

Scholars attribute the concept of the US melting pot to a so-named 908 play by Israel Zangwill, which summarized the efects of assimilation into a hegemonic “American” lifestyle. Stephan Ternstrom observes that the original liberal notion of the melting pot was not nearly as one-sided and oppressive as it is considered today. Tinkers who supported the melting pot concept believed that immigrants would be changed by America, to be sure; but they also expected that America would be changed by the immigrants. All citizens were in the melting pot together. In fact, the melting pot— far from being an oppressive or conformist notion, as it is ofen asserted today—was a liberal, cosmopolitan social ideal. It saw American culture as being in a state of constant fux, open to the contributions of successive waves of newcomers. Becoming American did not require a complete denial of one’s origins.9 In its original conception, the American melting pot’s holistic understanding of national culture does not necessarily insist that marginalized groups sacrifce their ethnic diferences and become a part of the dominant group. But despite its idealistic intentions, white supremacy and other power structures center certain cultural perspectives as defnitively “American” and imagine others as outsiders. Tus the rise of cultural pluralism in the United States and other multicultural states challenged the reality of the melting pot’s ideal. Sherrow O. Pinder summarizes that “cultural diversity is a radical break from America’s past, in which the focus was on assimilation into the White hegemonic culture, or ‘America’s cultural oneness,’ which is defned and understood as that of Whiteness.”10 In recent years, scholars have noticed a drive toward a pluralistic approach to American multiculturalism, but people are rightly skeptical about it. In Unthinking Eurocentrism, flm scholars Ella Shohat and Robert Stam propose the concept of “polycentric multiculturalism” as an ideology that recognizes power imbalances; “rejects a unifed, fxed, and essentialist concept of identities (or communities) as consolidated sets of practices, meanings, and experiences”; and insists on seeing marginalized communities “not as ‘interest groups’ to be ‘added on’ to a preexisting nucleus but rather as active, generative participants at the very core of a shared, confictual history.”11 Teir last point seems like an attempt to return to the original goals of US multiculturalism (outlined by Ternstrom), where mutual infuence from multiple perspectives shapes the fuid and ever-changing expressions of American culture(s).

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Introduction | 7

As Will Kymlicka summarizes, the liberal model of multiculturalism that gained momentum following World War II saw “ethnic identity, like religion, [as] something which people should be free to express in their private life, but which is not the concern of the state.”12 In other words, a “separation of state and ethnicity precludes any legal or governmental recognition of ethnic groups, or any use of ethnic criteria in the distribution of rights, resources, and duties.”13 Speaking specifcally of the ways that Canada adopted a federal policy of “ofcial multiculturalism” in 97 , Kymlicka charts the past ways in which “Canada, like other immigrant countries, had an assimilationist approach to immigration.” Kymlicka articulates three shifs that happened around the time when “ofcial multiculturalism” was assumed. First, immigrants “were encouraged and expected to assimilate to the pre-existing society,” yet, beginning in the 960s, a more “‘multicultural’ conception of integration . . . that expects that many immigrants will visibly and proudly express their ethnic identity” became the dominant narrative.14 Second, the Canadian government acknowledged, “at least in principle,” that Indigenous people “will exist into the indefnite future as distinct societies within Canada, and that they must have the land claims, treaty rights, cultural rights, and selfgovernment rights needed to sustain themselves as distinct societies.”15 Tird, and again in principle, the Canadian state determined to acknowledge and “accommodate” minority nationalisms, such as the Québécois, within the larger nation, as enduring and protected.16 In contrast to its southern neighbor, Canada established a multiculturalism policy that congratulated itself on its progressive model of accommodation and “tolerance.” But as Rinaldo Walcott points out, “state multiculturalism has always been a contested policy,” and ofcial multiculturalism in Canada was used to “manage and neutralize postWorld-War-II struggles for social and economic justice by racial and cultural minorities” and to “constrain the movement of mainly non-white migrants into national spaces which had formerly imagined, represented, and performed themselves as entirely white.”17 Walcott dismantles the myth of protection that Canadians have long fetishized as one of the primary features diferentiating their nation from more domineering US tactics. He insists that, contrary to what many wish to believe, multiculturalism, “as policy, practice, and even as an idea,” has “never been settled”18—that “the only consensus on Canadian multiculturalism in the last thirty-plus years is that it has become a fundamental Canadian entity,” while “a consensus on what it means and how it should work continues to elude us.”19 While much of Canadian national identity is predicated on the

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

8 | Adoption and Multiculturalism

ambiguous notion of ofcial multiculturalism, not only should we contest the celebratory and hegemonic ways this policy is deployed, but we should be suspicious of the manner in which it is seen as a fait accompli. One need not search hard to see the fawed US and Canadian approaches to multiculturalism, both bespeaking the building of individual national identity, as relevant to conversations about transnational adoption. In its most limited version, the approach of the American melting pot to cultural dissipation fnds its perfect alibi in transnational adoption practices, dissolving young people into families and communities where cultural uniqueness is erased in the name of determining a holistic body—in this case, the family instead of the nation. In the Canadian context, even when marginalized ethnicities are considered protected and valuable (as many scholars attest), the hegemonic power of the white settler state always prevails. Tis is not to say that transnational adoptive practices in either space mirrored the nation’s multiculturalist approaches. It is more realistic to consider earlier waves of adoptees experiencing culture in ways akin to the American melting pot while more recent waves of adoptees experience something closer to the mosaic model, regardless of the countries to which they were adopted. American and European nations are envisaged as primarily representing “the West.” But this collection continues to unpack that construct to disrupt notions of a monolithic destination to which adoptees are sent. Te West is an assemblage of nations with various histories, populations, practices, and discourses of identity and belonging. Tis study expands the assemblage’s scope to include “the Pacifc.” At ten thousand square kilometers wide, the Pacifc covers a vast area, stretching from Australia to Russia and down to South America. Te sociocultural and political geographies covered by the Pacifc within the region known as Oceania include four main groupings: Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia (the Pacifc Islands), and Australasia (Australia and Aotearoa / New Zealand). Researchers observe that adoption in Indigenous populations has traditionally occurred between relatives, based on non-Western kinship models and care frameworks.20 However, European colonialism by the French, Dutch, and British from the eighteenth century and America’s military presence from the twentieth century had immense impact on the region. Accordingly, some parts of the Pacifc, such as Australia, frmly warrant being studied as part of “the West.” Australia is the largest and most afuent island nation in the Pacifc region, and receives the largest intake of adopted children from other nations in the region. Te traditional owners and First Nations people of Australia are

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Introduction | 9

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations. However, Australia was profoundly infuenced by the invasion of English military in 788 to set up a penal colony and by the Frontier Wars and colonialism that followed. Australia was pronounced an independent nation following permission from the British Parliament in 90 to become part of the Commonwealth, with the monarch of England (and the United Kingdom) remaining its head of state. Various waves of migrations have since followed, with notable ones in the twentieth century including Greeks, Italians, and Eastern Europeans afer the two world wars and Southeast Asians following the Vietnam War. But nonwhites have been continuously marginalized in Australia, through antimiscegenation laws in the late nineteenth century, bans of interracial marriages in the early twentieth century,21 and discriminatory immigration policies such as the 950s White Australia policy,22 which used biased measures to favor Anglo immigrants and to exclude nonwhites. Tere are also distinct examples of exploiting children to overtly build a white nation in Australia and to maintain that country’s eforts to be part of the West. Poor British and Maltese minors forced into Australian institutions and homes and now known as the Lost Innocents under the Empire Settlement Act23 and Indigenous children forced into the custody of whites and now known as the Stolen Generations24 are two main examples, both from the twentieth century. Upon reaching adulthood, children impacted by these removals reported that the personal, social, and cultural impact of these forced removals was signifcantly negative and ofen traumatic. Calls were made for formal recognition and compensation, and the Australian government issued formal apologies for the Stolen Generations in 2006 and for the Lost Innocents and the Forgotten Australians (domestic-based children also forced into and ofen mistreated in institutional state care) in 2009.25 Despite the critical lens that emerged to view the removal of Indigenous children and the wave of child migrations involving the Lost Innocents, little research has been dedicated to children sent to Australia for international adoption and to how they and the families they join fare. Te frst main wave of transnational adoptees consisted of Vietnamese children who were believed to be war orphans and who migrated into Australia to be adopted during the Vietnam War, with most arriving at the war’s end, in 975, as part of an evacuation program known as Operation Babylif.26 At the macro level, diferences in the political climate for these children include that the country made a shif away from things such as the White Australia policy and over to eforts from the 970s to ofcially

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

10 | Adoption and Multiculturalism

incorporate discourses and policies of multiculturalism.27 Yet, at the micro level, some of the existing research suggests that Vietnamese adoptees were mostly adopted by white parents and felt pressure to “assimilate” into the culturally homogenous families and areas in which they were raised.28 In the present day, “everyday multiculturalism”29 is readily observable in Australia, particularly in its urban hubs and nearby suburbs. Encounters with people from various ethnicities, cultures, and languages is not out of the ordinary. But the mainstream, dominant culture in Australia remains a Christian and white settler society. Te faces in the Parliament of Australia and in the country’s media and positions of infuence and power are predominantly white, and it is argued that the nation is continually anchored to the idea that it is a white possession, with whiteness as its “normative” and “natural” cultural core.30 Te transnational adoption of children from overseas is argued to still reproduce a hierarchical version of the family that privileges white, middle-class, Western identities rather than more inclusive, diverse, and multicultural formations of the family.31 While the demographics of children adopted from overseas into Australia has changed to include numerous countries in Asia and some in Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, it appears, from practice-based experience and general studies, that the vast majority of adoptive parents in Australia are white.32 Two essays in this collection investigate contemporary transnational adoptions into Australia. Walton explores the experiences of adoptees from Korea who grew up racialized as “others” in Australia, while Willing, Fronek, and Skrbiš examine the identity constructions of white Australian parents whose normative status is challenged upon creating families by adopting nonwhite children from Asian and African nations. This collection opens with a section comprised of essays that consider everyday, familial, and national multiculturalisms. Jessica Walton analyzes the relevance of state-directed multiculturalism and everyday lived experiences of diversity to transnational and transracial adoption in Australia, once a British settler colony and still part of the British Commonwealth, where the queen is the head of state. Walton discusses the ways in which hierarchies of identity and the privileging of whiteness are obscured by discourses and notions of multiculturalism that herald it as a successful, national project and an accepted feature of Australian life. The author teases out how adult Korean adoptees in Australia experience misinterpellation and a denial of their transnational subjectivity as being othered. The struggles faced by Korean adoptees also reveal how the standing Aus-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Introduction | 11

tralian celebratory multiculturalism is insufficient in terms of truly recognizing diversity on a deeper level. Complementing Walton’s discussion, the essay by Indigo Willing, Patricia Fronek, and Zlatko Skrbiš, “Cosmopolitanism, Transnationalism, and Racialized Belongings: A Study of Transnationally Adoptive Parents in Multicultural Australia,” explores not just adoption but also the broader contemporary discourses of multiculturalism that mixed-race Australian families attempt to embrace. Te interviews on which their study is based unveil the complex, sometimes competing and contradictory expressions of Australian identity and the more cosmopolitan discourses of familial belonging on which adoptive parents draw. Te analysis illustrates how being open and inclusive of multiple identities is a messy and unstable process of ongoing articulation that is inseparable from uneven relationships of power and that risks being reifed and seeming “natural” when lef without interrogation. Te essay by Margaret Homans, “Reunions with Siblings in Search Memoirs across Cultures,” looks at reunion memoirs by transnational adoptees, to compare the experiences of reuniting with birth parents and birth siblings. Homans asserts that reuniting with birth parents can come with more troubled relationships, due to communication issues, feelings of disappointment, generational gaps, and traumatic experiences of abandonment. Te author’s selected texts highlight that transnational adoptees can form enduring and rewarding relationships with previously unimagined birth siblings, built on sympathetic intragenerational ties or ofering adoptees a vivid image of what their lives might have been like. Homans employs a historical, sociological, psychological, and psychoanalytic framework to examine the reunifcation experiences of transnational adoptees with their birth siblings and parents, implicitly addressing American kinship ideologies in a transnational arena. Tis collection’s second section, which centers on interrupting myths of postraciality and autochthony, commences with the collaborative and comparative work of Kim Park Nelson and Lene Myong, who examine Korean adoption since the 960s into the white-dominant spaces of Minnesota and Denmark, both locations where transnational Korean adoptees are involved in local political dialogue about inclusion and exclusion. Park Nelson and Myong analyze the “social and cultural landscapes in Denmark and Minnesota” that led to Korean adoption being normalized in predominantly white societies, as well as the impact there of “Lutheran secularism, homogenous whiteness, and political progressivism.” Tey look at the adoption, race, and immigration activism and discourse cre-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

12 | Adoption and Multiculturalism

ated by Korean adoptees in Denmark and Minnesota, analyzing the impact that white spaces have on Korean adoptees and examining how the adoptees engage in that sociopolitical climate themselves. Richey Wyver’s “Civilizing Missions and Mimicry in Sweden’s Colonial Present” is a close textual reading of Swedish adoption-related literature and critically examines the ways in which transnational adoptees of color are represented in a country that prides itself on being the world’s most progressive antiracist nation. One way, argues Wyver, is through the discourses of colonial violence, as a process of civilization seen to take place on the adoptee’s body encompasses a system of initial violence, deterritorialization, and dehistorization, followed by a recoding of the adoptee as a mimic (white) Swede. Given Sweden’s self-lauded exceptionalism as a European nation that did not engage in conventional forms of colonialism, Wyver’s essay focuses on the complex link between neocolonialism and multiculturalism. Borrowing from Homi Bhabha’s foundational analysis, Wyver carefully explains that the mimic Swede simultaneously shores up the nation’s multicultural fantasy and its myth of anticolonialism but is also a notable threat, given the subversive potential represented by mimicry in general. In “From Adoptee to Trespasser: Te Female Asian Adoptee as Oriental Fantasy,” Kimberly McKee challenges the narrow belief, overwhelmingly assumed, that incest is a sexual deviance occurring in communities at the racial and socioeconomic margins. Transnational, transracial adoption, says McKee, exposes both the “fallacy” of the “multicultural family” and the “limitations of color blindness” that is ofen celebrated as evidence of a nation’s exceptionalism, liberalism, and progressiveness. By juxtaposing public outrage over allegations that American flm director Woody Allen molested his domestically adopted white daughter with the relative acceptance of his marriage to the transnationally adopted Korean daughter of his romantic partner Mia Farrow, McKee argues that whiteness and perceptions of childhood shaped the public’s sympathy of Dylan, whereas projections of the “hypersexual Asian woman” framed Soon-Yi as the source of moral, Oedipal panic, an embodiment of Oriental fantasy somewhat responsible for the seduction of the father. Tinking through intersectionality, McKee gestures toward the Orientalism that lingers not far beneath the surface of an American national narrative that promotes multiculturalism and transnational adoption, at great cost. Tis collection’s last section, on exposing the discrepancies of racial purity in the multicultural adoptive land, starts of with the study by Riittaa Högbacka and Heidi Ruohio of how white Eastern European and Black

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Introduction | 13

African adoptees are positioned and treated in Finland, in relation to the fact that nonadopted members of both those minorities are at the bottom of Finland’s ethnic hierarchy. Te authors focus on the liberal notion of “choice” when they consider adoptive parents’ “narratives about choosing the country of origin,” particularly as those decisions are informed by stereotypes. Högbacka and Ruohio expose a curious phenomenon related to the logics of multiculturalism in Finland: as adults, transnational Black adoptees expose their adoptee statuses to avoid being labeled as African refugees or willful immigrants, whereas their white counterparts adopted from Russia vouch for the opposite and “pass” as Finns, to avoid being connected with their castigated country of birth. Te analysis by Högbacka and Ruohio parses the oppositional strategies undertaken by transnational adoptees whose birthplaces are deemed not ideal in the context of Finnishness. In “Black Identity-Making in Flanders: Discourses and Cultural Practices among Transracial Adoptive Families and Black Native Speakers of Flemish,” Katrien De Graeve and Sibo Kanobana use interviews and observations to study how blackness is played out in Flemish-speaking Belgium, a highly diverse country that has a complicated colonial history in Central Africa and that is seldom considered in adoption research. Central to their work is an exploration of the “increasing popularity of Flemish autochthony or native discourses” and a deliberate disavowal of the signifcance of race in social and political spheres. De Graeve and Kanobana argue that culture is framed as an “obstacle to immigrant integration,” an act that validates a postracial idealism that results in ambiguous and complex challenges for Black adoptees raised in these contexts. Tobias Hübinette’s “Transnational Adoption and the Emergence of Sweden’s Progressive Reproduction Policy and Swedish Antiracism and Multiculturalism: A Contribution to the Biopolitical History of Sweden” looks at how and why Sweden became the world’s leading adopting country proportionally and demographically, by revisiting the birth of Swedish antiracism and multiculturalism in the 960s and 970s and its linkage to certain discourses of race and whiteness through the institutionalization of transnational adoption. Hübinette outlines the impact of “racial thinking and race science” on various twentieth-century biopolitical reproduction and family policies, including the marriage act, the adoption act, the abortion law, and the sterilization law. He analyzes the shif from negative biopolitical interventions to what he calls pronatalist and nondiscriminatory interventions in the 970s and onward, arguing that transnational adoption was a key motivating “reproduction technology” in this sudden

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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transition. His essay contemplates the links between negative eugenics, positive eugenics, transnational adoption, and Sweden’s claims to being a multiculturalist and antiracist nation. Te collection’s fnal contribution, by Jenny Heijun Wills and Bruno Cornellier, invites consideration of transnational adoption beyond the (ofcial) multicultural context of Canada but in the intercultural setting of Québec. Wills and Cornellier imagine ways that adoptee subjects can simultaneously embody the interculturalist ideal of integration while also disrupt the Québécois ethnonationalist and sovereigntist project—which alleges that the fragility and historical vulnerability of the pure laine family must be secured as both the object and the end point of integration/assimilation—as a kinning project within a nation, bestowed as both a gif and a duty for immigrants and people of color. Tey argue that “the concepts ‘to adopt’ and ‘to be adopted by’ are more than mere analogies or stand-ins for integration” and “become a sort of sine qua non within interculturalist modalities of integration-as-assimilation.” NOTES 1. Jenny Heijun Wills, “Transnational and Transracial Adoption: Multiculturalism and Selective Colour-Blindness,” in American Multicultural Studies: Diversity of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality, ed. Sherrow O. Pindar (Tousand Oaks: Sage, 2013), 103. 2. Catherine Ceniza Choy, Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption in America (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 11. 3. Barbara Yngvesson, Belonging in an Adopted World: Race, Identity, and Transnational Adoption (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 103. 4. Tobias Hübinette, “Racial Stereotypes and Swedish Antiracism,” in Crisis in the Nordic Nations and Beyond: At the Intersection of Environment, Finance and Multiculturalism, ed. Kristin Lofsdóttir and Lars Jensen (London: Routledge, 2016), 71. 5. Indigo Willing and Patricia Fronek, “Constructing Identities and Issues of Race in Transnational Adoption: Te Experiences of Adoptive Parents,” British Journal of Social Work 44, no. 5 (2012). 6. For an excellent introduction to and comparative perspective on the diferent Nordic countries and their multiculturalist policies and approaches, see Peter Kivisto and Östen Wahlbeck, eds., Debating Multiculturalism in the Nordic Welfare States (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 7. On Belgian multilingualism and multiculturalism, see Michael O’Neill and Dennis Austin, eds., Belgium: Language, Ethnicity and Nationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Marco Martiniello, ed., Multicultural Policies and the State: A Comparison of Two European Societies (London, Routledge, 1998). 8. Will Kymlicka, “Canadian Multiculturalism in Historical and Comparative Perspective: Is Canada Unique?,” Constitutional Forum constitutionnel 13, no. 1/2 (2003): 2.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Introduction | 15 9. Stephan Terbstrom, “Rediscovering the Melting Pot—Still Going Strong,” in Reinventing the Melting Pot: Te New Immigrants and What It Means to Be American, ed. Tamar Jacoby (New York: Basic Books, 2004), 48. 10. Sherrow O. Pinder, “Te Concept and Defnition of American Multicultural Studies,” in American Multicultural Studies: Diversity of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality, ed. Sherrow O. Pinder (Los Angeles: Sage, 2013), xix. 11. Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (New York: Routledge, 2014), 48–49. 12. Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Teory of Minority Rights (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 3. 13. Kymlicka, 4. 14. Kymlicka, “Canadian Multiculturalism,” 1. 15. Kymlicka, 2. 16. Kymlicka, 3. 17. Rinaldo Walcott, “Disgraceful: Intellectual Dishonesty, White Anxieties, and Multicultural Critique Tirty-Six Years Later,” in Home and Native Land: Unsettling Multiculturalism in Canada, ed. May Chazan et al. (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2011). 18. Walcott. 19. Walcott. 20. Joan Silk, “Adoption and Kinship in Oceania,” American Anthropologist 82, no. 4 (1980): 799–821. New shifs in adoption practices to include transnational adoption are further discussed in Judith Schachter, “Intercountry Adoption / Global Migration: A Pacifc Perspective,” Asia Pacifc Journal of Anthropology 18, no. 4 (2017): 305–22. 21. Katherine Ellinghaus, “Absorbing the ‘Aboriginal problem’: Controlling Interracial Marriage in Australia in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” Journal of Aboriginal History 27 (2003): 197. 22. Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (London: Routledge, 2012). 23. See Coral Dow and Janet Philips, “‘Forgotten Australians’ and ‘Lost Innocents’: Child Migrants and Children in Institutional Care in Australia” (Social Policy Section, Parliament of Australia, 2009), https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/0910/ChildMigrants; Phillip Bean, Lost Children of the Empire (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989). 24. Robert Van Krieken, “Te Stolen Generations and Cultural Genocide: Te Forced Removal of Australian Indigenous Children from Teir Families and Its Implications for the Sociology of Childhood,” Childhood 6, no. 3 (2009): 297–311; Australian Human Rights Commission, Bringing Tem Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Teir Families (Commonwealth of Australia, 1997), https://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/bringing-them-homereport-1997. Also see Lowitja Institute, https://www.lowitja.org.au 25. Te Australian government gave a formal apology to the Stolen Generations in 2008 and to the Forgotten Australians in 2009 by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Parliament sessions. Patricia Fronek and Denise Cuthbert, “Apologies for Forced Adoption Practices: Implications for Contemporary Intercountry Adoption,” Australian Social Work 66, no. 3 (2013): 402–14. 26. “Saigon Vietnam—Evacuation of Orphans,” March–April 1975, National Archives of Australia, A4531, 221/4/8, part 1. See also Joshua Fokert, “Refugees, Orphans and a

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

16 | Adoption and Multiculturalism Basket of Cats: Te Politics of Operation Babylif,” Journal of Australian Studies 36, no. 4 (2012): 427–44. 27. For a detailed timeline of signifcant events and policies, see Andrew Jakubowicz, “Te Making of Multicultural Australia,” accessed March 25, 2018, http://www.multi culturalaustralia.edu.au/history/timeline/period/Timeline-Introduction/screen/1.TeMaking-of-Multicultural-Australia28. Indigo Williams Willing, “Te Adopted Vietnamese Community: From Fairy Tales to the Diaspora,” Michigan Quarterly Review 43, no. 4 (2004): 648–64. 29. Amanda Wise and Selvaraj Velayutham, Everyday Multiculturalism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). 30. Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Te White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2015). 31. Patricia Fronek and Denise Cuthbert, “Te Future of Intercountry Adoption: A Paradigm Shif for Tis Century,” International Journal of Social Welfare 21, no. 2 (2011): 215–24. See also Patricia Fronek, Dense Cuthbert, and Indigo Willing, “Intercountry Adoption: Privilege, Rights and Social Justice,” in Te Intercountry Adoption Debate: Dialogues across Disciplines, ed. Robert Ballard et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), 348—65. 32. In statistical data collection, Australia records countries of origin but not race, leaving a blind spot for demographers to address. See Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Adoptions Australia, 2016–17 (Canberra, 2017), https://www.aihw.gov.au/ reports-statistics/health-welfare-services/adoptions/adoptions-overview REFERENCES Australian Human Rights Commission. Bringing Tem Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Teir Families. Commonwealth of Australia, 997. https://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/ bringing-them-home-report-1997 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Adoptions Australia, 2016–17. Canberra, 20 7. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports-statistics/health-welfare-services/adoptions/ adoptions-overview Bean, Paul. Lost Children of the Empire. London: Unwin Hyman. 989. Choy, Catherine Ceniza. Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption in America. New York: New York University Press, 20 3. Dow, Coral, and Janet Philips. “‘Forgotten Australians’ and ‘Lost Innocents’: Child Migrants and Children in Institutional Care in Australia.” Social Policy Section, Parliament of Australia, 2009. https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamen tary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/0910/ChildMigrants Ellinghaus, Katherine. “Absorbing the “Aboriginal Problem”: Controlling Interracial Marriage in Australia in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.” Journal of Aboriginal History 27 (2003): 83–207. Fokert, Joshua. “Refugees, Orphans and a Basket of Cats: Te Politics of Operation Babylif.” Journal of Australian Studies 36, no. 4 (20 2): 427–44. Fronek, Patricia, and Denise Cuthbert. “Apologies for Forced Adoption Practices: Impli-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Introduction | 17 cations for Contemporary Intercountry Adoption.” Australian Social Work 66, no. 3 (20 3): 402– 4. Fronek, Patricia, and Denise Cuthbert. “Te Future of Intercountry Adoption: A Paradigm Shif for Tis Century.” International Journal of Social Welfare 2 , no. 2 (20 ): 2 5–24. Fronek, Patricia, Denise Cuthbert, and Indigo Willing. “Intercountry Adoption: Privilege, Rights and Social Justice.” In Te Intercountry Adoption Debate: Dialogues across Disciplines, edited by Robert Ballard, Naomi Goodno, Robert Cochran, and Jay Milbrandt, 348–65. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 20 5. Hage, Ghassan. White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society. London: Routledge, 20 2. Hübinette, Tobias. “Racial Stereotypes and Swedish Antiracism.” In Crisis in the Nordic Nations and Beyond: At the Intersection of Environment, Finance and Multiculturalism, edited by Kristin Lofsdóttir and Lars Jensen, 69–86. London: Routledge, 20 6. Jakubowicz, Andrew. “Te Making of Multicultural Australia.” http://www.multicul turalaustralia.edu.au/history/timeline/period/Timeline-Introduction/screen/1. Te-Making-of-Multicultural-AustraliaKivisto, Peter, and Östen Wahlbeck, eds. Debating Multiculturalism in the Nordic Welfare States. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 20 3. Kymlicka, Will. “Canadian Multiculturalism in Historical and Comparative Perspective: Is Canada Unique?” Constitutional Forum Constitutionnel 3, no. /2 (2003): –8. Kymlicka, Will. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Teory of Minority Rights. Oxford: Clarendon, 995. Martiniello, Marco, ed. Multicultural Policies and the State: A Comparison of Two European Societies. London: Routledge, 998. Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. Te White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 20 5. O’Neill, Michael, and Dennis Austin, ed. Belgium: Language, Ethnicity and Nationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pinder, Sherrow O. “Te Concept and Defnition of American Multicultural Studies.” In American Multicultural Studies: Diversity of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality, edited by Sherrow O. Pinder, 3– 9. Tousand Oaks: SAGE, 20 3. “Saigon Vietnam—Evacuation of Orphans.” March–April 975. National Archives of Australia, A453 , 22 /4/8, part . Schachter, Judith. “Intercountry Adoption / Global Migration: A Pacifc Perspective.” Asia Pacifc Journal of Anthropology 8, no. 4 (20 7): 305–22. Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media. New York: Routledge, 20 4. Silk, Joan. “Adoption and Kinship in Oceania.” American Anthropologist 82, no. 4 ( 980): 799–82 . Terbstrom, Stephan. “Rediscovering the Melting Pot—Still Going Strong.” In Reinventing the Melting Pot: Te New Immigrants and What It Means to Be American, edited by Tamar Jacoby, 47–60. New York: Basic Books, 2004. Van Krieken, Robert. “Te ‘Stolen Generations’ and Cultural Genocide: Te Forced Removal of Australian Indigenous Children from Teir Families and Its Implications for the Sociology of Childhood.” Childhood 6, no. 3 ( 999): 297–3 .

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

18 | Adoption and Multiculturalism Walcott, Rinaldo. “Disgraceful: Intellectual Dishonesty, White Anxieties, and Multicultural Critique Tirty-Six Years Later.” In Home and Native Land: Unsettling Multiculturalism in Canada, edited by May Chazan, Lisa Helps, Anna Stanley, and Sonali Takkar. Toronto: Between the Lines, 20 . Willing, Indigo. “Te Adopted Vietnamese Community: From Fairy Tales to the Diaspora.” Michigan Quarterly Review 43, no. 4 (2004): 648–64. Willing, Indigo, and Patricia Fronek. “Constructing Identities and Issues of Race in Transnational Adoption: Te Experiences of Adoptive Parents.” British Journal of Social Work 44, no. 5 (20 2): 29–46. Wills, Jenny Heijun. “Transnational and Transracial Adoption: Multiculturalism and Selective Colour-Blindness.” In American Multicultural Studies: Diversity of Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality, edited by Sherrow O. Pindar, 0 – 4. Tousand Oaks: SAGE, 20 3. Wise, Amanda, and Selvaraj Velayutham. Everyday Multiculturalism. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009. Yngvesson, Barbara. Belonging in an Adopted World: Race, Identity, and Transnational Adoption. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 20 0.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Section 1

Negotiating Everyday, Familial, and National Multiculturalism

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Embodying Multiple Selves Korean Australian Adoptees’ Experiences of Being and Belonging Jessica Walton

Tis essay is situated in an Australian context and analyzes color blindness, multiculturalism, and racism to locate adoption discourse within both national and global contexts. With almost ffy years of multiculturalism policies, Australia is one of their “longest-standing adopters,” with policies that emphasize civic integration and have been viewed as “politically stable” relative to policies in European countries such as Germany.1 Although Banting and Kymlicka argue that multiculturalism policies are not necessarily in retreat, a “discursive retreat from the word ‘multiculturalism’ . . . and rising xenophobia [in Europe] . . . has certainly had other efects” that may impact multiculturalism policies in the long term.2 Despite its merits, Australian multiculturalism continues to wrestle with tension between universality and particularity, resulting in what Hage calls “misinterpellation.” Within this tension is an inherent contradiction between aspiring toward a color-blind or “postracial” society and recognizing “diference.” Tis contradiction makes it difcult for adoptees from Korea3 to talk about experiences of racism and to openly critique the social impact of racial diference in Australian society. Furthermore, it can silence adoptees’ feelings about loss of their Korean selves and about denial of their claims as Australians and transnational subjects. Research on transracial and transnational adoption within the social sciences has demonstrated that racism is a key issue among nonwhite adoptees who are adopted into white families in Australia and other Western nations.4 Nevertheless, the social signifcance of race and experiences of racism are still reported as topics that white adoptive parents 21 Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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with color-blind racial attitudes and low regard for the importance of ethnic-racial socialization continue to minimize, avoid, or deny when socializing their children.5 Tis aversion to talking about or acknowledging the social signifcance of race is consistent with research about broader issues of color blindness and denial of racism in countries where multiculturalism has been embraced politically and in popular discourses about its identity.6 Tis essay begins by exploring how the emergence of transnational adoption and discourses of “good” adoptive parents and altruism intersect with broader “postracial” discourses that advocate a form of color blindness called “racelessness.”7 Tat exploration provides the necessary background for the essay’s focus, which is to analyze adoptees’ experiences of identifcation and contested belonging, using the concept of misinterpellation8 and a phenomenological framework to understand their sense of self as transnationally adopted people. Drawing on interviews with adult Korean adoptees who were adopted to Australia, I make three arguments in this analysis. First, “postracial” color-blind approaches that deny the social signifcance of race, such as “racelessness,” also deny adoptees’ experiences of racism, thus marginalizing their experiences in favor of a cultural approach to adoption that focuses on celebrating the adoptee’s birth culture. Second, tensions between race and culture and between universality and particularity afect adoptees’ sense of self through a process of mistinterpellation. Tird, processes of identifcation experienced by transnational adoptee raise ontological questions about multiple selves. I conclude this essay with a call for a more radical ontological acceptance that refuses to choose one state of being over another and instead allows for the coexistence of multiple ontologies. The Research Design

Te research used for this essay is based on nine interviews, conducted in 2006–7, with adult Korean adoptees who were adopted to white families in Australia. Seven women and two men between the ages of twenty and twenty-eight were interviewed.9 Te gender disparity can be explained by disproportionate numbers of girls and boys adopted. According to statistics, 48 girls and 56 boys were adopted from Korea to Australia in 990– 9 .10 As far as the interviewed Korean adoptees in Australia can ascertain from their adoption records, all of them have two parents in Korea. I used a semistructured interview guide to cover such topics as the

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Embodying Multiple Selves | 23

relative signifcance of “being an adoptee,” as well as experiences of belonging and “diference” in Australia and Korea, of ethnic and cultural identity in everyday social interactions, and of accessing adoption records and searching for Korean family members. As I drew on constructive grounded theory11 and analyzed the interview and secondary data,12 coded themes emerged about color blindness, diference and sameness, identity, belonging, and racism. Pseudonyms were used for participants unless they chose to be identifed by their actual name. To date, research on Korean adoptees by academic “insiders” within that population is still in the minority in Australia and globally, and my research as a Korean adoptee and scholar contributes by adding rich insights. From Exclusion to Multiculturalism: Immigration Policies and Transnational Adoption

In an Australian context, policies that address racial, ethnic, and cultural diference have ranged from exclusionary and overtly racist to assimilationist, integrationist, and multicultural.13 A notable shif from past exclusionary policies was signaled by the end of the Immigration Restriction Act of 90 (commonly referred to as the White Australia policy), and in the 970s, the Australian government began to develop policies that addressed ethnic and cultural diversity as an issue of cultural integration, gradually moving toward a multicultural approach with a focus on the right to maintain cultural identities.14 Te turn toward multiculturalism policy was a signifcant step toward cultural recognition, compared to an exclusive focus on assimilation. However, a common thread connecting the almost ffy years of Australian multicultural policies is the continued orientation of the explicitly acknowledged and supported cultural diversity to an imagined “core” national identity as white and “Anglo.”15 In the Australian government’s 2003–6 multiculturalism policy, under former prime minister John Howard, cultural diversity was to be respected as long as it was “productive diversity” (economically viable) and contributed to the cohesive “harmony”16 of the nation, defned by a common Australian identity. Tis policy draws attention to the “contradictions . . . between a society’s diversity and the more unitary population agendas of the nation state.”17 As such, some scholars have questioned “whether there is any real diference between ‘integration’ and ‘multiculturalism.’”18 A process of color blindness also exacerbates the racial privileging of whites and specifc struggles

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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of minorities as exemplifed by the Howard government’s decision to institute Harmony Day.19 To further explain the lack of fundamental change at the heart of policies addressing cultural diversity, Alana Lentin argues that the racial has been relegated to the “backwards past” and replaced with the cultural as symbolic of the progressive future, without fully addressing the racial.20 Consequently, to be “color-blind” (i.e., purporting to not notice racial diference) is associated with a progressive “postracial” future, in which race does not matter. Color blindness therefore becomes a moralistic question, while also bufering white adoptive parents. In this context, “thinking culturally about diference is the default position for not talking about race and avoiding the charge of racism.”21 Te recognition of cultural diferences is more progressive in the sense that it moved away from trying to completely exclude and ignore those diferences both in multiculturalism policy and in approaches to transnational adoptive families.22 However, cultural diference has become a proxy for racial diference without clearly confronting and engaging with underlying issues that inform contemporary social relations and racial inequalities. In Australia, the ongoing impact of its colonial history and the systematic genocide of Indigenous peoples is pushed to the periphery. Te favored approach is to superfcially celebrate cultural diversity and use it as an example of Australia’s openness and success as a multicultural country.23 Conversely, not only is mentioning race and racism associated with a past that is behind “us” (read as white and politically progressive), but the word racism has been associated with and confned to a small cohort of the population (white and politically conservative). Tis conversational shif has infuenced other sectors, such as education, where talking about culture is viewed as safer, more comfortable, and less likely to disrupt the status quo than talking about race.24 However, culture can still be essentialized in similar ways to race, by slotting people into defned static cultural categories or taking a more “color-blind” approach, through which cultural diferences are ignored based on the assertion that everyone should be treated the same.25 Both approaches make it difcult to talk about race and racism, either by focusing only on cultural diferences or by fattening any kind of diference to focus on sameness. Transnational Adoption in Australia—a Historical Perspective

Te tensions between “postracial” idealism and the very real experiences of racism and systemic inequalities are refected in transnational adoption discourse.26 Transnational adoption emerged as a practice in Australia Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Embodying Multiple Selves | 25

around the same time that measures were being taken to remove the more explicit forms of racial discrimination in Australia’s immigration policy, with the end of the Dictation Test in 958 and into the 960s and 970s. Te frst transnational adoptions to Australia began as a result of a number of global and local factors, including wartime separation and displacement of children from their families. Infuential changes within Australia included changes to domestic adoption policy and law reform, as well as the introduction of new reproductive technologies, such as female contraception.27 Particularly in the context of the Korean War and the Vietnam War, child “rescue” narratives began to dominate adoption discourse. Tose narratives were based on a dichotomy between the positive (mostly economic) attributes of Australia and other Western countries, which were reinforced by narrow negative portrayals of Vietnam and Korea as simply war-torn and poor.28 Although I am certainly not contesting that both countries were devastated by the atrocities of war or that children who were highly vulnerable sufered greatly as a result, I am drawing attention to the simplistic dichotomy between “good” and “bad” countries and “good” (suitable) and “bad” (unsuitable) parents as a justifcation for the adoption of children.29 As Forkert demonstrated through a historical analysis of Australian domestic adoption, a representational shif in the Australian domestic adoption context in the early 900s began to portray adoptive parents in a more favorable light by re-presenting adoption as “sentimental adoption” and focusing on “love,” rather than economic support, as the binding tie between nonbiological kin.30 Tis signifcant attitudinal shif toward adoption and adoptive parents within domestic contexts presented prospective adoptive parents seeking to adopt children transnationally in a favorable light, demonstrated in the report Overseas Adoption in Australia.31 Around the time that transnational adoptions started to overtake domestic ones, Australia’s immigration policy began to support increased openness to racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity, which gradually extended beyond immigration policy, to a concern with recognizing and integrating cultural diversity through multiculturalism policy. Tis call for increased openness to migration and to Australia’s existing diversity was refected in a 973 parliamentary speech by Al Grassby (previous minister for immigration), in which he used tropes of the family to evoke acceptance of cultural diversity. Te concept I prefer, the “family of the nation,” is one that ought to convey an immediate and concrete image to all. In a family the overall attachment to the common good need not impose a sameWills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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ness on the outlook or activity of each member, nor need these members deny their individuality and distinctiveness in order to seek a superfcial and unnatural conformity. Te important thing is that all are committed to the good of all.32 Emphasizing that the Australian nation, if viewed as a “family,” need not all be the same to be united as one, Grassby highlighted the importance of openness toward ethnic and cultural diversity. Tis integrationist framing of the nation as composed of people who are diferent but united as one arguably infuenced subsequent multiculturalism policies that focused on “unity in diversity.”33 It signaled a call to recognize Australia’s multicultural present and future. If we also understand transnational adoption within the context of the development of multiculturalism policy, the “openness” that predominantly white adoptive parents were seen to demonstrate by adopting Asian babies into their homes and creating families that were not based on biogenetic ties contributed to a positive representation of adoptive parents. As Hübinette argues, “In this era of decolonization, antiracism, and civil rights movements—reinforced by lef-liberating ideology prescribing multiculturalism—international adoption quickly came to be perceived as an antiracist and progressive act.”34 In this context, I argue, adoptive parents were considered not only “good” and altruistic but also, by extension, not racist, due to a confation of morality with racist attitudes (i.e., the idea that well-meaning good people in general cannot also deploy and reproduce racist actions, language, etc.). Tis strong moralistic positioning of adoptive parents as unquestionably “good” as well as “antiracist” is reinforced through a discourse of “love.”35 As recent research of Australian adoptive parents demonstrates, adoptive parents expressed that “desires to adopt were founded upon various notions of the love they had for ‘any’ children and their love for, or at the very least, sense of openness towards, ‘other’ people and cultures rather than infertility alone.”36 Because notions of love rather than emphases on biogenetic connections had become the “glue” that binds adoptive kinship, love trumped attention to racial and cultural diferences between adoptive parents and adoptees. For the adoptive parents who were interviewed for that research, “issues of race and diference were marginalized in favor of luck, love for culture and the maintenance of power diferentials as invisible.”37 Terefore, within adoption discourse accompanied by a multicultural turn that celebrates culture while masking race, love not only acts to bind adoptive families but is also “blind.” Because of the obvious racial difer-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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ences between adoptive parents and adoptees, the idea of being “colorblind” to those diferences is not practically possible. However, by focusing on culture instead of race, as refected in Australian multiculturalism, and by focusing on the child’s birth culture mainly through consumption (e.g., food) rather than engaging issues of race and racism, adoptive parents are able to take a “racelessness” approach while still recognizing cultural diference, albeit in ways that “require minimal risk or meaningful interaction within Korean cultural contexts.”38 As Arlo Kempf explains, “racelessness” refers to: Te denial of the relevance of race and . . . acts as midwife for discursive safe spaces in which the silencing of issues concerning race proceeds in service of the claim that it is possible and even moral, to not see it.39 Within transracial families, the common adage that love is color-blind, despite the racial diferences between adoptive families and adoptees, is upheld as a moral position to take. As Willing and Fronek found in Australian adoptive parents’ perceptions of adoption information sessions held by government departments, any potentially negative association with adoption, including topics such as racism, was ofen seen as deterring access to adoption rather than as a critical issue that many transnational and transracial adoptees face.40 In the education sessions, some of the adoptive parents did not accept it when “love was said not to be enough.”41 Consistent with a postracial outlook, “racism was readily dismissed as an issue of the past, not relevant to adopted children, despite the contemporary Australian political climate concerning refugees, asylum seekers and First Australians.”42 Te combination of an apolitical love (i.e., adoptive parents simply love other people’s children) and a postracial moral stance serves the best interests of adoptive parents, because they are able to unproblematically claim someone else’s child as their own by focusing on love as the ties that bind, while ignoring the global racial politics and inequalities that inform transnational adoption. Critically, this aversion to talking about racism, the active dismissal of racism’s contemporary relevance, and the replacement of discussions of race with discussions of culture in Australian society more broadly all inform the extent to which race and racism are taken seriously as issues that many transracial adoptees face. Moreover, if issues of race, such as experiences of racism, are presented as undermining the idea that love is blind and is what binds the family (particularly in the absence of biogene-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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tic ties), not only is it difcult for adoptees to talk about racism as a lived experience, but “race talk” can be seen as a direct challenge to those adoptive ties. Furthermore, as I argue in this essay, race denial or cultural recognition within Australian multiculturalism, which is also reproduced in adoptive families, afects adoptees’ sense of self and sense of belonging in Australia. Processes of Misinterpellation

In this section, I turn to theoretical concepts of interpellation and misinterpellation, to examine the tension between race denial and cultural recognition as evidenced through Korean adoptees’ experiences of being and belonging.43 For Ghassen Hage, the concept of misinterpellation describes a process whereby someone’s subjective positioning is read by or interpellated by someone else in a way that contradicts how the person being “read” understands that positioning.44 Specifcally, the person who is misinterpellated is denied universality through the process of specifying presumed nonuniversality. For example, research about transnational transracial adoptees’ everyday experiences of discrimination in Sweden show that their racialized otherness (read as nonwhite and therefore nonSwedish) takes precedence despite their being culturally Swedish.45 Teir racialized bodies challenge the imagined racialized homogeneity of who can be Swedish. Similarly, experiences of misinterpellation in a multicultural Australian society draw attention to the deeply embedded assumptions about who is allowed to feel that they unconditionally belong in Australia. For transnational transracial adoptees in Australia, their right to vacillate between diferent identities is denied in the process of being misinterpellated. At stake for adoptees, I argue, is not only their right to vacillate between Korean, Australian, Korean Australian, adoptee, or other identity categories but also a deep embodied sense of being in the world. A discomforting scenario described to me by an interviewee named Mia illustrates the process of being misinterpellated. Te other night when I was going out, a [white] lady at the tram stop said to me, “Wow, you have beautiful eyes! What’s your orientation?” It made me feel really uncomfortable, but I think that sometimes people don’t understand how it can feel being asked such personal questions. I feel that it emphasizes the fact that we “look diferent.” Isn’t Australia supposed to be a multicultural country? I don’t go ’round asking Caucasians what their orientation is. Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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According to Hage, to be misinterpellated is to be racially “interpellated as belonging to a collectivity” and then to discover unexpectedly not only that your imagined belonging to that collectivity is denied but that you were never considered to belong to the collectivity imagined as the universal “we” and, instead, are marked as belonging to the universal “them.”46 Mia believed that her “diference” within a multicultural country like Australia should be the norm and, therefore, just “like everybody else,” yet she was marked as racially “diferent” by the white woman’s comment about Mia’s eyes.47 Te sense of injustice that Mia’s experience evoked and her interpretation of it draw attention to tensions within Australian multiculturalism. If Australia’s national image has been ofcially reconstructed by government policy as a “multicultural nation” rather than a “white nation,” the fact of cultural diversity as core to what it means to be Australian should be the standard norm. However, as I discussed earlier, the construct “culture” has simply replaced the construct “race” as a way of describing “diference.” Not only is this new description inefective for challenging racial hierarchies that continue to privilege those categorized as “white,” but it also masks a privileged white Anglo cultural dominance within Australian society.48 Te “multicultural nation” is still the “white nation,” with an imagined white Anglo core that defnes how “cultural diversity” or “them” is incorporated into the “‘we’ of the nation.”49 In other words, as Ahmed describes, “racial diference, already construed as ethnic diference, is redefned in terms of cultural diversity, that is, in terms that erase any distinctions between groups.”50 However, a new focus on “cultural diversity,” which tries to cover up the social relevance of race through a “racelessness” approach, does not make racial diference any less relevant in social interactions, nor does it make those group distinctions any less distinct. As Mia experienced, her body was read as “not white” by the white woman on the tram, which was misinterpellated as “not us.”Other examples of being misinterpellated include questions or comments that suggest someone must be from somewhere other than “here,” based on a particular racialized attribute. In an interview, Hannah explained that being asked where one is from brings up diferent negative feelings of being patronized or perceived as “a little stupid” or “inferior. Mia’s and Hannah’s observations suggest that in a presumably postracial context, noticing racial diference is directly at odds with Australia’s multiculturalism and, by extension, “racist,” due to a tendency to confate racialization with racism.51 However, noticing of racial diference and being asked to locate perceived diference were not always interpreted by interviewees as negative or unsettling experiences. For example, Young Mi explained, Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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If I have to identify myself for practical reasons, like curious people, I just say. I don’t have a problem with telling people I’m Korean or Asian. It’s pretty straightforward for me. Nate similarly said, Oh yeah, people ask and I just tell them straight up that I was from South Korea and I’m adopted, so I’m Korean by blood but I was raised in Australia. It’s more just a fact. If they’re curious, they’re curious. For Young Mi and Nate, people noticing their racial diference and asking their origin was not an issue. For others, like Hannah and Mia, pointing out their racial diference made them feel like their sense of belonging to a multicultural Australia was being contested. Another Korean adoptee, Pia, explained in an interview that when she was growing up, her parents always told her to respond to questions about her origin by saying, “I am Australian.” As a result, she said, “I never felt Korean or wanted to be identifed as being Korean.” About visiting Korea for the frst time as a nine-year-old with her mother, Pia said, “I remember saying to Mum that I didn’t like it in Korea because I didn’t stand out.” In Korea, Pia’s presence among other people who looked like her made her invisible compared to her experience of being marked as “diferent” in Australia. Pia’s conficting feelings support Hage’s observations that people perceived as “diferent” or “not white” who do not like being asked about their origin because it marks them as “diferent” may also be ofended by not being asked, because it ignores their “diference.”52 He explains that the main issue in the process of misinterpellation is the freedom to vacillate between categories of universality and particularity, and the categories themselves are not necessarily contentious. When people aspire to integrate in a new cultural group, or choose to continue to be part of group they were born into, they do not just fear being particularized and having their universality denied, and they do not just fear being universalized and having their particularity denied. Tey fear both, and being “fxed” in both. Tat is, they fear not being able to have a space where they can vacillate at will between the universal and the particular.53

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Similarly, for Korean adoptees, the key issue at the heart of such encounters is not necessarily the denial of universality but the potential denial of both the universal and the particular. Tis universality may shif meaning depending on the context: in Australia, it might be the desire to be accepted as unquestionably Australian; in Korea, it might be the desire to be accepted as unquestionably Korean. In both contexts, it is also important that adoptees can be regarded as unquestionably ftting into both those categories of belonging, so the categories need to be fexible enough to include multiple belongings. Pia explained, Afer going to Korea, I realized it was okay to be more than one “thing” and that . . . embracing my Korean heritage is not pushing away my Australian upbringing. Before the trip, I really didn’t see it was possible for my “Korean” and “Australian” identities to coexist. Pia’s realization that she does not have to choose between Korean or Australian but can be both refects the need to vacillate between diferent identities. As Amy adamantly stated in an interview, it is also important to have the ability to vacillate without being defned and confned by bounded identities. I don’t always think of myself as just Australian, but I don’t think of myself as Korean Australian. Like, I hate, I really actually hate that hyphenated Korean-Australian or Malaysian-Australian, or—what is it?—Greek-Australian, you know. I hate that. I hate the stereotyping of people into something, because I suppose when you go Korean-Australian, it automatically gives someone a reference or a stereotype to bring up, and maybe that’s not always the case . . . , you know, for that individual person. Rejecting a self that can be easily categorized as one thing, Amy contended that hybridized identity markers, represented by a hyphen to describe people’s identity as more than one thing, are another form of “knowing” someone and potentially stereotype them based on that knowing. Amy’s perspective is similar to that of other people with transnational identities that resist a simple hyphen. For example, Carruthers argues that Turkish Australians in Sydney challenge the hyphen through the use of digital media and technologies that enable instantaneous connections with Turkey.54

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Trough these connections, he explains, the ethnic minority status of “‘Turkish’ on the head of the hyphen in Turkish-Australian” is contested, and these transnational connections open new ways of being “Turkish” that are not locally bounded or marginalized as an “ethnic minority community” in multicultural Australia.55 Rather than Turkish being an identity tacked onto another identity or an identity contained in relation to an Australian national identity, argues Carruthers, “Turkishness is far more sophisticated and uncontainable than the ‘symbolic ethnicity’ one might expect to fnd on the other end of a hyphenated multicultural identity.”56 Te experiences of the interviewees I have cited challenge ofcial Australian multiculturalism policy that seeks to “include” cultural diference while still maintaining a distinction between the universal “we” as Australians and the particular “them” as cultural diference. For transnational adoptees, a sense of self or being in the world needs to allow for vacillating between identities, rather than viewing identity as, for example, Korean or Australian or even Korean Australian. Te multicultural approach to “cultural diference,” which tends to involve celebrating and consuming material culture or what is imagined to be culturally representative, contributes little to understanding more complex modes of being and belonging. Embodied Identities and Ontological Questions

In this section, I argue that the experience of misinterpellation raises ontological questions about transnational adoptees’ existence in the world, which is much more than moving between or the addition and subtraction of diferent hyphenated identities. At stake for transnational adoptees is not only the need to vacillate in a process of identifcation between identity categories (e.g., Korean, Australian, Korean Australian, adoptee) but also the ability to feel a deep embodied sense of being in the world. First, I briefy explore this process of embodiment by drawing on phenomenological theories. Ten, I propose that the conficted senses of self and belonging may be understood as an ontological matter. Because Korean adoptees in the present study were socialized into white families, many have embodied a white racial identity.57 Objectively, Korean adoptees know they are not white, but one does not experience the world or one’s self simply through a cognitive lens. As Maurice MerleauPonty’s work on phenomenology and perception argues, both psychological and physiological explanations of the body “treat the body as an objective body, and thus get the experience wrong in a fundamental way.”58

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Rather than a Cartesian duality between consciousness and the objective body, the central premise of Merleau-Ponty’s work maintains, “to be conscious is to be embodied.”59 Korean adoptees’ feeling white or wishing that they were white does not arise out of a separation between a conscious imagining of the body as white and an objectifed body as not white. Instead, it arises from a bodily knowing, a sense that a white body matches with their perception of the world to which they have been socialized to feel they belong. In an interview, Erin explained her feelings about her sense of belonging. I wanted to be like everyone else I knew. I became racist out of my own fear to accept who I really was and couldn’t handle being around other Asians or even being referred to as Asian. When I started going to university, I became friends with other Asians and fnally started to accept who I really was. Wanting to be recognized as being the same as other white people she knew growing up, Erin developed a negative understanding of her Asian appearance, as a form of internal racism. Only when she started to become friends with people from Asian backgrounds at university did she begin to develop a more positive association with “being Asian.” Many Korean transnational adoptees do not walk around consciously aware of their body as objectively Asian in appearance, which makes experiences that mark their body as diferent even more surprising and potentially traumatizing. Tey interact with the world with the “bodily schema” (Merleau-Ponty) or “skills” (Heidegger) they have learned as people who are culturally Australian, and they thus bring the world into being through their bodies as they interact with and in the world. When they experience an incident that interrupts their embodied sense of being in the world, they become aware of their “otherness.” In Martin Heidegger’s concept of “being-in” the world, “unless something goes wrong, our skillful knowhow usually is entirely inexplicit.”60 Tus, to be identifed as Other, represented only by their objectifed body, serves to disrupt transnational adoptees’ embodied sense of being in the world. If we take experiences of racism as an example of when adoptees are misinterpellated, it is not just a problem of contested belonging or a question of their identity; it also raises deep ontological questions of their sense of being in the world. Oliver J. T. Harris and John Robb describe ontology as “a fundamental set of understandings about how the world is: what kinds of beings, processes, and qualities could potentially exist and

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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how these relate to each other.”61 For adoptees, these experiences of misinterpellation allude to a diferent sense of being in the world prior to their adoption. Before they were adopted, they once existed as a diferent kind of self in their country of origin, and then, through a Western process of adoption, that self was cut of—they were given new parents, a new name, a new identity as Australian, and, ultimately, a new sense of being in a different reality. A Western form of adoption that remakes the adopted child through “kinning” processes does not allow for multiple ontologies to coexist.62 Sarah’s refection on her sense of self describes this ontological struggle. If I was to be acknowledged as Korean, ideally I would like that to not involve any reference to adoption, but to [Korean] being a legitimate part of my heritage. I want to have the cultural literacy of a Korean who has grown up in Korea with a Korean family. In short, I want to be an “authentic” Korean. Acknowledging that some people fnd dichotomies like “authentic/nonauthentic” or “real/fake” ofensive, Sarah explained, “I don’t mean it that way.” Her desire to be read as “authentic” may refect a desire for her sense of her preadoption self to exist in the same “authentic” way as her sense of self in Australia—a life, she added, that she would “never exchange or wish away.” She refected that due to the adoption process that cut those ties, to exist as someone who existed prior to adoption and, at the same time, as someone who was adopted is an “issue that can never be resolved and a want that can never be fulflled.” Sarah’s self as she was in Korea is still a part of her sense of self as someone who has grown up in Australia. However, because she was adopted, the possibilities of that life in Korea and what it could have been continue as an imagined sense of self rather than as an “authentic,” realized self. Despite the disjuncture that the adoption process creates between different ways of being in the world, the existence of multiple ontologies comes to the forefront particularly when accessing adoption fles or when going to Korea.63 Steph explained that going back to Korea and fnding out information about herself before she was adopted to Australia helped to bring that previous self to life. She said that it was important “even just fnding out the time I was born and that my mother went to the clinic with her sister. I have an Aunty.” Such information is evidence of who adoptees were prior to adoption, and through a process of discovering more about

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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that life, the preadoptive and adoptive worlds come to coexist in unexpected ways. Tis deep ontological sense of being in the world is more than just having diferent identities. Te experiences and perspectives of adoptees like Sarah and Steph signify a desire to be two selves at once. However, this idea of multiple ways of being does not ft within a particular adoption framework that does not allow for multiple selves, let alone the existence of multiple mothers and fathers without distinguishing them in reductive ways (i.e., birth mother, adoptive mother). Like Todd, who said his sense of belonging is as “Korean adopted” rather than as completely Australian or completely Korean, Sarah conceded that the tension between her Korean self and Australian self “seems to be another unavoidable and unresolvable part of being an adoptee.” To understand adoptees’ experiences of being and belonging, we need to understand it in terms of processes of identifcation and to regard these processes as arising from a deep ontological question about who adoptees are in the world. Conclusion

Multiculturalism policies that focus on the inclusion of cultural diference without fully engaging with the history of race and racism and their contemporary signifcance will continue to favor a core white identity to which adoptees are marginalized. Against systemic whiteness in Australia, wherein those in positions of power are predominantly white and viewed in “neutral” terms as “Australian,” other groups, including Korean and Asian adoptees, are judged as only partially worthy of inclusion and to be stripped of complex diferences, with even “celebratory” expressions of diferent identities set and constrained within a subordinate relationship to power. Transnational adoption discourse is situated within this broader multicultural context of tense yet invisible processes of selective inclusion and erasure. Consequently, there is a tendency for adoptive families to avoid discussions of race, racism, and such difcult issues as the global politics and inequalities of transnational adoption. Aversion to these important issues signifcantly marginalizes adoptees’ experiences as racialized subjects in countries such as Australia and as transnational subjects whose lives and sense of being in the world were replaced with diferent lives. Experiences of misinterpellation, most notably during racist incidents as observed in this analysis, highlight complex processes of

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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identifcation that require the ability to vacillate between diferent identities that engage both universal and particular ways of being. Ability to vacillate, while necessary, can also be experienced as an uncomfortable space, particularly in situations requiring the misinterpellated subject (Korean adoptees) to “‘pull him/herself together’ . . . to maintain their sense of togetherness in the face of others.”64 For adoptees, this act of pulling oneself together again can raise ontological questions of their sense of being in the world, in terms of their selves prior to and afer adoption. Rather than viewing adoptees’ sense of being in the world as separating two selves or including one self at the expense of another, I propose that those selves can coexist, even as they remain blurred and unresolved. As Harris and Robb point out, “an emphasis on the blurred boundaries between ontologies is also a far more accurate description of phenomenological experience.”65 In a multicultural society, the ability to vacillate between multiple identities is required. Also required is “a space that allows for a multiplicity of realities to coexist together  .  .  . a space which allows for a multiplicity of ontologies.”66 In resisting dominant modes of recognition and belonging, racialized subjects in multicultural societies can refuse to be translated or interpellated into any one category to suit a limited celebratory multiculturalism only allowing “diference” to exist so long as it does not threaten the “we” toward which the “diference” is oriented. As Hall argues, “We need to be able to insist that rights of citizenship and the incommensurabilities of cultural diference are respected and that the one is not made a condition of the other” (Hall’s italics).67 Similarly, adoptees can refuse to choose one self over another or to subsume a preadoption self under a hyphenated identity (e.g., Korean-Australian-adoptee) to suit a celebration of adoption as an example of the success of a “postracial” multiculturalism (e.g., “rainbow families”). Required instead is a more radical acceptance of belonging that allows for the coexistence of multiple ontologies, not only multiple identities but also multiple ways of being in the world. NOTES 1. Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka, “Is Tere Really a Retreat from Multiculturalism Policies? New Evidence from the Multiculturalism Policy Index,” Comparative European Politics 11, no. 5 (2013): 589. 2. Banting and Kymlicka, 592. 3. For stylistic purposes, I use the designation “Korea” to refer to South Korea throughout this essay. 4. Kim Park Nelson, Invisible Asians: Korean American Adoptees, Asian American

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Embodying Multiple Selves | 37 Experiences, and Racial Exceptionalism (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2016); Tobias Hübinette and Carina Tigervall, “To Be Non-white in a Colour-Blind Society: Conversations with Adoptees and Adoptive Parents in Sweden on Everyday Racism,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 30, no. 4 (2009): 335–53; Indigo Willing, Patricia Fronek, and Denise Cuthbert, “Review of Sociological Literature on Intercountry Adoption,” Social Policy and Society 11 (2009): 465–79; Jessica Walton, “Feeling It: Understanding Korean Adoptees’ Experiences of Embodied Identity,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 36, no. 44 (2015): 395–412. 5. Indigo Willing and Patricia Fronek, “Constructing Identities and Issues of Race in Transnational Adoption: Te Experiences of Adoptive Parents,” British Journal of Social Work 44, no. 5 (2014): 1129–46; Richard M. Lee et al., “Cultural Socialization in Families with Internationally Adopted Children,” Journal of Family Psychology 20, no. 4 (2006): 571–80; Darron T. Smith, Cardell K. Jacobson, and Brenda G. Juárez, White Parents, Black Children: Experiencing Transracial Adoption (London: Rowman and Littlefeld, 2011); Naomi Priest et al., “Understanding the Complexities of Ethnic-Racial Socialization Processes for Both Minority and Majority Groups: A 30-Year Systematic Review,” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 43 (2014): 139–55; Maria Berbery and Karen O Brien. “Predictors of White Adoptive Parents’ Cultural and Racial Socialization Behaviours with Teir Asian Adopted Children,” Adoption Quarterly 14, no. 4 (2011): 284–304. 6. Patrick Solomona et al. “Te Discourse of Denial: How White Teacher Candidates Construct Race, Racism and ‘White Privilege,’” Race Ethnicity and Education 8 (2005): 147–69; Jacqueline K. Nelson, “Denial of Racism and Its Implications for Local Action,” Discourse and Society 24, no. 1 (2013): 89–109; Erin Pahlke, Rebecca S. Bigler, and Marie-Anne Suizzo, “Relations between Colorblind Socialization and Children’s Racial Bias: Evidence from European American Mothers and Teir Preschool Children,” Child Development 83, no. 4 (2012): 1164–79. 7. Arlo Kempf, “Colour-Blind Praxis in Havana: Interrogating Cuban Teacher Discourses in Race and Racelessness,” Race Ethnicity and Education 16, no. 2 (2012): 1–22. 8. Ghassan Hage, “Analysing Multiculturalism Today,” in Te SAGE Handbook of Cultural Analysis, ed. T. Bennet and J. Frow (Los Angeles: SAGE, 2008), 488–509; Hage, “Te Afective Politics of Racial Mis-Interpellation,” Teory, Culture and Society 27 (2010): 112–29. 9. Interviews were conducted over e-mail over several months or in person, depending on participants’ geographical location or format preference for talking about their experiences. 10. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Adoptions Australia, 1990–1991 (Canberra, 1993). 11. Kathy Charmaz, Constructing Grounded Teory, 2nd ed. (Los Angeles: SAGE, 2014). 12. Norman Fairclough, Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research (London: Routledge, 2003). 13. For a time line of shifs toward multiculturalism in Australia, see Board of Studies, New South Wales, “A Multicultural History of Australia,” 2018, http://www.multi culturalaustralia.edu.au/history/index.php 14. Jatinder Mann, “Te Introduction of Multiculturalism in Canada and Australia, 1960s–1970s,” Nations and Nationalism 18, no. 3 (2012): 483–503.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

38 | Adoption and Multiculturalism 15. Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (Sydney: Pluto, 1998); James Forrest and Kevin Dunn, “‘Core’ Culture Hegemony and Multiculturalism: Perceptions of the Privileged Position of Australians with British Backgrounds,” Ethnicities 6, no. 2 (2006): 203–30. 16. Commonwealth of Australia, Multicultural Australia: United in Diversity (Canberra, 2003). 17. Andrew Jakubowicz, “Anglo-Multiculturalism: Contradictions in the Politics of Cultural Diversity as Risk.” International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 2, no. 3 (2006): 253. 18. James Jupp, “Preface: A New Era in Australian Multiculturalism?” Journal of Intercultural Studies 32, no. 6 (2011): 578. 19. Harmony Day, held on March 21, was started under Howard in 1999 to focus on celebrating cultural diversity, masking that the day is the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. 20. Alana Lentin, “Replacing ‘Race’: Historicising the ‘Culture’ in Multiculturalism,” Patterns of Prejudice 39, no. 4 (2005): 379–96; Lentin, “Post-Race, Post Politics: Te Paradoxical Rise of Culture afer Multiculturalism,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37, no. 8 (2014): 1268–85. 21. Lentin, “Replacing ‘Race,’” 394. 22. Toby Alice Volkman, “Embodying Chinese Culture: Transnational Adoption in North America,” Social Text 74, no. 21 (2003): 29–55. 23. Hage, White Nation. 24. Greg Vass, “Hear No Race, See No Race, Speak No Race: Teacher Silence, Indigenous Youth, and Race Talk in the Classroom,” Social Alternatives 32, no. 2 (2013): 19– 24; Nado Aveling, “Student Teachers’ Resistance to Exploring Racism: Refections on ‘Doing’ Border Pedagogy,” Asia-Pacifc Journal of Teacher Education 30, no. 2 (2002): 119–30 25. Jessica Walton et al., “Talking Culture? Egalitarianism, Color-Blindness and Racism in Australian Elementary Schools,” Teaching and Teacher Education 39 (2014): 112–22. 26. See Yin Paradies, “Whiter Anti-Racism?” Ethnic and Racial Studies 39, no. 1 (2016): 1–15. 27. Denise Cuthbert and Ceridwen Spark, “Society Moves to Make Its Own Solutions . . . : Re-Tinking the Relationship between Intercountry and Domestic Adoption in Australia,” in Other People’s Children: Adoption in Australia, ed. Denise Cuthbert and Ceridwen Spark (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009), 55–72. 28. Indigo Willing, “Te Adopted Vietnamese Community: From Fairy Tales to the Diaspora,” Michigan Quarterly Review 43, no. 4 (2004): 648; Tobias Hübinette, Comforting an Orphaned Nation: Representations of International Adoption and Adopted Koreans in Korean Popular Culture (Seoul: Jimoondang, 2006). 29. See, e.g., Damien W. Riggs, “Race Privilege and Its Role in the “Disappearance’ of Birth Families and Adoptive Children in Debates over Non-Heterosexual Adoption in Australia,” in Cuthbert and Spark, Other People’s Children, 161–75; Sonja van Wichelen, “Scales of Grievability: On Moving Children and the Geopolitics of Precariousness,” Social and Cultural Geography 16, no. 5 (2015): 552–66. 30. Joshua Forkert, “‘Lacerated Feelings and Heart-Burnings’: A Historical Background to Adoption in Australia,” in Cuthbert and Spark, Other People’s Children, 23– 36.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Embodying Multiple Selves | 39 31. Cuthbert and Spark, Other People’s Children; House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Human Services, Overseas Adoption in Australia: Report on the Inquiry into Adoption of Children from Overseas (Canberra, 2005). 32. Al J. Grassby, A Multi-cultural Society for the Future (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1973). 33. Mann, “Introduction of Multiculturalism”; Jon Stratton and Ien Ang, “Multicultural Imagined Communities: Cultural Diference and National Identity in Australia and the USA,” Continuum 8 (1994): 124. 34. Tobias Hübinette, “Asian Bodies out of Control: Examining the Adopted Korean Existence,” in Asian Diasporas: New Formations, New Conceptions, ed. Rhacel S. Parreñas and Lok C. D. Siu (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007), 180. 35. Jon Telfer, “Te Imagined Child: Ambiguity and Agency in Australian Intercountry Adoption,” Australian Journal of Anthropology 14, no. 1 (2003): 72–79. 36. Indigo Willing and Patricia Fronek, “Constructing Identities,” 1138. 37. Willing and Fronek, 1138. 38. Lentin, “Replacing ‘Race’”; Kempf, “Colour-Blind Praxis”; Kathleen Ja Sook Bergquist, “From Kim Chee to Moon Cakes: Feeding Adoptees’ Imaginings of Culture and Self,” Food, Culture and Society 9 (2006): 147. 39. Kempf, “Colour-Blind Praxis,” 249. 40. Willing and Fronek, “Constructing Identities.” 41. Willing and Fronek, 1138. 42. Willing and Fronek, 1139. 43. Sara Ahmed, Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality (London: Routledge, 2000); Hage, “Analysing Multiculturalism Today”; Hage, “Afective Politics.” 44. Hage, “Afective Politics.” 45. Hübinette and Tigervall, “To Be Non-white.” Barbara Yngvesson, Belonging in an Adopted World: Race, Identity, and Transnational Adoption (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). 46. Hage, “Afective Politics,” 122. 47. Hage, 122. 48. Lentin, “Replacing ‘Race.’” 49. Hage, White Nation; Ahmed, Strange Encounters, 95. 50. Ahmed, Strange Encounters, 95. 51. Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, Critical Race Teory: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 2001). 52. Hage, “Afective Politics.” 53. Hage, 117. 54. Ashley Carruthers, “National Multiculturalism, Transnational Identities,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 34, no. 2 (2013): 214–28. 55. Carruthers, 219. 56. Carruthers, 219. 57. Jessica Walton, “Feeling It.” 58. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (London: Routledge, 2012); Stephan Käufer and Anthony Chemero, Phenomenology: An Introduction (Cambridge, Polity, 2015), 102. 59. Käufer and Chemero, Phenomenology, 100. 60. Käufer and Chemero, 60.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

40 | Adoption and Multiculturalism 61. Oliver J. T. Harris and John Robb, “Multiple Ontologies and the Problem of the Body in History,” American Anthropologist 114, no. 4 (2012): 668. 62. Signe Howell, Te Kinning of Foreigners: Transnational Adoption in a Global Perspective (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006). 63. Walton, “Feeling It.” 64. Hage, “Afective Politics,” 126. 65. Harris and Robb, “Multiple Ontologies,” 671. 66. Hage, “Afective Politics,” 128. 67. Stuart Hall, “Culture, Community, Nation.” Cultural Studies 7, no. 3 (1993): 360. REFERENCES Ahmed, Sara. Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality. London: Routledge, 2000. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Adoptions Australia, 1990–1991. Canberra, 993. Aveling, Nado. “Student Teachers’ Resistance to Exploring Racism: Refections on ‘Doing’ Border Pedagogy.” Asia-Pacifc Journal of Teacher Education 30, no. 2 (2002): 9–30. Banting, Keith, and Will Kymlicka. “Is Tere Really a Retreat from Multiculturalism Policies? New Evidence from the Multiculturalism Policy Index.” Comparative European Politics , no. 5 (20 3): 577–98. Berbery, Maria, and Karen O Brien. “Predictors of White Adoptive Parents’ Cultural and Racial Socialization Behaviours with Teir Asian Adopted Children.” Adoption Quarterly 4, no. 4 (20 ): 284–304. Bergquist, Kathleen Ja Sook. “From Kim Chee to Moon Cakes: Feeding Adoptees’ Imaginings of Culture and Self.” Food, Culture and Society 9 (2006): 42–53. Board of Studies, New South Wales. “A Multicultural History of Australia.” 20 8. http:// www.multiculturalaustralia.edu.au/history/index.php Carruthers, Ashley. “National Multiculturalism, Transnational Identities.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 34, no. 2 (20 3): 2 4–28. Charmaz, Kathy. Constructing Grounded Teory. 2nd ed. Los Angeles: SAGE, 20 4. Commonwealth of Australia. Multicultural Australia: United in Diversity. Canberra, 2003. https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/24217543 Cuthbert, Denise, and Ceridwen Spark. “‘Society Moves to Make Its Own Solutions . . .’: Re-Tinking the Relationship between Intercountry and Domestic Adoption in Australia.” In Other People’s Children: Adoption in Australia, edited by Ceridwen Spark and Denise Cuthbert, 55–72. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009. Delgado, Richard, and Jean Stefancic. Critical Race Teory: An Introduction. New York: New York University Press, 200 . Fairclough, Norman. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge, 2003. Forkert, Joshua. “‘Lacerated Feelings and Heart-Burnings’: An Historical Background to

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Embodying Multiple Selves | 41 Adoption in Australia.” In Other People’s Children: Adoption in Australia, edited by Ceridwen Spark and Denise Cuthbert, 23–36. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009. Forrest, James, and Kevin Dunn. “‘Core’ Culture Hegemony and Multiculturalism: Perceptions of the Privileged Position of Australians with British Backgrounds.” Ethnicities 6, no. 2 (2006): 203–30. Grassby, Al J. A Multi-cultural Society for the Future. Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 973. Hage, Ghassan. “Te Afective Politics of Racial Mis-Interpellation.” Teory, Culture and Society 27 (20 0): 2–29. Hage, Ghassan. “Analysing Multiculturalism Today.” In Te SAGE Handbook of Cultural Analysis, edited by T. Bennett and J. Frow, 488–509. Los Angeles: SAGE, 2008. Hage, Ghassan. White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society. Sydney: Pluto, 998. Hall, Stuart. “Culture, Community, Nation.” Cultural Studies 7, no. 3 ( 993): 349–63. Harris, Oliver J. T., and John Robb. “Multiple Ontologies and the Problem of the Body in History.” American Anthropologist 4, no. 4 (20 2): 668–79. Howell, Signe. Te Kinning of Foreigners: Transnational Adoption in a Global Perspective. New York: Berghahn Books, 2006. House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Human Services. Overseas Adoption in Australia: Report on the Inquiry into Adoption of Children from Overseas. Canberra, 2005. Hübinette, Tobias. “Asian Bodies out of Control: Examining the Adopted Korean Existence.” In Asian Diasporas: New Formations, New Conceptions, edited by Rhacel S. Parreñas and Lok C. D. Siu, 77–200. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007. Hübinette, Tobias. Comforting an Orphaned Nation: Representations of International Adoption and Adopted Koreans in Korean Popular Culture. Seoul: Jimoondang, 2006. Hübinette, Tobias, and Carina Tigervall. “To Be Non-white in a Colour-Blind Society: Conversations with Adoptees and Adoptive Parents in Sweden on Everyday Racism.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 30, no. 4 (2009): 335–53. Jakubowicz, Andrew. “Anglo-Multiculturalism: Contradictions in the Politics of Cultural Diversity as Risk.” International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 2, no. 3 (2006): 249–66. Juárez, Brenda, G. White Parents, Black Children: Experiencing Transracial Adoption. London: Rowman and Littlefeld. 20 . Jupp, James. “Preface: A New Era in Australian Multiculturalism?” Journal of Intercultural Studies 32, no. 6 (20 ): 577–78. Käufer, Stephan, and Anthony Chemero. Phenomenology: An Introduction. Cambridge: Polity, 20 5. Kempf, Arlo. “Colour-Blind Praxis in Havana: Interrogating Cuban Teacher Discourses of Race and Racelessness.” Race Ethnicity and Education 6, no. 2 (20 2): –22. Lee, Richard M., Harold D. Grotevant, Wendy L. Hellerstedt, and Megan R. Gunnar. “Cultural Socialization in Families with Internationally Adopted Children.” Journal of Family Psychology 20, no. 4 (2006): 57 –80. Lentin, Alana. “Post-Race, Post Politics: Te Paradoxical Rise of Culture afer Multiculturalism.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37, no. 8 (20 4): 268–85.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

42 | Adoption and Multiculturalism Lentin, Alana. “Replacing ‘Race’: Historicising the ‘Culture’ in Multiculturalism.” Patterns of Prejudice 39, no. 4 (2005): 379–96. Mann, Jatinder. “Te Introduction of Multiculturalism in Canada and Australia, 960s– 970s.” Nations and Nationalism 8, no. 3 (20 2): 483–503. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge, 20 2. Nelson, Jacqueline K. “Denial of Racism and Its Implications for Local Action.” Discourse and Society 24, no. (20 3): 89– 09. Pahlke, Erin, Rebecca S. Bigler, and Marie-Anne Suizzo. “Relations between Colorblind Socialization and Children’s Racial Bias: Evidence from European American Mothers and Their Preschool Children.” Child Development 83, no. 4 (20 2): 64–79. Paradies, Yin. “Whither Anti-Racism?” Ethnic and Racial Studies 39, no. (20 6): – 5. Park Nelson, Kim. Invisible Asians: Korean American Adoptees, Asian American Experiences, and Racial Exceptionalism. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 20 6. Priest, Naomi, Jessica Walton, Fiona White, Emma Kowal, Alison Baker, and Yin Paradies. “Understanding the Complexities of Ethnic-Racial Socialization Processes for Both Minority and Majority Groups: A 30-Year Systematic Review.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 43 (20 4): 39–55. Riggs, Damien W. “Race Privilege and Its Role in the ‘Disappearance’ of Birth Families and Adoptive Children in Debates over Non-Heterosexual Adoption in Australia.” In Other People’s Children: Adoption in Australia, edited by Ceridwen Spark and Denise Cuthbert, 6 –75. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009. Smith, Darron T., Cardell K. Jacobson, and Brenda G. Juárez. White Parents, Black Children: Experiencing Transracial Adoption. London: Rowman and Littlefeld, 20 . Solomona, R. Patrick, John P. Portelli, Beverly‐Jean Daniel, and Arlene Campbell. “Te Discourse of Denial: How White Teacher Candidates Construct Race, Racism and ‘White Privilege.’” Race Ethnicity and Education 8 (2005): 47–69. Stratton, Jon, and Ien Ang. “Multicultural Imagined Communities: Cultural Diference and National Identity in Australia and the USA.” Continuum 8 ( 994): 24–58. Telfer, Jon. “Te Imagined Child: Ambiguity and Agency in Australian Intercountry Adoption.” Australian Journal of Anthropology 4, no. (2003): 72–79. van Wichelen, Sonja. “Scales of Grievability: On Moving Children and the Geopolitics of Precariousness.” Social and Cultural Geography 6, no. 5 (20 5): 552–66. Vass, Greg. “Hear No Race, See No Race, Speak No Race: Teacher Silence, Indigenous Youth, and Race Talk in the Classroom.” Social Alternatives 32, no. 2 (20 3): 9–25. Volkman, Toby Alice. “Embodying Chinese Culture: Transnational Adoption in North America.” Social Text 74, no. 2 (2003): 29–55. Walton, Jessica. “Feeling It: Understanding Korean Adoptees’ Experiences of Embodied Identity.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 36, no. 4 (20 5): 395–4 2. Walton, Jessica, Naomi Priest, Emma Kowal, Fiona White, Katie Brickwood, Brandi Fox, and Yin Paradies. “Talking Culture? Egalitarianism, Color-Blindness and Racism in Australian Elementary Schools.” Teaching and Teacher Education 39 (20 4): 2–22. Willing, Indigo A. “Te Adopted Vietnamese Community: From Fairy Tales to the Diaspora.” Michigan Quarterly Review 43, no. 4 (2004): 648–64. Willing, Indigo, and Patricia Fronek. “Constructing Identities and Issues of Race in

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Embodying Multiple Selves | 43 Transnational Adoption: Te Experiences of Adoptive Parents.” British Journal of Social Work 44, no. 5 (20 4): 29–46. Willing, Indigo, Patricia Fronek, and Denise Cuthbert. “Review of Sociological Literature on Intercountry Adoption.” Social Policy and Society (20 2): 465–79. Yngvesson, Barbara. Belonging in an Adopted World: Race, Identity, and Transnational Adoption. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 20 0.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Cosmopolitanism, Transnationalism, and Racialized Belongings A Study of Transnationally Adoptive Parents in Multicultural Australia Indigo Willing, Patricia Fronek, and Zlatko Skrbiš

In this exploration of transnational adoption in the Australian context, the research “gaze” falls on the experiences and identity constructions of white adopters1 rather than nonwhite adoptees. Two of the authors, Fronek and Skrbiš are white, each with their own migration heritages. Although Skrbiš migrated from Eastern Europe in his twenties and has traces of a “foreign” accent that suggests he has not always called Australia “home,” their identifcations as Australians are usually accepted by others without contestations. Willing, nonwhite and born in Vietnam, was raised in Australia by white adoptive parents, Although migrating to Australia in infancy, becoming an Australian citizen at the age of seven, and speaking with a mainstream “Aussie” accent, a marker of being “local” and “from here,” not somewhere “over there,”—a phenomena described by Eng2 as the misrecognition of adoptees—she is still regularly misrecognized as a foreigner and grapples with being viewed as not quite a “real” Australian,3 Te comparatively open acceptance whites experience in terms of others’ response to their own sense of being “Australian” is refected in the population considered in this study which examines the identities of white Australians who adopted nonwhite children from overseas. Our aim herein is to explore and shed light on how those parents talk about their own and their family’s identities in relation to the transnational ties and multicultural practices they foster for adoptees. As De Graeve observes, such children are transmigrants in one sense although “current transnational adoption practice, in contrast to other migration practices, legally 44 Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Cosmopolitanism, Transnationalism, and Racialized Belongings | 45

disconnects the adoptee’s experiences from that of other immigrants.”4 As De Graeve also highlights, the “prevailing adoption discourse emphasizes the necessity of symbolically or actually reconnecting”5 adoptees to their countries of birth. Tis essay presents a qualitative study of white Australians who do not identify as migrants yet, by extension of caring for children adopted from overseas (we argue), develop transnational practices and cosmopolitan orientations as expressions of “doing multiculturalism.” Te discussion draws on a larger study that examined the adoption narratives of Australian adoptive parents relating their experiences before, during, and afer they had adopted nonwhite children from overseas. Te practice of transnational adoption ofers a distinct window into how individuals attempt to perform openness and make active eforts to “live together with diference”6 in families perceived to have multiracial and multicultural backgrounds and where the socially constructed category of “race” becomes a signifcant source of complexity and contradictions. From the data, we identify three theoretical frameworks that assist with understanding how various cultural practices, as well as orientations toward other nations, cultures, and ethnic identifcations, can work together as part of adoptive parents’ constructions of their own identity through eforts to be what they perceive are “suitable parents.” In the process, we propose that adoptive parents’ narratives of identity ofer an additional and valuable window into how multiculturalism in Australia is constructed and perceived in the private sphere of families. Adoptions in Australia

As observed in Walton’s research in this collection, her prior research on Korean adoptees,7 and Willing’s research on adopted Vietnamese in Australia,8 adoptees with nonwhite appearances can be interpreted as being “non-Australian.” Tis observation does not deny these and other populations of transnational adoptees agency and a sense of having fexible and sometimes hybrid identities, as explored in a comparative study of Vietnamese and Korean adoptees in Australia by Gray.9 Paradoxes can exist for nonwhite adoptees who have grown up mostly knowing only white Australian culture largely due to adoptive parents’ eforts to ensure they “ft in” to their immediate environments. At the same time, outsiders ofen reify adoptees through assumptions that they will be familiar with the rituals, languages, cuisines, and cultural habits from their counties of

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

46 | Adoption and Multiculturalism

birth, as if such knowledge was innate and compulsory.10 As Walton’s contribution to this book reveals, Australian society’s attempts to embrace “multiculturalism” without addressing racism compound the problem of such “misinterpellation” for nonwhite adoptees. Despite multiculturalism being an ofcial part of national discourses and social policies for almost half a century,11 research suggests that socially constructed hierarchies of race and whiteness still predominate and haunt society. Nonwhites, including adoptees, are still seen as both foreigners and add-ons, and as culturally apart from, rather than part of, Australia’s identity, citizenry, and sociocultural landscape.12 Tis paradox is a refection of historical and structural issues in Australia,13 where nonwhites feel pressure to “ft in” with a white cultural mainstream on the one hand, and, on the other, are stereotyped and expected to identify with, embody, and perform other ethnic cultures, as a peripheral presence. Such reifcation also takes hold in adoptions due to a “cultural turn”14 in attitudes toward adopting, encouraged structurally through international adoption agreements, overseas adoption representatives, local adoption authorities and professionals, and many in the adoption community. Current trends include the view that adoptees should have knowledge about their “birth cultures” and that eforts should be made so they do not “lose” a sense of connection.15 In Australia, such views take form in such acts as adoption case workers requiring potential adopters to learn about informal and formal ethnic cultural practices and activities for adoptees before they adopt, resulting in adoptive parents organizing exposure and participation in such things once adoptees join the family.16 Australia’s history of unaccompanied children being moved from overseas has not always inscribed “birth cultures” onto adoptees, as the reasons and rationales for adopting have themselves evolved.17 Notable earlier waves of Australian adoptees include British unaccompanied minors from poor Anglo backgrounds who became part of a nation-building project to “populate or perish” Australia from the 940s to 950s, followed by Vietnamese babies and children adopted in the 960s to 975 within the context of humanitarian responses to the Vietnam War.18 In the decade that followed, transnational adoptions shifed from being large-scale “public” migrations to becoming a “quiet migration” of children who were discreetly absorbed into families.19 Concurrently, infertility became a common reason Australians turned to overseas adoptions, and discourses of humanitarianism shifed to life-course and lifestyle motivations revolving around quests for parenthood and families.20 More recently, adoptions

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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into Australia became highly visible and publicly debated, with spikes in media attention, particularly due to adoptive parents who are well-known celebrities.21 In Australia as well as overseas, local celebrities who adopt have become leading fgures among political lobbyists and social change agents whose star power and status assists them to secure strategic alliances with the media, politicians, wealthy benefactors, and adoption lobbyists who are “ordinary” adoptive parents.22 Infuential historical and contemporary approaches to notions of multiculturalism and national identity in Australia have accompanied these shifs in adoption. Australia had to construct itself as a “Western” nation via colonialism and white British settlement. White culture forcibly elevated itself as the dominant culture through aggressive attempts at erasing Indigenous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island cultures and by the subordination of the cultures of minority immigrant populations.23 Te politics and attitudes toward multiculturalism in Australia, Hage argues, is weighted down by a problematic tradition of Euro-Christianity where “whiteness” portrays white Anglo-Australians of Christian background as representing “humanity,” while all other types of humans are deemed inferior.24 Lobo explains that “whiteness is a mono-cultural Anglo-inspired cultural orientation” historically predominating notions of what is Australian from a cultural standpoint and that nonwhites are expected to comply with but unable to fully occupy the overlap of Australian cultural and racial identities.25 Adoptees become integrated legally as if born into their adoptive families, but expectations for them to refect the white environments and identities of their parents have transformed. As previously highlighted, adoption authorities in Australia encourage adoptive parents to “celebrate” adoptees’ cultures of origin. Sending countries are also increasingly observed to play a key role in facilitating, creating, and developing ongoing ways for adoptees to re-create ties to their “birth cultures.”26 Essentialist beliefs around race, culture, and ethnic identity are based on the problematic notion that such things are biologically determined. Tat a child adopted from Asia or Africa, for example, would act in certain ways by nature and possess an innate knowledge of the cultures of their countries of origin is a notion that numerous studies on adoption challenge,27 adopting an anti-essentialist approach guided by the social sciences and founded on the belief that all categories of identity are socially constructed as meaningful rather than being biologically signifcant.28 Ebron explains that socially constructed identity markers such as race, culture, and ethnicity provide critical analytic tools for focusing on “pro-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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cesses of fashioning and refashioning  .  .  . ideas, material objects, social relations, and practices,” allowing for identity distinctions to be imagined and for senses of belonging to take form.29 Veronis argues that transmigrant communities “orphaned” from their countries of origin and othered by the dominant culture can fnd empowerment from strategically staged expressions of ethnicity.30 In her study of geographies of relatedness, Nash observes that although adoptive families do not share “blood ties,” “adoptive parents  .  .  . selfconsciously recreate the ideas of biological relatedness in its absence and are aware of the dangers of ignoring its reality in the child’s original home.”31 In transnational adoption, she emphasizes, “the fexibility of kinship is curtailed by racialized versions of national Indigeneity that shape the ways that questions of ‘where do you come from’ are asked.”32 However, the racial category of being white is socially constructed and open to changing perceptions, boundaries, and cultural practices.33 As this collection reveals, in Western societies in which nonwhite adoptees are raised, whites currently sit at the top of a racial hierarchy achieved through what critical race theories describe as historical and structural processes of “white privileges” and “whiteness.”34 Such theories ofer foundations for understanding that adoptive parents’ lived experiences include that their children are racialized as being racially and sometimes culturally diferent from them and other white Australians, as adoptees feel estranged and need to be educated about their countries of birth. Challenges for adoptive parents, then, include fnding coherent identity narratives that recognize the diverse heritages of family members as Australian, as well as fulflling their role as key facilitators in connecting adoptees to their countries of origin, as is increasingly expected of them. Transnational Adoption Studies

Surprisingly, as an international feld of research, transnational adoption has mostly been neglected until recent decades, when it has begun to receive signifcant attention from the social sciences, such as sociology, anthropology, and geography.35 Although transnational circulations and fows of cultures, people, and ideas across borders and geographies is not a new phenomenon, studies in migration and related literature have more strongly focused on nonadoptive transnational families.36 Adoption research tends to have a greater focus on adoptees’ identities and their particular challenges, with the majority of studies conducted in North

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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America and overseas settings.37 However, it is important to reverse the gaze and also attempt to understand white adoptive parents’ constructions of identity, rather than rendering the parents as neutral actors with a static, normative cultural identity that is unable to transform. Tere is a rich and more substantial body of research on adoptive parents in north American and European contexts.38 Such literature commonly asserts that contemporary adoptive parents actively make eforts to engage with adoptees’ preadoption ethnic heritage, despite being geographically distanced from their birth countries. Tis “cultural turn” signals a shif away from last-century adoption practices that encouraged adoptees to assimilate into their adoptive countries’ cultures.39 Important shifs in studies in north America and Europe include the trend toward adoptive parents being more likely to enthusiastically embrace a growing array of engagement practices, ranging from cooking ethnic foods to undertaking “homeland tours” to adoptive children’s countries of birth.40 Jacobson, who describes these practices in the United States as “culture keeping,” highlights that adoptive parents’ attempts to reconstruct adoptees’ “homeland” heritages into their everyday lives have become the “standard in the adoption community.”41 She states that while cultural practices are facilitated for adoptees, they can also serve to “expand adoptive parents’ understandings of world cultures, bring new friends into their lives, and facilitate deep feelings of connection and love for the birth country.”42 Mindful of the risk of “reifying diference in unintended ways”43 by imposing birth cultures onto adoptees, De Graeve, who studied adoption in Belgium, calls this process “culture work” including strategies that “bear resemblance to the transmigrant practices” of broader, nonadopted populations of transmigrants.44 But unlike parents who are transmigrants themselves and engage in such activities, adoptive parents have lives shaped by diferent social and political histories than the lives of their adopted children.45 Dorow explains that adoptive parents’ cultural activities in Western nations, such as the United States, do not play out in neutral spaces and places but instead occur within transnational contexts, as part of an emerging transnational “cultural economy” based on vast differences in wealth and power between the people and nations that “send” adoptees and those who “receive” them.46 Adoptive parents in Australia are the subject of only a handful of studies,47 focused on such aspects as the waiting period adoptive parents face while their applications obtain approval, the ethics that arise when people raise other people’s children, and the judgment that adoptive parents feel is cast on them by negative media about celebrity adoptions.48 Australian

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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investigations of how transnationally adoptive parents recognize and approach issues of diference and belonging when raising their adopted children are rare, and that aspect of their experience largely goes unrecognized. Tus our understanding of these processes in Australia are only partial. Te study reported in this essay addresses a gap on this understudied population of adopters in the West, who, we will reveal, are also an emerging and overlooked group of transnational actors. The Study

Our study explored the experiences of white transnationally adopted parents who lived in Brisbane and had transnationally adopted children from Asia and Africa. Brisbane is the capital city of Queensland, a subtropical northern state that is neither a hypercosmopolitan metropolis nor so overly isolated as to be easily monocultural. Qualitative interviews were conducted by Willing, whose background as an Australian researcher adopted from Vietnam assisted with access to the adoption community (in terms of recruitment and rapport). Te parents’ narratives of their personal and families’ identities refected broader issues of Australia’s nationbuilding eforts incorporating notions and sentiments of multiculturalism in tension with ongoing processes upholding the mainstream notion of white Australian settler culture as both central and superior.49 We explored how adoptive parents’ own sense of identity, family, and belonging might expand or evolve in the process of raising children adopted from overseas, what types of discourses assist and enable them to articulate this process, and how adoptive parents’ narratives of family and their own identities might contribute to or hinder more inclusive formations of multicultural families in Australia. Tere were ten males and twenty-fve females in our sample of thirtyfve Australian adoptive parents. All were of middle-class backgrounds and described themselves as identifying as white.50 Te children they adopted were still living at home, allowing the parents to best refect on how raising adoptees impacts on their own sense of identity. Combined, the countries from which these parents adopted were China, India, South Korea, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Tailand, and Ethiopia. We used in-depth, semistructured interviews and focus groups. Where both parents participated, couples were interviewed together. Parents’ ages ranged between thirty and ffy-fve years. Combined, their adopted children (forty-four in total) ranged from infants to young

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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adults up to the age of nineteen years, with the majority under twelve years. Just under half of the children (twenty) were under a year old when adopted and the oldest age at adoption was ten years. Only one parent had adopted while not married, and two participants identifed as single parents at the time of their interviews. All had traveled overseas for recreation or work, as well as to adopt. Te number of semistructured interviews and focus groups conducted was sufcient to achieve “rich, descriptive, contextually situated data.”51 Te sample and methods of inquiry were well suited for providing insights on the discourses of identity and belonging that adoptive parents grapple with when describing themselves and their families, including the tensions between notions of “Australianness,” more global identifcations, and becoming a multicultural family. Te analysis was guided by grounded theory52 and analysed thematically.53 Findings concluded that questions of how things such as gender, generational diferences, and reunions with adoptees’ frst (or birth) families impact on adoptive parents constructions of identity and belonging are important distinctions to explore in future research. Findings and Discussion

As our discussion ahead highlights, white adoptive parents in Australia sit at the top of a socially constructed racial and cultural hierarchy that positions their identities as normative, neutral, and an “authentic” core to the nation’s identity. As we previously highlighted, it is critical not to reify the identity of whites as static and unchanging. Moreover, insight into how whites can experience moments of awkwardness and discomfort in seeing themselves as having a culture at all (and therefore as being part of multicultural Australia rather than central to it) is valuable to understanding why adoptive parents may avert, avoid, or be largely unaware of uneven power dynamics between them and the children they adopt. Our analysis identifed three frameworks for exploring and further understanding adoptive parents’ experiences and identity narratives, under the common themes of transnationalism, cosmopolitan openness, and (white) nationalism. Te following discussion illustrates these themes at work. Transnationalism

Like their counterparts in other countries, such as the United States, Australian adoptive parents described how they pursued various types of eth-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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nically related “culture work” for their adopted children, which we proposed as transnational practices that are part of the ways adoptive parents construct identities as being multicultural. Tese types of culture work range from mundane everyday activities and consumption practices, such as eating ethnic-specifc cuisines and buying ethnic-specifc goods, to embarking on “homeland” visits, sometimes multiple times. Some parents even sent fnancial remittances (donations) to adoptees’ surviving relatives. Such practices, we argue, refect those found in other types of transnational families and diasporas.54 Practices that are transnational were described by adoptive parents as ways to connect to adoptees’ birth cultures and to sometimes complement a preexisting familiarity they have with the country and ethnic population from which they adopted. Louise, for example, conveyed that the Chinese cultural activities she introduced to her adopted daughters were “routine” rather than a “special” aspect of their family life. We’re doing this as a family. We wouldn’t ship our kids of and say, “Tat’s your Chinese thing. Tere you go, darling.” . . . We try to make it natural. And that’s why we decided to adopt from China— because it was such a natural thing for our family to do given our preexising contacts. Louise’s emphasis on “natural” activities raises questions about whether she was evoking essentialist beliefs that Chinese children will require Chinese culture, while, in contradiction, constructing “Chineseness” for them through her and her husband’s routine and their established ties to China and to Chinese people and aspects of the Australian Chinese diaspora. In this context, the term natural can also refer to practices that are unforced, particularly in the context of having preexisting interests in China. Her narrative of family sheds light on how she sees adoptees’ links to their culture of birth as something present and active rather than distant and past. Tat outlook is also observed in studies arguing that American families adopting from China constitute a “unique diaspora,”55 with ties also encouraged by Chinese authorities.56 In contrast, some of the adoptive parents expressed feeling that they were “thrown into the deep end.” One parent claimed to need a travel agent with a world map to point out the country from which the couple was adopting. Tose older adoptive parents adopted before expectations of acquiring some cultural knowledge of adoptees’ birth countries became normative in Australia’s adoption procedures.57 Interestingly, adoptive

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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parents’ discourses of multiculturalism were coupled with stories of compensation, motivated by a belief that removing children from their country of birth created a void or loss of some kind in their identities, as also observed in studies of adoptive parents in the United States.58 Beth, for instance, described her investments in transnational related activities as stemming from such feelings: “[Adopted children] didn’t ask for this. We’ve done this, and it may turn out really well, or it may turn out that they might think, ‘Well, we didn’t want to come.’” Multiculturalism in Australia can work to provide points of recognition to the complex migrations of some of its citizens and for some transnationally adoptive families. As discussed in an earlier section of this essay, past generations of adoptees from overseas were encouraged to “assimilate,” but in our current, globalized era, we can see how the term transnational adoption is better suited to signal how these formations of families epitomize those Sassen describes as embedded in various “counter-geographies.”59 Gilmartin elaborates this concept by involving circuits of activities in a globalized world where families are split by migration arising from matters of survival related to economic, political, or cultural hardships and stigma.60 Families that are transnational are argued to create and better maintain links between a “homeland” and “host land” through gestures of compensation and maintaining ties despite and because of such separations, gestures that may be symbolic afliations or involve more tangible practices as part of their ongoing constructions of identities and articulations of belonging.61 Te mobility of transnationally adopted children, it is argued, is also due to migration being forced rather than voluntary or with full agency, and their ongoing sense of belonging is open to being framed and nurtured by adoptive parents in ways that sometimes echo the lives of transmigrants.62 Only one participant spoke negatively about “doing cultural stuf ” related to adoption. An adoptive mother to a Korean-born child, Sally, suggested that she raised her child to feel no diferent from any other Australian, demonstrating a discourse of assimilation that goes against the idea of the country’s national multicultural identity. Sally’s ethical framework aims for inclusion and equality by drawing on discourses of assimilation seemingly out of touch with the multiculturalism argued to be normative for Australia.63 While demonstrating assimilation discourse, Sally also discussed how she collected cultural souvenirs for her adopted child (for example, a hanbok, traditional Korean garb) and was keen on traveling to Korea as a parental obligation if she could aford it. Tus, even as the only adoptive parent that was resistant to expressing a deeper cultural

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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engagement and identifcation with her child’s country of origin, Sally engaged in “symbolic ethnic” and mobility practices of “returning home” as a “transnational pilgrimage” of sorts, albeit at a more tentative and distanced level than was typical of other participants.64 Cosmopolitan Openness

In her study of encounters with diversity, Valentine suggested that cosmopolitanism provides a dynamic, multifaceted process for understanding how people live alongside those who difer from them.65 Ulf Hannerz described the cosmopolitan as someone with “an intellectual and aesthetic stance of openness towards divergent cultural experiences” and who, at minimum, has a “willingness to engage with the other.”66 Skrbiš and Woodward’s study of “ordinary cosmopolitanism” suggested that cosmopolitans “espouse a broadly defned disposition of ‘openness’ towards others, people, things and experiences whose origin is non-local.”67 While the adoptive parents we interviewed engaged in practices comparable to other transnational families, their discourses of familial belonging also drew on identifcations for themselves that were more cosmopolitan than nation-specifc. At the same time, identifcations were hindered by the racialization of both adoptees’ and adoptive parents’ birth countries. Te analysis also shed light on how discourses of cosmopolitanism, such as self-declarations of being “world citizens,” did double work for these parents’ eforts, in doing kinship and discarding the historical baggage of colonialism and racism that complicated celebrations of a multicultural Australia. Put diferently, the “cosmopolitan” openness that adoptive parents can display toward doing “culture work” and in their attempts to recognize “diversity” in their family and their heritages is afected by underlying issues of power. Briggs suggested that cosmopolitanism does not occur on a “level playing feld” for all in terms of class, structural racism, and disparities between the “frst” and “third” world in terms of people’s resources and mobility. Yet he maintained that cosmopolitanism can be a meaningful set of dispositions and processes in the lives of people from various backgrounds, including adoptive parents.68 Te identity discourses of many of the adoptive parents we interviewed clearly echoed the dictum of Diogenes about being “a citizen of the world.”69 A statement by Nel, an adoptive mother of two children from Korea, illustrates the quintessential discourses of cosmopolitanism that she felt comfortable embracing: “I don’t feel a great patriotism to Austra-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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lia. . . . I feel like we’re people of the world.” Similarly, refecting on the impact adoption had on her life, Sandra, an adoptive mother of two children from India, explained, “You become a citizen of the world.” Te sense of ease some participants felt about fexibly identifying with other countries and cultures is seen in Liz’s comments. You feel like you have a real connection to countries where your kids come from. . . . You feel a sense of pride that you have a child from that country. . . . We just feel like we can go and immerse ourselves in other cultures and it isn’t a big deal. Sandra explained that her sense of global belonging was founded on the idea that “everybody loves children,” adding, “I think that you become a part of the parent club rather than anything else.” Emma’s refections illustrated how her sense of personal and familial identity became less bound to one nation and increasingly cosmopolitan. I don’t feel as patriotically Australian as I used to. . . . I think our family proves that the color of a person’s skin simply does not matter. We belong to our families more than we ever belong to a country. Te ways that cosmopolitanism can infuence the relationships, practices, and outlooks in transnationally adoptive families is underexamined in the cosmopolitanism literature.70 Don Weenik argued that families in general are overlooked in cosmopolitanism studies, even though cosmopolitanism can provide insights into cultural complexities, discourses of belonging, and the constraints posed by broader norms in society. We suggest that cosmopolitanism can provide a fruitful lens for understanding how openness to the world, particularly being citizens of the world and comprising a global “parents club,” assists adoptive parents in their eforts to be inclusive of the racial, cultural, and ethnic diversity within their families.71 On the one hand, the priority that participants in our study placed on their family’s personal bonds above belonging exclusively to Australia pushes against essentialist constructions of familial identities as being bound to or rooted in “national soil or in a ‘blood’ connection.”72 On the other hand, as Pnina Werbner states, “global families and trans-national marriages reconfgure the local through global connections, while still being marked by economic class and status.”73 Te familial cosmopolitanism these participants reconstructed in their identities was not accompa-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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nied by deeper refections of their privileged social, racial, cultural, and economic backgrounds. (White) Nationalism

Ralph and Staeheli argue that “social processes of inclusion and exclusion depend critically on the categorization of people as belonging and not belonging.”74 Sometimes, statements of the adoptive parents in our study refected the cosmopolitan openness outlined above. At other times, they slipped over to or were stuck to an assumption that Australian identities are white, fxed, unchangeable, and monocultural which excludes adoptees. Te former outlook can be seen in Val’s statement demonstrating how her relationship to Ethiopia via adoption disrupted the normative, neutral ways she was once able to identify as a white Australian. I would say we’ve become more Ethiopian than Australian.  .  .  . I think it’s opened up my world a lot more, . . . and it makes me think more about the people that I’m living amongst. Te follow-up statement by Bill, Val’s husband, illustrates the latter, exclusionary view of Australianness. I think, until we thought about adoption, we didn’t really realize we had a race or a culture. . . . I’ll always be Australian. I don’t think there’s any way of changing that. But I really like exploring other cultures and the way people live around the world as well. Emma also expressed sentiments of ambivalence or resignation over the possibility that her identity could incorporate ties to both Australia and the nation of her adopted children. Te Ethiopian people we met while in Ethiopia told us we were now part Ethiopian. I certainly felt honored by their generosity in saying this, but I didn’t really feel it for myself. Demonstrating an attempt to expand notions of what “traditional” Australian families are, Liz described the identities of her and her husband, Tony, as “Australian with a cultural twist. . . . Someone described it once as a mixed grill. I thought that was a good expression.” Tis comparison of family identity to a popular meal in Australia made up of a combination

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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of meats that complement each other rather than clash or seem juxtaposed illustrates an interesting attempt to incorporate diversity into a picture of Australian life. But Liz’s phrase “cultural twist” indicates that mixing of cultures is an unusual addition rather than normal. Louise’s description of her family demonstrated how adoptive parents tend to describe their families as a multicultural mix still impacted by certain boundaries. She describes the categories of being Australian and Chinese as partial identities within the family, rather than identities that are fully shared . We’ve become a multicultural family rather than, say, “white with two.” We really feel that we have changed as a family. And our children are somewhat Australian because of us, and we’re part Chinese because of them. Te articulation of Australian national identity by some adoptive parents illustrated its close ties to processes of whiteness as normative rather than being a culture within multicultural Australia. Louise’s statement supports the theoretical proposal that whiteness, as a socially constructed identity, is founded on assuming a position of being normative and universal, as seen in Bill’s observation of not realizing that he and his wife “had a race or a culture” prior to visiting Africa where they became a racial minority. Conclusion

Identity is an ongoing process rather than a presumed category of belonging. Te discourses on which adoptive families drew their eforts to construct and describe their identities as “same yet diferent” and/or “together in diference” ofered a window into the conventions that followed, as well as the complexities and contradictions that arose. Nash argues that although adoptive families are without biological ties, “categories of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ are both mobilized and disrupted” as part of their eforts at “doing kinship.”75 She explains, “Te symbolic power of biological or blood relatedness is not always easily elided. Instead, its signifcance can be reworked . . . by reconfguring what substances and processes mean most in established kinship relations.”76 As we illustrated, the participants in our study described reworking and reconstructing their own identities to create ties to adoptees, ofen emphasizing adoptees’ birth culture as a meaningful aspect of their lives.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Te cosmopolitanism in the lives of these transnationally adoptive parents enabled them to embrace diversity into their own and their family’s narratives of belonging. However, “worldly” identifcations also allowed adopters to detour from teasing out more complicated issues of power in adoption. For instance, speaking about cosmopolitanism as enriching rather than challenging corresponds with a more privileged form that Hannerz argues involves “cultivating a sense of intercultural mastery that one possesses, but is not necessarily possessed by.”77 For adoptive parents in the context of Australian society (in which this study was conducted), the openness to identify openly as a global citizen does not appear to be cut short structurally or more intimately impacted by racist exclusions and disadvantages that nonwhites face. Tis fnding refects Hannerz’s argument that more privileged forms of cosmopolitanism become fostered by “people who can aford to experiment, who do not stand to lose a treasured but threatened uprooted self.”78 For categorizing some of the ways adoptive parents construct identities, cosmopolitan theories do not fall short. Helpful, for instance, is Skrbiš and Woodward’s explanation that cosmopolitanism can be seen as “a set of increasingly available cultural outlooks that individuals selectively deploy to deal with new social conditions.”79 Te new conditions we explored in our study were those faced within families created through transnational adoption. We have begun to shed light on the self-focused and familyfocused relationships individuals can have with cosmopolitan outlooks and experiences. Permeable borders tend to be the hallmark of the global era, providing a fertile ground for new family formations to emerge, including transnational adoptive parenthood. In this essay, we highlighted how having an attitude of openness to “diference” (in the cosmopolitan sense of the word) is a crucial part of constructing and performing this particular type of “global” and “transnational” parenthood. Te diverse identifcations and ties adoptive parents began to feel from adopting and connecting adoptees to their birth culture were commonly situated under an umbrella of being “citizens of the world.” Our study also highlighted how parents who adopt children from other nations are compelled to perform and achieve this stance of openness in a sometimes contradictory and competitive relationship with their own sense of national identity, which, for white adoptive parents, is ofen confated with their ethnic, cultural, and racial identities. Tis analysis contributes to the critically needed body of research on transnationally adoptive parents, particularly those living in Australia,

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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and to studies of families and cosmopolitanism. From it, scholars can draw fruitful insights as to how and why cosmopolitan processes become meaningful for people who are not migrants and do not have marginalized identities and who raise children who are immigrants and whose identities are ofen problematized. Te discussion ofers broader insights for studies of cross-ethnic and interracial partnerships in which one partner might have migrated from overseas and of other families whose members’ have ties that span across two or more countries. We have drawn attention to how transnationally adoptive parents can engage in practices that refect similar emotional and ethical orientations as those found in other transnational families and diasporas, such as viewing cultural and travel practices as necessary compensation for being removed from one’s original country and culture origin. Adoptive parents’ social construction of identity through actively doing cultural work played an important role in dispelling the idea that categories of racial, ethnic, and national identity and cultural practices are somehow innate, racially determined, or unshifing across difering social contexts. Transnational practices ofer a bridge between narrowly bound identities, more refexive types of cosmopolitan openness, and a sense of Australianness that disrupts whiteness rather than upholds it, which can provide strong foundations for allowing transnationally adoptive parents to foster more inclusive constructions of identity and belonging. Insights into these practices and outlooks shed light on how nurturing diversity as a part of Australian life cannot rely on the rhetoric of multiculturalism alone and, instead, requires critical refection on the role that whiteness and colonialism still play in how the nation sees itself and its sense of belonging to the West.

NOTES 1. In this essay, the terms adoptive parents and adopters refer to people who have created families through transnational adoption, also referred to in various research literature as “intercounty adoption” or “international adoption.” We use the term transnational adoption to emphasize certain migration practices of interest. Our research sample consists of white individuals who have adopted “transracially,” that is, across socially constructed categories of “race.” 2. David Eng, “Transnational Adoption and Queer Diasporas,” Social Text 21, no. 3 (2003): 1–37, https://doi.org/10.1215/01642472-21-3_76-1 3. Indigo Willing, “Te Adopted Vietnamese Community: From Fairytales to the Diaspora,” in “Viet Nam: Beyond the Frame,” special issue, Michigan Quarterly Review 43 no. 4 (2004): 648–64. 4. Katrien De Graeve, “Geographies of Migration and Relatedness: Transmigrancy

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

60 | Adoption and Multiculturalism in Open Transnational Adoptive Parenting,” Social and Cultural Geography 16, no. 5 (2015): 522–35. 5. De Graeve, 523. 6. Gill Valentine, “Living with Diference: Refections on Geographies of Encounter,” Progress in Human Geography 32, no. 3 (2008): 323–37. 7. Jessica Walton, “Feeling It : Understanding Korean Adoptees’ Experiences of Embodied Identity,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 36, no. 4 (2015): 395–412. 8. Willing, “Adopted Vietnamese Community.” 9. Kim Gray, “Identity and International Adoptees: A Comparison of the Vietnamese and Korean Adoptee Experience in Australia,” in International Korean Adoption: A Fify-Year History of Policy and Practice, ed. Kathleen Ja Sook Bergquist, Elizabeth Vonk, and Dong Soo Kim (Philadelphia: Haworth, 2007), 237–62 10. Regarding such reifcation, observed in overseas case studies in this collection, see, e.g., Katrien De Graeve “Festive Gatherings and Culture Work in Flemish-Ethiopian Families,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 16 (2013): 548–64; Carina Tigervall and Tobias Hübinette, “Adoption with Complications: Conversations with Adoptees and Adoptive Parents on Everyday Racism and Ethnic Identity,” International Social Work 53 (2010): 489–509. 11. Andrew Jakubowicz, “Anglo-Multiculturalism: Contradictions in the Politics of Cultural Diversity as Risk,” International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 2, no. 3 (2006): 249–66. See also Board of Studies, New South Wales, “A Multicultural History of Australia,” 2018, http://www.multiculturalaustralia.edu.au/history/index.php 12. See Ghassan Hage, “Multiculturalism and White Paranoia in Australia,” JIMI/ RIMT 3, no. 2–4 (2002): 417–37; Walton, “Feeling It.” Patricia Fronek and Laura Briggs, “A Qualitative Exploration of the Adult Intercountry Adoptee Experience in Australia. “Adoption Quarterly 21, no. 3 (2018): 161–81. 13. Jakubowicz, “Anglo-Multiculturalism,” 249–66. See also the discussion of Australian multiculturalism in the introduction to the present collection. 14. An emphasis on cultural diference can also be used to avoid issues of racism, as discussed in Tobias Hübinette and Carina Tigervall, “To Be Non-white in a Colorblind Society: Conversations with Adoptees and Adoptive Parents in Sweden on Everyday Racism,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 30, no. 4 (2009): 335–53. 15. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Adoptions Australia, 2016–17 (Canberra, 2017), https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/adoptions/adoptions-australia-2016-17/ contents/summary; Indigo Willing and Patricia Fronek, “Constructions of Identity and Issues of Race in Transnational Adoption: Te Experiences of Adoptive Parents,” British Journal of Social Work 44 no. 5 (2014): 1129–46. 16. Willing and Fronek, “Constructions of Identity,” 1129–46. 17. Patricia Fronek, “Intercountry Adoption in Australia,” Encyclopedia of Social Work, 2015, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199975839.013.1165; Patricia Fronek, “Intercountry Adoption in Australia: A Natural Evolution or Purposeful Actions,” in Other People’s Children: Adoption in Australia, ed. Ceridwen Spark and Denise Cuthbert (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Press, 2009); Patricia Fronek and Denise Cuthbert, “Te Future of Intercountry Adoption: A Paradigm Shif for Tis Century,” International Journal of Social Welfare 21, no. 2 (2012): 215–24. 18. Patricia Fronek, “Operation Babylif: Advancing Intercountry Adoption in Australia,” Journal of Australian Studies 36, no. 4 (2012): 445–58; Willing, “Adopted Viet-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Cosmopolitanism, Transnationalism, and Racialized Belongings | 61 namese Community”; Indigo Willing, “Constructions of Identity and Belonging in Transnational Adoption: A Qualitative Study of Australian Parents of Children Adopted from Overseas” (PhD diss., University of Queensland, 2010). 19. Richard Weil, “International Adoptions: Te Quiet Migration,” International Migration Review 18, no. 2 (1984): 276–93. 20. Denise Cuthbert and Patricia Fronek, “Perfecting Adoption? Refecting on the Rise of Commercial Ofshore Surrogacy and Family Formations in Australia,” in Families, Policy and the Law: Selected Essays on Contemporary Issues for Australia, ed. Alan Hayes and Daryl Higgins (Melbourne: Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2014), 55– 66; Fronek, “Operation Babylif”; Ceridwen Spark and Denise Cuthbert, eds., Other People’s Children: Adoption in Australia (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009); Jon Telfer, “Te Imagined Child: Ambiguity and Agency in Australian Intercountry Adoption,” Australian Journal of Anthropology 14, no. 1 (2003): 72–79. 21. Indigo Willing, “Te Celebrity Adoptions Phenomenon: Emerging Critiques from ‘Ordinary’ Adoptive Parents,” in Other People’s Children: Adoption in Australia, ed. Ceridwen Spark and Denise Cuthbert (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Press, 2009), 241–56. 22. Fronek, “Intercountry Adoption” (2009); Willing, “Celebrity Adoptions.” 23. Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society (Annandale, New South Wales: Routledge in association with Pluto, 1998); Aileen Moreton-Robinson, “Whiteness, Epistemology and Indigenous Representation,” in Whitening Race: Essays in Social and Cultural Critique, ed. Aileen Moreton-Robinson by (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2005), 75–88. 24. Hage, “Multiculturalism and White Paranoia,” 419. 25. Michele Lobo, “Everyday Multiculturalism: Catching the Bus in Darwin, Australia,” Social and Cultural Geography 15, no. 7 (2014): 714–29. 26. While the term birth cultures is problematic, its use is common in the feld of adoption and refers to socially constructed cultural, ethnic, and racialized practices and identities associated with the adoptees’ countries and cultures of origin. See De Graeve (2015); Toby Alice Volkman, ed., Cultures of Transnational Adoption (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); Barbara Yngvesson, “Placing the ‘Gif’ Child in Transnational Adoption,” in “Nonbiological Parenting,” special issue, Law and Society 36, no. 2 (2002): 227–56. 27. Sara Dorow and Amy Swifen, “Blood and Desire: Te Secret of Heteronormativity in Adoption Narratives of Culture,” American Ethnologist 36, no. 3 (2009): 563–73. 28. Herbert Gans, “Symbolic Ethnicity: Te Future of Ethnic Groups in America,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 2, no. 7 (1979): 6–20; Michael Pickering, “Racial Stereotyping,” in Social Identities: Multidisciplinary Approaches, ed. G. Taylor and S. Spencer (London: Routledge, 2004), 91–106. 29. Paula Ebron, Performing Africa (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 23. 30. Luisa Veronis, “Strategic Spatial Essentialism: Latin Americans’ Real and Imagined Geographies of Belonging in Toronto,” Social and Cultural Geography 8, no. 3 (2007): 455–73. 31. Catherine Nash, “Geographies of Relatedness,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30, no. 4 (2005), 453. 32. Nash, 453. 33. Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1996).

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

62 | Adoption and Multiculturalism 34. Ruth Frankenberg, Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999); Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1994); Emma Kowal, “Te Stigma of White Privilege,” Cultural Studies 25, no. 33 (2011): 313–33; Maggie Walter, Sandra Tylor, and Daphne Habibis, “How White Is Social Work in Australia?,” Australian Social Work 64, no. 1 (2011): 6–19. 35. Allen P. Fisher, “A Critique of the Portrayal of Adoption in College Texts and Readers on Families, 1981–2001,” Family Relations 52 (2003): 154–60. 36. Rhacel Salazer Parreñas, Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2005); Zlatko Skrbiš, “From Migrants to Pilgrim Tourists: Diasporic Imagining and Visits to Medjugorje,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33, no. 2 (2007): 313–29; Zlatko Skrbiš, “Transnational Families: Teorising Migration, Emotions and Belonging,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 29, no. 3 (2008): 231–46. 37. Hübinette and Tigervall, “To Be Non-white.”; Jessica Walton, “More Tan a Korean Adoptee: Making Sense of Identity and Adoption in South Korea and Adoptive Countries,” in Other People’s Children: Adoption in Australia. ed. Ceridwen Spark and Denise Cuthbert (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Press, 2009), 197–206; Walton, “Feeling it”; Willing, “Adopted Vietnamese Community”; Willing, Fronek and Cuthbert, “Review of Sociological Literature on Intercountry Adoption.” Social Policy and Society 11, no. 4 (2012): 465–79; Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin, eds., Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption (Cambridge, MA: South End, 2006). 38. Sara Dorow, Transnational Adoption: A Cultural Economy of Race, Gender, and Kinship (New York: New York University Press, 2006); Karen Dubinsky, Babies without Borders: Adoption and Migration across the Americas (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010); Heather Jacobson, Culture Keeping: White Mothers, International Adoption, and the Negotiation of Family Diference (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008); Karen Miller-Loessi and Zeynep Kilic, “A Unique Diaspora? Te Case of Adopted Girls from the People’s Republic of China,” Diaspora 2 (2001): 243–60; Volkman, Cultures of Transnational Adoption; Barbara Yngvesson and Maureen Mahoney, “As One Should, Ought and Wants to Be: Belonging and Authenticity in Identity Narratives,” Teory, Culture and Society 17, no. 6 (2000): 77–110; Signe Howell, Te Kinning of Foreigners: Transnational Adoption in a Global Perspective (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006); Hübinette and Tigervall, “To Be Non-white”; Diana Marre and Laura Briggs, eds., International Adoption: Global Inequalities and the Circulation of Children (New York: New York University Press, 2009). 39. Richard Lee, “Te Transracial Adoption Paradox: History, Research, and Counselling Implications of Cultural Socialization,” Counselling Psychologist 31, no. 6 (2003): 711–44; Willing, “Adopted Vietnamese Community.” 40. Jacobson, Culture Keeping. 41. Jacobson, 2. 42. Jacobson, 5. 43. Toby Volkman, quoted in De Graeve, “Geographies of Migration,” 528. 44. De Graeve, “Geographies of Migration,” 528, 524. 45. Willing and Fronek, “Constructions of Identity.” 46. Dorow, Transnational Adoption.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Cosmopolitanism, Transnationalism, and Racialized Belongings | 63 47. Spark and Cuthbert, Other People’s Children; Telfer, “Imagined Child”; Willing, Cutherbert and Fronek “Review of Sociological Literature.” 48. In addition to the studies cited in the preceding note, see Jacobsen, Culture Keeping. 49. Hage, White Nation; Jessica Walton et al., “Whiteness and National Identity: Teacher Discourses in Australian Primary Schools.” Race Ethnicity and Education 21 (2018): 1—16, http10.1080/13613324.2016.1195357 50. Five participants also described themselves as having “mixed” or migrant heritage. To maintain confdentiality, individual demographic data are not reported, and all participants are referred to using pseudonyms. 51. John T. E. Richardson, Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods for Psychology and the Social Sciences (Leicester: BPS Books, 1996), 175. 52. Barney G. Glaser and Anselm L. Strauss, Te Discovery of Grounded Teory (Chicago: Strategies for Qualitative Research, 1967). 53. Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke, “Using Tematic Analysis in Psychology,” Qualitative Research Psychology 3, no. 2 (2006): 77–101. 54. Ebron, Performing Africa; Gans, “Symbolic Ethnicity”; Parreñas, Children of Global Migration. 55. Miller-Loessi and Kilic, “Unique Diaspora?” 56. Dorow, Transnational Adoption; Miller-Loessi and Kilic, “Unique Diaspora?” 57. Telfer, “Imagined Child”; Willing and Fronek, “Constructing Identities”. 58. Jacobson, Culture Keeping. 59. Saskia Sassen, “Women’s Burden: Counter-Geographies of Globalization and the Feminization of Survival,” Journal of International Afairs 53, no. 22 (2000): 523. 60. Mary Gilmartin, “Migration, Identity and Belonging,” Geography Compass 2, no. 6 (2008): 1842. 61. Skrbiš, “Transnational Families.” 62. De Graeve, “Geographies of Migration”; Tobias Hübinette, “From Orphan Trains to Babylifs: Colonial Trafcking, Empire Building, and Social Engineering,” in Trenka, Oparah, and Shin, Outsiders Within, 139–50. 63. Judith Brett and Anthony Moran, “Cosmopolitan Nationalism: Ordinary People Making Sense of Diversity,” Nations and Nationalism 17, no. 1 (2011): 188–206. 64. Gans, “Symbolic Ethnicity”; Skrbiš, “From Migrants to Pilgrim Tourists”; Skrbiš, “Transnational Families.” 65. Valentine, “Living with Diference. 66. Ulf Hannerz, “Cosmopolitans and Locals in World Culture,” Teory, Culture and Society 7, no. 2–3 (1990): 209. 67. Zlatko Skrbiš and Ian Woodward, “Te Ambivalence of Ordinary Cosmopolitanism: Investigating the Limits of Cosmopolitan Openness,” Sociological Review 55, no. 4 (2007): 730. 68. Charles L. Briggs, “Genealogies of Race and Culture and the Failure of Vernacular Cosmopolitanisms: Rereading Franz Boas and W. E. B. Du Bois,” Public Culture 17, no. 1 (2005): 92. 69. Cf. Martha Nussbaum, “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism,” Boston Review 19, no. 5 (1994): 3–34. 70. Willing, “Constructions of Identity.” 71. Don Weenink, “Cosmopolitanism as a Form of Capital: Parents Preparing Teir Children for a Globalizing World,” Sociology 42, no. 6 (2008): 1089–106.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

64 | Adoption and Multiculturalism 72. Yngvesson and Mahoney, “As One Should,” 77. 73. Pnina Werbner, “Global Pathways: Working Class Cosmopolitans and the Creation of Transnational Ethnic Worlds.” Social Anthropology 7, no. 1 (1999): 17. 74. David Ralph and Linda Staeheli, “Home and Migration: Mobilities, Belongings and Identities,” Geography Compass 5, no. 7 (2011): 523. 75. Nash, “Geographies of Relatedness,” 452. 76. Nash, 452. 77. Skrbiš and Woodward, “Ambivalence of Ordinary Cosmopolitanism,” 732; see also Hannerz, “Cosmopolitans and Locals,” 240; Dorow and Swifen, “Blood and Desire.” 78. Hannerz, “Cosmopolitans and Locals,” 243; Ulf Hannerz, Cultural Complexity (New York: Colombia University Press, 1992), 252. 79. Skrbiš and Woodward, “Ambivalence of Ordinary Cosmopolitanism,” 745. REFERENCES Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Adoptions Australia, 2016–17. Canberra, 20 7. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/adoptions/adoptions-australia-2016-17/contents/ summary Board of Studies, New South Wales. “A Multicultural History of Australia.” 20 8. http:// www.multiculturalaustralia.edu.au/history/index.php Bhabha, Homi K. Te Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 994. Braun, Virginia, and Victoria Clarke. “Using Tematic Analysis in Psychology.” Qualitative Research Psychology 3, no. 2 (2006): 77– 0 . Brett, Judith, and Anthony Moran. “Cosmopolitan Nationalism: Ordinary People Making Sense of Diversity.” Nations and Nationalism 7, no. (20 ): 88–206. Briggs, Charles L. “Genealogies of Race and Culture and the Failure of Vernacular Cosmopolitanisms: Rereading Franz Boas and W. E. B. Du Bois.” Public Culture 7, no. (2005): 75– 00. Briggs, Laura. Somebody’s Children: Te Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 20 2. Cuthbert, Denise, and Patricia Fronek. “Perfecting Adoption? Refections on the Rise of Commercial Ofshore Surrogacy and Family Formation in Australia.” In Families, Policy and the Law: Selected Essays on Contemporary Issues for Australia, edited by Alan Hayes and Daryl Higgins, 55–66. Melbourne: Australian Institute of Family Studies, 20 4. De Graeve, Katrien. “Festive Gatherings and Culture Work in Flemish-Ethiopian Families.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 6 (20 3): 548–64. De Graeve, Katrien. “Geographies of Migration and Relatedness: Transmigrancy in Open Transnational Adoptive Parenting.” Social and Cultural Geography 6, no. 5 (20 5): 522–35. Dorow, Sara. Transnational Adoption: A Cultural Economy of Race, Gender, and Kinship. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Dorow, Sara, and Amy Swifen. “Blood and Desire: Te Secret of Heteronormativity in Adoption Narratives of Culture.” American Ethnologist 36, no. 3 (2009): 563–73.

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66 | Adoption and Multiculturalism Building, and Social Engineering.” In Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption, edited by Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin, 39–50. Cambridge, MA: South End, 2006. Hübinette, Tobias. “Post-racial Utopianism, White Color-Blindness and ‘Te Elephant in the Room’: Racial Issues for Transnational Adoptees of Color.” In Intercountry Adoption: Policies, Practices, and Outcomes, edited by Judith L. Gibbons and Karen Smith Rotabi, 22 –29. Aldershot: Ashgate, 20 2. Hübinette, Tobias, and Carina Tigervall. “To Be Non-white in a Colorblind Society: Conversations with Adoptees and Adoptive Parents in Sweden on Everyday Racism.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 30, no. 4 (2009): 335–53. Ignatiev, Noel. How the Irish Became White. New York: Routledge, 996. Jacobson, Heather. Culture Keeping: White Mothers, International Adoption, and the Negotiation of Family Diference. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008. Jakubowicz, Andrew. “Anglo-Multiculturalism: Contradictions in the Politics of Cultural Diversity as Risk.” International Journal of Media and Cultural Politics 2, no. 3 (2006): 249–66. Kowal, Emma. “Te Stigma of White Privilege.” Cultural Studies 25, no. 3 (20 ): 3 3–33. Lee, Richard M. “Te Transracial Adoption Paradox: History, Research, and Counseling Implications of Cultural Socialization.” Counselling Psychologist 3 , no. 6 (2003): 7 – 44. Lobo, Michele. “Everyday Multiculturalism: Catching the Bus in Darwin, Australia.” Social and Cultural Geography 5, no. 7 (20 4): 7 4–29. Lincoln, Yvonna, and Egon Guba. Efective Evaluation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 983. Malcomson, S. L. “Te Varieties of Cosmopolitan Experience.” In Cosmopolitics: Tinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, edited by Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins, 233– 45. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 998. Marre, Diana, and Laura Briggs. International Adoption: Global Inequalities and the Circulation of Children. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Miller-Loessi, Karen, and Zeynep Kilic. “A Unique Diaspora? Te Case of Adopted Girls from the People’s Republic of China.” Diaspora 0, no. 2 (200 ): 243–60. Moosnick, Nora Rose. Adopting Maternity: White Women Who Adopt Transracially or Transnationally. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004. Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. “Whiteness, Epistemology and Indigenous Representation.” In Whitening Race: Essays in Social and Cultural Critique, edited by Aileen MoretonRobinson, 75–88. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2005. Nash, Catherine. “Geographies of Relatedness.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30, no. 4 (2005): 449–62. Nussbaum, Martha. “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism.” Boston Review 9, no. 5 ( 994): 3–34. Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 994. Parreñas, Rhacel Salazar. Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005. Pickering, Michael. “Racial Stereotyping.” In Social Identities: Multidisciplinary Approaches, edited by Gary Taylor and Steve Spencer, 9 – 06. London: Routledge, 2004. Ralph, David, and Lynn Staeheli. “Home and Migration: Mobilities, Belongings and Identities.” Geography Compass 5, no. 7 (20 ): 5 7–30. Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Cosmopolitanism, Transnationalism, and Racialized Belongings | 67 Richardson, John T. E. Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods for Psychology and the Social Sciences. Leicester: BPS Books, 996. Robbins, Bruce. “Introduction, Part : Actually Existing Cosmopolitanism.” In Cosmopolitics: Tinking and Feeling beyond the Nation, edited by Bruce Robins and Pheng Cheah, – 9. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 998. Rutherford, Jonathan. Identity: Community, Culture, Diference. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 990. Sassen, Saskia. “Women’s Burden: Counter-Geographies of Globalization and the Feminization of Survival.” Journal of International Afairs 53, no. 2 (2000): 503–24. Skrbiš, Zlatko. “From Migrants to Pilgrim Tourists: Diasporic Imagining and Visits to Medjugorje.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 33, no. 2 (2007): 3 3–29. Skrbiš, Zlatko. “Transnational Families: Teorising Migration, Emotions and Belonging.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 29, no. 3 (2008): 23 –46. Skrbiš, Zlatko, and Ian Woodward. “Te Ambivalence of Ordinary Cosmopolitanism: Investigating the Limits of Cosmopolitan Openness.” Sociological Review 55, no. 4 (2007): 730–47. Spark, Ceridwen, and Denise Cuthbert, eds. Other People’s Children: Adoption in Australia. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009. Telfer, Jon. “Te Imagined Child: Ambiguity and Agency in Australian Inter-country Adoption.” Australian Journal of Anthropology 4, no. (2003): 72–79. Tigervall, Carina, and Tobias Hübinette. “Adoption with Complications: Conversations with Adoptees and Adoptive Parents on Everyday Racism and Ethnic Identity.” International Social Work 53 (20 0): 489–509. Trenka, Jane Jeong, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin, eds. Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption. Cambridge, MA: South End, 2006. Valentine, Gill. “Living with Diference: Refections on Geographies of Encounter.” Progress in Human Geography 32, no. 3 (2008): 323–37. Veronis, Luisa. “Strategic Spatial Essentialism: Latin Americans’ Real and Imagined Geographies of Belonging in Toronto.” Social and Cultural Geography 8, no. 3 (2007): 455–73. Volkman, Toby Alice, ed. Cultures of Transnational Adoption. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. Walter, Maggie, Sandra Taylor, and Daphne Habbis. “How White Is Social Work in Australia?” Australian Social Work 64, no. (20 ): 6– 9. Walton, Jessica. “Feeling It: Understanding Korean Adoptees’ Experiences of Embodied Identity.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 36, no. 4 (20 5): 395–4 2. Walton, Jessica. “More Tan a Korean Adoptee: Making Sense of Identity and Adoption in South Korea and Adoptive Countries.” In Other People’s Children: Adoption in Australia, edited by Ceridwen Spark and Denise Cuthbert, 97–206. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Press, 2009. Walton, Jessica, Naomi Priest, Emma Kowal, Fiona White, Brandi Fox, and Yin Paradies. “Whiteness and National Identity: Teacher Discourses in Australian Primary Schools.” Race and Ethnicity Education 2 (20 8): 32–47. Weenink, Don. “Cosmopolitanism as a Form of Capital: Parents Preparing Teir Children for a Globalizing World.” Sociology 42, no. 6 (2008): 089– 06. Weil, Richard H. “International Adoptions: Te Quiet Migration.” International Migration Review 8, no. 2 ( 984): 276–93. Werbner, Pnina. “Global Pathways: Working Class Cosmopolitans and the Creation of Transnational Ethnic Worlds.” Social Anthropology 7, no. ( 999): 7–35. Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

68 | Adoption and Multiculturalism Willing, Indigo. “Te Adopted Vietnamese Community: From Fairytales to the Diaspora.” In “Viet Nam: Beyond the Frame,” special issue, Michigan Quarterly Review 43, no. 4 (2004): 648–64. Willing, Indigo. “Te Celebrity Adoptions Phenomenon: Emerging Critiques from ‘Ordinary’ Adoptive Parents.” In Other People’s Children: Adoption in Australia, edited by Ceridwen Spark and Denise Cuthbert, 24 –56. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Press, 2009. Willing, Indigo. “Constructions of Identity and Belonging in Transnational Adoption: A Qualitative Study of Australian Parents of Children Adopted from Overseas.” PhD diss., University of Queensland, 20 0. Willing, Indigo, and Patricia Fronek. “Constructing Identities and Issues of Race in Transnational Adoption: Te Experiences of Adoptive Parents.” British Journal of Social Work 44, no. 5 (20 4): 29–46. Willing, Indigo, Patricia Fronek, and Denise Cuthbert. “Review of Sociological Literature on Intercountry Adoption.” Social Policy and Society , no. 4 (20 2): 465–79. Yngvesson, Barbara. “Placing the ‘Gif’ Child in Transnational Adoption.” In “Nonbiological Parenting,” special issue, Law and Society 36, no. 2 (2002): 227–56. Yngvesson, Barbara, and Maureen Mahoney. “As One Should, Ought and Wants to Be: Belonging and Authenticity in Identity Narratives,” Teory, Culture and Society 7, no. 6 (2000): 77– 0.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Reunions with Siblings in Search Memoirs across Cultures Margaret Homans

When adoptees search for their birth families, they are typically looking for their birth parents. For example, in advertisements for a recent discussion on birth parent searches for adoptees from China, no mention was made of any other family members.1 Searches tend to focus on parents, specifcally on mothers, for a variety of reasons. Whatever traceable records may survive most likely memorialize the moments of birth and of relinquishment, perhaps with records of a stay in a hospital or unwed mothers’ home or of a “fnding place.” Moreover, adult adoptees are likely to imagine the link to their birth mother as the most signifcant and enduring of all original family ties, perhaps because Western theories of familial attachment derived from psychoanalysis put the child’s romance with the parents permanently at the center of the child’s emotional life.2 Yet such searches ofen lead to disappointment, whether because the birth parents are untraceable or lost to ill health or early death or because, when found, they do not live up to the searcher’s hopes for meaningful connection. In the case of transnational adoptions, regardless of whether the adoptee has been raised with knowledge about his or her country of origin, barriers of language and of cultural and class diference can create signifcant obstacles. Generational diferences with regard to gender can trouble such reunions in situations where the parents’ lives have been constrained by gender ideologies that their children do not share. Nonetheless, ofen to the searcher’s surprise, the discovery of birth siblings can provide unanticipated and welcome compensation for such disappointments. Less emotionally fraught than parent-child ties (generally, the siblings did not relinquish the searcher) and aided by generational commonalities and the erosion of local traditions and language barriers 69 Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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by Anglophone global modernization, relationships with birth siblings sometimes emerge as the best or even the only source of genuine birth family connection. Siblings ofen share assumptions about gender equality to which the parents do not subscribe, and siblings may share a multicultural global ethos that normalizes transnational adoption and can ease the experience of cross-cultural (re)connection. Tis essay investigates the repeated contrastive pattern of parent and sibling reunions in search memoirs by adoptees with birth families in Taiwan, Korea, and Nigeria and, briefy, in emergent writing about reunions in China; it analyzes, in the context of other losses and disappointments, these memoirs’ representations of the richness and promise of recovered sibling birth relationships. If searching for birth parents is about the endeavor to reconstruct an adoptee’s past, building a relationship with siblings can be about creating a new future. The Language of Blood and Fugitive Visions

In my previous writing about Jane Jeong Trenka’s Te Language of Blood (2003) and Mei-Ling Hopgood’s Lucky Girl (2009), I focused on those memoirs’ intensely moving accounts of each adult adoptee’s difculty establishing or maintaining a meaningful relationship with her rediscovered birth mother.3 Both mothers had been physically and emotionally abused in the past and, despite the lessening of the poverty that had exacerbated the abuse, still sufered from the traumatic circumstances that led to the relinquishment of their daughters long ago. In Trenka’s memoir of returning to Korea, the abusive father is long gone, and mother and daughter establish a deep rapport. But the unboundedness of the relation initially makes Trenka uncomfortable, and most of the time Trenka has lef with her mother is spent caring for her physically as she sufers and dies of a cancer caused, Trenka suggests, by her years of chronic sufering. In Hopgood’s memoir, her Taiwanese birth mother’s ill treatment at the hands of her domineering birth father continues in the present and seems to have lef her mother’s mind confused and scrambled; Hopgood never quite connects with her. In both narratives, the birth mother is associated with the sensorium of babyhood: intimate touch, the taste and smell of food (sometimes to excess), speechlessness (exaggerated, in both cases, by the lack of a shared language), and irrationality. With varying degrees of ambivalence on the

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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part of these adult daughters—sophisticated and highly educated American artists, scholars, and writers—both mother and daughter are thrown back to the primal scene of a brief and truncated babyhood. Yet, in both memoirs, these anachronistic intensities are counterpointed by the active presence of siblings—specifcally sisters—whose modernity, competence, and articulateness contrast with the mother’s inaccessibility and create entirely new possibilities for relationship, even if each returning adoptee at frst has eyes only for her mother. Trenka’s account of her frst meeting with members of her birth family—while on a homeland tour for adoptees, she arranged to meet them at the airport in Seoul—sets the pattern for this contrast. For her birth mother, who “couldn’t stop crying,” the meeting is a long-anticipated reunion with the baby daughter “she never wanted to give away in the frst place.”4 Trenka says she can “feel her emotions now, without language.” Of riding on a bus together with her mother to the tourist hotel, an hour-long journey in the dark, Trenka recalls, She clutched my hand tightly and didn’t let go. Tere was nothing we could say to each other, since I spoke no Korean and she spoke no English. So she held my hand, and all I could think about was how hot my hand was. . . . In my memory we are suspended together in the blackness, all by ourselves, with nothing to say, no words to say it.5 Te next day, Umma (Korean for “mom”) violates her daughter’s boundaries by intrusively visiting the hotel with “plastic bags crammed full of tomatoes and watermelon—far more than I could ever eat.”6 Yet Trenka’s reunion with her birth family begins not with Umma’s timeless, inchoate embrace but, rather, with technologically mediated communications with Trenka’s older sister, who uses the fax machine at her ofce, the Industrial Bank of Korea, to arrange the meeting. Of frst meeting her sister at the airport, Trenka writes, A beautiful woman in a white pantsuit—she was jaw-droppingly beautiful—rushed toward me. “I am Eun-Mi!” my sister exclaimed and grabbed my arm, pulling me torso-frst toward my family, all the while bouncing/shuffing in that urban Korean woman’s walk, the Seoulite Shufe, the result of wearing very, very fashionable high heels.7

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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In contrast to Umma’s warm, weeping body, apprehended principally by touch, Eun-Mi’s body is shaped by modern urban technoculture and is an object of visual appreciation and potential identifcation (Trenka has just described her own efort to apply makeup afer the lengthy plane ride). Efcient and English-speaking, Eun-Mi, with her rapid and purposeful actions, stands in contrast to Umma’s wordlessness, passivity, and useless gestures. Teir generational diference is also a class diference that links Trenka more to Eun-Mi than to her mother: Umma, impoverished when her children were young, still makes her living cleaning ofce buildings. In the schema David Eng lays out for understanding Deann Borshay Liem’s apprehension of her birth and adoptive mothers in her flm First Person Plural (2000), in which the birth mother also relates to her daughter chiefy by touch and tears, Umma would be the preoedipal mother, and Trenka’s older sister would inhabit the domain of the symbolic.8 Tis pattern of contrasts continues throughout Trenka’s reunion narrative. Whereas Trenka communicates with Eun-Mi in English and is shown doing so in an extended scene of shopping and bargaining for gifs, Umma performs her grief-flled story of maternal loss “in charades” and in a “river of words I could not understand.”9 While Eun-Mi’s English is utilitarian, Trenka focuses on the physical characteristics of her mother’s spoken Korean: Umma holds onto her strong consonants “for longer than anyone I’ve ever heard. . . . She was a one-woman theater, . . . full of fre and hot red pepper paste.”10 Umma’s body wordlessly communicates maternal love and sufering, as Trenka narrates: “She showed me her breasts to tell me that she loved me and had nursed me. I touched her old woman’s depleted breasts, as she asked. Touch me here, where I gave myself to you. I made you with my own body, she seemed to say.”11 Trenka writes that the sight of her mother’s disfguring scars and her mother’s stories of hardship and sacrifce “worked their way through my skin and into my blood”: Umma’s language is principally semiotic, and for Trenka, it is somatic in its efects.12 When Trenka fnally visits Umma at home, Umma insists on bathing Trenka, scrubbing her all over, as one would a baby, in “water [that] is warm as birthwater.”13 Her hand in Umma’s, Trenka sleeps on the foor close to Umma and her younger sister Myoung-Hee, “all sleeping together in the breath’s rhythm: bliss.”14 Trenka and Umma continue to relive her babyhood together. Umma becomes all the more sheer body when her cancer, a brain tumor, shows itself in a sudden collapse and complete paralysis of her lef side; she becomes a helpless, heavy weight others must lif. In contrast,

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Eun-Mi, summoned by Myoung-Hee’s telephone call, “snaps into her very useful oldest sibling behavior.”15 “Unfappable,” the center of a busy household in a suburb an hour away (where she and her husband run an electronics and appliance store), Eun-Mi organizes her young children, husband, and mother-in-law to respond to the crisis. (Trenka details this busy scene even though she was not in Korea at the time.) When Eun-Mi and her husband arrive, Eun-Mi makes the decision to take Umma to the hospital and, dressed “in big wedge heels and a tweed suit” for work at the bank, “carries Umma piggyback to the minivan.”16 Eun-Mi activates her international network of friends to get a fuent English speaker (in Germany) to convey the news to Trenka and her sister Carol (her biological sister, adopted at the same time and by the same family) in the United States. When Trenka returns to Korea for this emergency, she and her mother still communicate principally by touch: camped out now with her sisters in the hospital, Trenka gives Umma massages and learns her naked body with the same intimacy with which a mother learns her child’s. Tis bodily communication is the “language of blood” in the title of Trenka’s book. As their mother fades into her pain and fever, EunMi assumes the position of “the new matriarch,” seeming “to grow in seriousness and duty.” Trenka explains, “My big sister knew how to talk with the doctors and the guests, how to keep Umma as comfortable as possible. Her words and her actions were flled with grace; the only tears she shed were outside Umma’s room, her face turned toward the wall.”17 In contrast to Eun-Mi’s control, abstraction, and eloquence, Trenka records her own lack of words, her desperate emotions, and the physicality of her care: “Feed you. Tell you to swallow. Ten pound you on the back when you choked. . . . I remember the sof, sagging skin on your hand, your brittle hair, the way your sweat soaked into your pillow.”18 In these scenes, Trenka emphasizes the likeness, even interchangeability, of her body and her mother’s as they exchange the roles of mother and baby. Trenka has assumed the role of caregiver, but one day, in her delirium, Umma strokes her daughter’s hair and calls her ipun eggi (pretty baby), going back, in her mind, to her daughter’s birth. Trenka recalls of this incident, “I have never felt so wanted or loved.”19 Later, having decided to return to the United States, Trenka enlists a translator to convey her last words to Umma, thinking that Umma, too, must have had many parting words for her young daughters before putting them on the plane long ago.20 Te emotional center of the book is clearly Trenka’s complex identifcation, love, and mourning for Umma. Yet outside this dyad, Eun-Mi

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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remains a beacon, separate and necessary. Having orchestrated a difcult dinner outing to the beach with her children, sisters, and dying mother, Eun-Mi decides—of all things—to buy freworks. It was her indomitable spirit that I saw light the sky that night, streaking up and then showering down, her way of being joyful despite bearing scars on her body even thicker than Umma’s. Nothing—not our father’s abuse, not poverty, not the indiference of those who allowed her to grow up without innocence—could ever extinguish the kind of beauty and courage that is the essence of Eun-Mi, my elder sister.21 Some brief scenes following this illumination confrm that the sisters will remain a family even afer Umma is gone. Just before Trenka’s departure, the three sisters stay up late talking about men. Trenka wants to break her habit of returning to abusive men, a habit that unites her with Umma, who could not leave her husband. Eun-Mi, who “tries to rely on her husband for nothing” and who desperately urged her mother to leave her abuser, helps Trenka to understand the value of difering from Umma even while loving her.22 Te narrative loses sight of Eun-Mi and Myoung-Hee for a while, as Trenka, back in the United States (with a better boyfriend), struggles both to grieve Umma’s death and to hold onto their identifcation with each other, as well as to come to terms with her adoptive parents’ coldness and rejection. When Trenka later makes plans for a week’s visit to Korea with her now husband, Eun-Mi responds with an elaborate itinerary, invading Trenka’s time as Umma once did, but with an orderly timetable and without the dripping bags of fruit. Eun-Mi has indeed taken over as the matriarch, but with a diference. Te Korean sisters and Eun-Mi’s children speak more English now, Trenka speaks more Korean, and Trenka is able to invite them to visit the United States. Te memoir’s closing reverie—of the writer joyously taking fight hand in hand with her own daughter and with Umma—is credited to the ever-competent Eun-Mi: “Eun-Mi’s instructions were to have an eggi and then come back to Korea. Mark and I think it’s crazy to bring an infant on a trip so long, but we know that EunMi would do it, and she’d do it in high heels, too.”23 Umma remains the emotional center of Trenka’s melancholic dreams, yet it is Eun-Mi who keeps the idea of family moving forward. Eun-Mi’s role in Trenka’s story is contingent on global modernization’s erosion of Confucian and specifcally Korean family traditions,

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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with their emphasis on hierarchies of gender and age and their insistence that married women belong to the husband’s family.24 Although Confucian respect for elders survives in Trenka’s emphasis on birth order, and although it appears that Eun-Mi lives with or near her mother-in-law in accord with the Confucian pattern, Eun-Mi breaks tradition in devoting so much attention to her natal family. While Umma could never leave her abusive husband, Eun-Mi’s freewheeling attitude toward her husband and his family (including enlisting her mother-in-law to help in Umma’s emergency) mark her departures from Confucian family practices. Tese departures go hand in hand with her employment outside the family home and her growing mastery of global English. According to scholars Miai Sung and Jaerim Lee, the weakening of a married woman’s ties to her husband’s family enables the deepening of her intimacy with her own sisters.25 Although Trenka bitterly resents her own loss of fuency in Korean language and traditions, she is only able to recover an enduring family relation because those traditions have lost some of their centrality for her sister. Te implied promise that the forward-thinking sister will continue to provide an upbeat alternative to the lost mother is not wholly borne out in Trenka’s second memoir, Fugitive Visions (2009), written long afer Umma’s death and afer Trenka had been living alone in Seoul for three years. In that book, Trenka occasionally mentions her sisters but focuses on the community of returned adoptees in South Korea, the alienation they share from both their adoptive and their birth cultures, and her own personal history (including divorce) that prompted her to make a life among them. She references her sisters chiefy as conveyors of the pressure she feels from all native Koreans to perfect her knowledge of Korean language. Eun Kyung Min’s recent history of Korean ambivalence toward English, as the language both of colonial subjugation and of cosmopolitan modernity, highlights Trenka’s painful ambivalence in Fugitive Visions: Trenka’s English fuency estranges her from her family and birth culture, even as it ironically enables her to earn an easy living as a teacher and to “pass as an elite, globalized Korean.”26 Although noting that Eun-Mi “tries to understand my discomfort intellectually,” Trenka feels unwelcome, culturally foreign, and “unreal” in Korea, acknowledging that all her relatives “are disappointed that I’m not learning more quickly.”27 She feels happy at the country house of her half brother, but only because it was their mother’s home and is full of her “traces.”28 Trenka groups herself among returned adoptees who are “homeless, almost without nationality and with only thin traces of family remaining.”29 She annoys her sisters, mak-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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ing them cry by asking them to recall “the past that they have tried so hard to forget.”30 In a fantasy sequence near the end of the book, she imagines her life as if she were “fully integrated into Korean society,” expecting that she would “call my sisters every day and  .  .  . chat about domestic life and . . . meet for lunch once a month,” engaging in the kind of nonhierarchical family intimacy that Sung and Lee report is on the rise but that Trenka evidently has not achieved.31 Trenka comments that the transnationalism that is “supposed to look like freedom” resulted, for her, in “sisters trying to rebuild their relationship afer being unwillingly separated.”32 Shifing from the primarily personal account of trauma in Language of Blood to a more public and political discourse, Trenka’s second book forcefully argues against transnational adoption, showing that it is not the fulfllment of a cosmopolitan dream but, rather, the enduringly violent consequence of US military occupation.33 Yet, at the book’s end, she describes the Korea she loves best as culturally transnational and cosmopolitan: “I love the Korea of my friends, the Korea where kimchi is stashed inside the fridge, and salty black Danish candy is stashed on top of it. . . . I love my Korea, where Buddhist monks call upon the power of the mountain to improve their pool and Ping-Pong games.”34 In the acknowledgments printed at the back of the book, Trenka saves for last her “sincerest thanks and enduring love” for her brother and sisters, “for your courage in welcoming me home and in acknowledging me as a sister.”35 She wants it known that if, in her return, she has had some success in creating a transnational life, her siblings have played a key role. Lucky Girl

Whereas the reunion sections of Trenka’s Te Language of Blood center on her tie to and loss of her mother, with her sisters playing a contrasting, if secondary, role, Mei-Ling Hopgood’s Lucky Girl centers immediately and explicitly on the returning adoptee’s siblings as much as on her parents. She describes her frst trip to Taiwan, twenty-three years afer her adoption, as a visit to “my long-lost parents and sisters,” because afer initial contact—a translated letter from her birth father—it is chiefy her sisters who write to her, in English, and leave her phone messages.36 She describes a photograph they send of the fourth sister’s wedding, “a joyful jumble of chaos,” with “sisters in dresses, brothers-in-law in suits, aunts, uncles and cousins” who “press in close.”37 Tis photo also reveals that her siblings “were not merely the children of a poor farming family,” her expectation

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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derived from having been relinquished: “Tey were a middle-class family. My sisters were attractive, educated, and successful.” Hopgood discovers she is one of eight sisters, and despite their individual diferences, “my sisters” becomes a frequently used collective category in her book. Imagining them as young children, she pictures “a pile of sisterhood” on shipboard as the family travels to Taiwan to better their lives; soon, she observes, “my sisters were becoming a handsome group, with shiny hair and round faces.”38 Hopgood explains that as her sisters urgently called and wrote, conveying the family invitation to visit in the spring of 997, she “felt as if I was being passionately recruited for an exclusive, mysterious sorority.”39 When she fnally visits, she was “suddenly . . . part of that pile of sisters,” squeezed onto a sofa with them, her mother, and any number of nieces and nephews.40 Hopgood sums up, “Everywhere I looked, everywhere I went, everything I did, there were sisters. Tey hovered, doted, teased, bossed, laughed, and cried. Tey were my translators and tour guides, my keepers, protectors, and friends.”41 As the reunion unfolds over several visits, Hopgood’s intimacy with her sisters deepens, as she learns from them—not directly from her parents—the darker parts of the family story. Two entire chapters of her book are devoted to her two younger sisters. Summing up both her love for her sisters and her appreciation of them as a collective unit, Hopgood writes, “I adored my sisters,” and “my sisters always treat me with a huge helping of patience and hospitality. Tey consider me one of them.”42 Hopgood also has a slightly older brother, adopted just afer her birth and relinquishment and nourished with the breast milk that would have been hers. By the end of the narrative, she also has a much younger half brother. Both are the results of her father’s fanatical Confucianism, played out in his “obsession” with having a son. (Te adopted brother’s disability disqualifed him from the role of heir, so Ba tried again with a mistress.) “I need someone who will worship me afer I die,” he explains, adding that “girls belong to someone else.”43 Ba tried to abandon the fourth daughter (who is given a nickname meaning “no more daughters”); he forced Ma to give up Mei-Ling, the sixth daughter, and Irene, the eighth, who joins the reunion from her home in Switzerland. Hopgood later learns that he ofered Min-Wei, the seventh daughter, to the same couple who adopted her. An important aspect of Hopgood’s bond with and admiration for her sisters, then, is her recognition of Ba’s startling disregard for his accomplished, successful daughters and his long-sufering wife, in stark contrast to his overvaluation of one possible son afer another. What led to MeiLing and Irene’s relinquishment was the same force that distorts family life

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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in the present. Ma considers her life a failure. Even in the new millennium, both father and mother remain locked in a caricature of traditional Confucian views of the family, in which the production of a male heir is the only measure of a wife’s value. Anger toward Ba and impatience with Ma for not standing up for herself and her children lead to Hopgood’s sorrowful alienation from them, even as the sisters—who, like Eun-Mi in Te Language of Blood, have “transcended” their abject beginnings—inspire both her identifcation and her praise.44 Te generational diference between parents and daughters in Lucky Girl is played out geopolitically and culturally, and as in Trenka’s family, generational diference is also class diference. While Ba sent the sisters to college, Ma lef school afer frst grade and remains illiterate. Most of the sisters live in and around modern, urban Taipei, where they raise small families (each has two children and a husband) while working at whitecollar jobs in fnancial services or the information economy. Ba and Ma, poor farmers who eventually achieved relative wealth, still live in mostly rural Taitung, in the family home, where a shrine to the ancestors occupies the third story, too much food is cooked, and dark family secrets linger. Te daughters and their children are all learning English, which improves (as does Hopgood’s Mandarin) across the decade of their reunion; by contrast, Hopgood is barely able to communicate with her mother, whose Taiwanese is stronger than her Mandarin. In contrast to the traditional Confucian ways of the elders, the sisters are associated with global English and contemporary media culture. Hopgood recounts that early in her frst visit, “four sisters took me to the famous Shihlin Night Market,” a Taipei location where a blast of pop music mixing English and Chinese songs accompanies surging, giddy crowds buying Chinese food and T-shirts with English slogans (e.g., “Destiny Girl Love Diamond”) from black-market street vendors. As much as Trenka expresses love for transnational Korean culture, and without Trenka’s bitterness about losing her native language fuency, Hopgood says she “felt at home” in this multicultural, cosmopolitan urban mix.45 Te sisters set up Skype visits and Internet chats. Min-Wei—the youngest sister and the family’s teen rebel, who has long thought about her missing sister in America and “wonder[s] what would have happened if only she, too, had escaped”—spends a couple of months visiting Hopgood in St. Louis, aspiring to learn English and acquire American ways.46 Min-Wei has an Australian boyfriend, Patrick; they eventually marry and live a cross-cultural life on two continents. Irene brings the sisters another global dimension, with visits back and forth between Switzerland, China, and the United

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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States. Te sisters visit when Hopgood spends most of a year in Hawaii, and her eventual move to Buenos Aires does not interrupt the fow of their intercontinental travels. Ma, by contrast, has hardly even been to mainland China; the birth parents are involved in none of this casual globe hopping. When Hopgood—yearning to know her mother as an individual apart from the surrounding crowds of noisy family—takes Ma on a tourist trip to Guilin, with only Min-Wei along as guide and translator, Ma’s failures as a traveler (her poor table manners, her bathroom needs) are emphasized, and the longed-for intimacy arrives only briefy, when a painful mosquito bite allows Ma to baby Hopgood. When obliged to choose between her urbane sisters and her backward parents, Hopgood is explicit and unambivalent about her loyalties. Te memoir’s last visit follows a gap of years during which Ba has had the efrontery to bring home the mistress’s son for Ma to raise, reluctantly but dutifully; the sisters refer to him as “the boy” and refuse to care for him or even acknowledge him. Ba demands that he call Hopgood jiejie (big sister), as if this would prove he is part of the family; but although she pities this spoiled, neglected child, she sides with Ma and the sisters, refusing to hear Ba’s complaints about his daughter Ya-Ling’s treatment of “the boy” (Ya-Ling lives with Ba and Ma with her two boys, out of pity for Ma) and assuring Jin-Hong with the comments “I think Ba has gone crazy” and “I feel closest to you, my sisters.”47 Asking herself why she keeps disrupting her own happy, normal life to make these ofen painful visits to Taiwan, Hopgood writes that journalistic curiosity and “an attempt to know myself better” take second place as motives to “the enchantment and intimacy of sisterhood,” which “seduced me, made me stay when otherwise I might have fed.”48 Refecting on her sisters’ generosity to her, their loyalty to their mother, and their “trace of love for Ba,” whose “lunatic behavior helps to unite us,” Hopgood explains, “We are all distinct products of this man’s muddled logic. I am fnding that tragedy is as strong a bonding agent as triumph—maybe even stronger. As we gossip about the last unbelievable thing that Ba did, we are joined in our amusement, horror, shame, and despair. We endure him and our past, together.”49 Hopgood notes that when she became pregnant, she longed to ask Ma “how her body behaved when we were in her belly,” but, discouraged by the difculties of translation and of “confronting again our lack of a relationship,” instead “quizzed my sisters on their pregnancies.”50 Much as Eun-Mi assumes the role of matriarch in Te Language of Blood afer Umma’s death, Hopgood’s sisters displace their mother as the focus of Hopgood’s emotional and narrative attention, even during Ma’s lifetime.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Hopgood’s memoir diametrically opposes Trenka’s in many respects. Trenka portrays her life as a transracial adoptee before her returns to Korea as a nightmare of sexist racism (she is stalked and nearly killed by a man with an Asian fetish), and she characterizes her adoptive parents as uncaring, ignorant, and hostile to her Korean family ties. Hopgood has nothing but good to say about her supportive and loving adoptive parents, who raised her according to US multicultural principles and who encourage her reunion (the title Lucky Girl is not ironic). Trenka turns to her birth family from deep emotional need; Hopgood claims a motive closer to curiosity. Trenka mourns her loss of integration into her native culture, while Hopgood is glad to have escaped acculturation into a traditional, now fading Confucianism whose only merit, in her eyes, is that its absurdities foster her bond with her sisters. Trenka ofers a serious political critique of adoption as a colonial-style institution (and is a well-known political activist in Korea), whereas Hopgood limits her critique to Ba’s appalling personal views. Trenka’s tone is melancholic throughout; pain is encountered at almost every turn. Hopgood plays her story for comedy or farce much of the time, allowing sadness to emerge around the story of Ma, but more ofen only turning to a serious mood from traveler’s exhaustion or journalist’s skepticism. Still, their stories share common themes: both women were relinquished for adoption because of traditional Confucian undervaluation of girls in families stressed by poverty; both return from the United States to East Asian nations with strong Confucian traditions, where their birth families eagerly await them; and both seek reconnection with their mothers especially and fnd their sisters instead. Red Dust Road

Jackie Kay’s memoir of search and reunion, Red Dust Road (20 0), comes from an entirely diferent context. Kay was born to an unmarried pair who maintained no contact with each other or with her afer her birth: a white Scottish mother and a Nigerian father, a student in Aberdeen who had returned to Nigeria. Kay’s birth was a secret from her birth father’s family and a source of shame for her birth mother, who tried to keep the story quiet. Kay’s relinquishment thus refects a diferent expression of sexism than that found in the memoirs of Trenka and Hopgood: not the preference for sons, but the shaming of unwed parenthood. Whereas Trenka and Hopgood hardly need to search for their birth families, who still exist as families and whom they never lost track of entirely, Kay details the

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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research she undertook to fnd her birth parents, starting when, pregnant at age twenty-six, she frst became curious about her genetic parentage. Both birth parents eventually married and had their own families; both present great difculty for Kay when she approaches them, when she fnally meets them, and as she tries to maintain contact over the years. Her adoptive parents, whom she loves and who, like the Hopgoods, tried their best to raise their adopted daughter according to multicultural ideals and to embrace her discoveries, are generous, cheerful working-class Scots. Kay’s memories of her searches and complex reunions are intercut with appreciative recollections of growing up with these sturdy, loving people and of their eforts to protect her from racism.51 Although Kay’s book follows an intricately nonlinear chronology (Faulkner’s “the past is never past” is one of her epigraphs), it ends with the most recent event: Kay’s unexpected and absolutely joyous discovery of her father’s children, her Nigerian half siblings.52 Despite the vast circumstantial diferences between Kay, Hopgood, and Trenka, they share in common the frustration of failing to make or maintain satisfying emotional connections with birth parents, at least partially compensated by the unexpected pleasure of same-generation sibling connection. As in the cases of Hopgood and Trenka, Kay’s birth parents have ways of thinking that are lodged in the past and circumscribed by tradition, by narrow geographic scope, and by shame and guilt; siblings enable new ties that may be less deeply rooted but that thrive across a globally connected and future-oriented world. Like Trenka and Hopgood, Kay initiates her searches with no thought for siblings; she looks frst for her birth mother, Elizabeth, and then for her birth father, Jonathan. Elizabeth’s seven sisters, Kay’s aunts, still live in the Highland town of Nairn, welcome Kay when she visits, and play a positive but brief role in giving her a sense of connection and belonging, since the combination of Elizabeth’s enduring shame and early dementia (possibly brought on by the trauma of loss) rob Kay of full knowledge of her and of connection to the family through her. Kay never meets Elizabeth’s children, a son who committed suicide and two daughters of whom Elizabeth is somewhat fearful; Elizabeth never tells them of the existence of their half sister, and the daughters’ apparent lack of compassion for their mother makes them unappealing fgures in Kay’s account. Kay’s relationships with the other children of her birth father— younger half brothers and a half sister—are another matter altogether. Intercut with and delayed by older memories, the suspenseful lead-up to Kay’s meeting with the eldest brother, Sidney, forms the climax of her

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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story’s plot, and throughout the book, their connection is associated with Kay’s status as an internationally renowned writer and scholar. By 2009, Kay has been appointed to the OBE (Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) and has become a celebrity on the world Anglophone literary circuit, which takes her periodically to Nigeria. She frst meets her father, Jonathan, there in 2003, her search prompted by her worldly, postcolonial academic connections: a friend at a conference suggests she Google her father. Kay has long known her father’s name. He is a professional arborist who studies the healing properties of the African Moringa tree, and within hours, she is speaking with him on the phone. Tey plan to meet when she will be in Nigeria for a series of readings, and the book opens with her frst and only meeting with him, at a hotel in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, where—in a scene Kay plays as farce—he tries to convert her to fundamentalist Christianity. Jonathan, a fellow scholar, has become a devout Christian preacher, and because he views his daughter as an emblem of his sinful past, he refuses to tell his family about her and refuses all subsequent contact. In this way, he becomes identifed with the backwardness of tradition. In 2009, despite Jonathan’s resistance and, again, through her international cultural connections, Kay discovers the location of her father’s (and therefore her) ancestral village. A Nigerian student of hers, Kachi, knows Jonathan’s Igbo village, and his uncle studied under Jonathan. Kay then learns more about her siblings from Facebook and Google: her generation in Nigeria shares her technological and transnational Anglophone modernity, but her search also benefts from deeply traditional ties. She is unsure if she should contact her siblings without Jonathan’s agreement, but soon she is traveling to Lagos for another reading, as the guest of her novelist friend Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Teir friendship (with its implications for Kay’s international cultural celebrity) provides an alternative source of authority for Kay’s sibling search. From Lagos, Kay travels thirteen arduous hours to the village of Nzagha, in the vicinity of Ukpor. Although she feels an immediate kinship with the land (she fnds the “red dust road” of her dreams) and with the look of the villagers, neither Jonathan nor his son are home; she sees their vacant houses and feels the sting of her father’s rejection. A phone exchange confrms that her father refuses to see or acknowledge her. But Kachi’s parents-in-law, whom they visit next, reassure Kay that it is her right to know her father and to contact her brothers. Tey welcome her as “a true daughter of Ukpor,” refute Jonathan’s view of her as a “bastard,” and insist that ties of community—the mother-in-law is herself from Ukpor—and of blood

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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take precedence over Jonathan’s hostile fundamentalism.53 Implicitly underwriting this family’s warm acceptance may be the memory of traditional Igbo polygamy, which produced families with children from diferent mothers.54 Igbo values that long predate the colonial imposition of Christianity ironically match up better with modern values: as Kay concludes with relief, “It is just not done here. It is so unusual for a man not to acknowledge his blood.”55 Ultimately, her father’s rejection has the efect of freeing her: “I can now do what I want. I can even contact my brother if I want.”56 Her relationship with her siblings will circumvent her father’s mediation, much as Hopgood afrms her place among her sisters, bonded both by shared skepticism about their father and by common experiences and values of modern life that their tradition-bound parents do not share. In Kay’s case, the shared modern value of broad-mindedness about sex is also supported by a pre-Christian countertradition, benignly adapted to modern circumstances. Te relation found in Kay’s memoir between Indigenous tradition and language, on the one hand, and global modernity, on the other, both resonates with and difers from the relation in the memoirs of Trenka and Hopgood. English has been the language of public life in Nigeria since British colonization in the nineteenth century, so fuency in English— even though it is learned as a second language—is taken for granted when Kay communicates with educated Nigerians, including her family.57 Ironically, that education takes place in the colonizers’ language and that Britain was the inevitable destination of an ambitious young Nigerian scholar in 960 both led to Jonathan’s fateful journey to Scotland and now facilitate the relative ease of their communications (including, perhaps unfortunately, his forceful expression of Christian belief). Te irony that empire created both the conditions of Kay’s loss and the possibility of its repair resonates with the irony of Trenka’s painful linguistic situation, both suffering and benefting from the linguistic and political dominance of the United States in Korea. Kay does not have the same kind of language barrier to confront and lament as Trenka, with her imperfect Korean, or as Hopgood, with her mother’s Taiwanese: Kay expresses little ambivalence about the connections that global English and her appointment to the OBE make possible. Yet she, too, feels the loss of a native language. She enjoys exchanging a few words in Igbo with a Nzaghan villager and takes comfort in fnding that she “can understand quite a lot of it, without ever having been taught it.”58 Tinking that locals at a market are calling her “Igbo” when, really, they are calling her “white person,” she expresses frustration with her lack of fuency that emphasizes her outsider status.59 Igbo

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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is the beloved language in which her traditional blood ties to Jonathan are afrmed; Igbo traditions have only positive associations for her, in contrast to Hopgood’s negative views of Taiwanese Confucianism, Trenka’s acknowledgments of Korean Confucianism’s ill efects, and Jonathan’s judgmental and antiquated Christianity. Global English, seamlessly incorporating selective elements of Igbo tradition, brings Kay the happiest moments of the memoir. Back in Lagos afer the visit to her village, on Kay’s last day in Nigeria, Adichie encourages Kay to make contact with her half brother Sidney, makes the initial call, and coaches Kay through the difcult frst steps of speaking with him. Sidney is overjoyed to hear from the person he immediately acknowledges as “my sister”; they meet for a euphoric forty-fve minutes at a soccer stadium on Kay’s way to the airport for her departure.60 Teir meeting creates the only purely happy scene of reunion in the memoir. Upon their frst open-armed embrace, with tears in their eyes, Kay notices, “I feel a strange almost ecstatic sensation of recognition,” and she is “shocked by the speed Sidney has accepted me as his sister,” in contrast to her birth parents’ delays, reluctances, and refusals.61 She is amazed that he is not “angry or suspicious or cautious” but, instead, “open-hearted, generous, kind.”62 Sidney is grateful that Kay’s news reveals another side of their father’s character, and he even looks up to her as his “senior sister.”63 In another instance of adapting Igbo tradition to modern values, Sidney’s respectful term for her position in the family preserves traditional respect for the eldest sibling regardless of gender (and he appreciates Kay’s respectfully contacting him, as “senior brother,” before his younger siblings), while silently omitting the equally traditional diferentiation among children of diferent mothers.64 By the end of their conversation, they are fnishing each other’s sentences and concur that “you can’t do anything about yesterday but you can afect today and tomorrow.”65 Te promise of meeting again and of Kay meeting her other siblings on another visit establishes their relationship as moving forward into the future, even as Jonathan’s stubbornness locks him into “yesterday.” Although Adichie does not accompany her friend to this meeting, she calls her en route, “sounding girlish and excited,” to tell her that Sidney has called again. Indeed, Kay details every moment of Adichie’s helping her reconnect with her family. Other friends contact Kay along the way to ofer encouragement; it is clear that she is well loved by her adoptive family, by her students (Kachi goes out of his way to facilitate Kay’s travels in Nigeria), and by many friends. I speculate that Kay writes a starring role among these for Adichie, internationally celebrated author of Anglophone

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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world literature, because Adichie’s participation identifes Kay’s connection with Sidney and her other Nigerian siblings as part of international global cultural circuits. Sidney and his siblings are relations who belong to Kay’s global modernity and her future. Her father, lost to a warped view of traditional Christian morality, is lost to Kay, to his reconfgured family, and—although he shares her global English—to modernity too. Twinsters

It is remarkable how similarly the three reunion memoirs so far considered in this essay align rediscovered siblings with cosmopolitan modernity and with the future, in contrast to birth parents who remain tied to the past and to geographically and emotionally narrow ranges of experience. Tat pattern does not consistently obtain in experiences and representations of reunion. Katy Robinson’s memoir A Single Square Picture (2002) and Deann Borshay Liem’s First Person Plural feature patriarchal Korean older brothers who repeat, in the present, the past ungenerosity of their fathers. Catherine McKinley’s (domestic and transracial) reunion memoir features various siblings who initially promise rich family connection but whose appeal eventually fades, although the writer stays tentatively connected to two half sisters in a way that faintly resonates with Hopgood (“Song and Sabine and I are practically strangers. . . . Nevertheless, we are bonded by our witnessing of Al Green [their father], what we feel we’ve lost of our mothers, and this shaky little promise of sisterhood.”)66 McKinley places more confdence in other ties. Siblings are not always the heroes of the reunion story. Moreover, at least for Trenka and Kay, if not also for Hopgood, the choice to focus positive attention on siblings may have been infuenced by the productive constraints of literary form. Taken alone, Kay’s stories of reunion with her birth parents would have made for gloomy and inconclusive reading; her story becomes a satisfying narrative thanks to her discovery of her half siblings and to the suitability of this episode as a plot climax. Given Trenka’s irreparable sadness about her mother in the frst memoir and her ambivalence about Korean life in the second, perhaps the siblings are called on for exaggeratedly positive energy at the ends of both books, to give the stories closure. Nonetheless, a more recent representation of sibling reunion suggests that the pattern I have sketched is not just limited to the books considered previously in this essay and may grow more prevalent as the internet con-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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tinues to facilitate more reunions. A recent documentary flm about reunited identical twin sisters from Korea, Twinsters (20 5), directed by Samantha Futerman, makes a similar claim for the positive, globally connected, future-oriented value of a happy sibling reunion and contrasts it with the difculty and inchoate emotional freighting of a birth parent search.67 Anaïs Bordier, adopted to France as an infant and living in London, is told by a friend that she appears in a YouTube video actually featuring actress Samantha Futerman, adopted as an infant to the United States. Te two women appear to be identical twins, they share a birthday and a place of origin, and DNA testing confrms what the two feel they already know, having bonded instantaneously over Facebook and Skype. Eventually they meet, their families and friends meet, and their lives grow ever more richly and deeply interconnected. From the beginning, the attachment between Anaïs and Sam is enabled by worldwide social media and embedded in a shared multicultural, cosmopolitan youth culture that relies on global English and on transnational popular culture as its common languages (evidenced, e.g., in such sayings as “I don’t want to be too Lindsay Lohan”). Anaïs’s English is perfect; only once does her slight reticence (compared to Sam’s New Jersey / Californian openness), owing to her having to speak entirely in her second language, become an issue worth noting. Te ironic dominance of global English that so pains Trenka—because the language of the imperial power that led to mass adoptions out of Korea is the same language on which adoptees depend to fund their returns—barely registers on these young women, who simply take global English for granted. Shots of their computer screens ofen fll the flm screen: the flm records long scenes of their Facebook and Skype chats prior to and in between their face-to-face interactions. Te twins’ instant compatibility, despite being raised in diferent national cultures, is represented visually by their identical faces appearing side by side on matching windows of the Skype screen. Te two siblings are completely and equally at ease in on-screen interactions. We sometimes see and hear their nervous yet loving text conversations (e.g., when they frst decide to meet), popping onto the screen in speech bubbles accompanied by a machine-made popping sound. Tat sound subsequently becomes part of their texted and spoken vocabulary. Tey write the word pop as a way to get each other’s attention and as an active verb (“we are going to pop around”). When Anaïs arrives at Los Angeles International Airport, Sam is holding up a giant sign spelling out “Welcome/POP,” and the flm’s fnal image is of their hands closing together two locks-of-love padlocks decorated with little hearts, their

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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names in English and Korean, and the word pop. Tey say “pop” aloud to one another in person in moments of excitement and of quiet intimacy. Anaïs, slightly weepy at the thought of their separation, comforts herself by murmuring “pop” to herself. Tis cybersound, the universally understood sound of global Skype, is organically incorporated into the twins’ private language. Similarly, when they frst meet in the London apartment of a friend of Anaïs and approach each other cautiously, Anaïs holds out a tentative fnger and gives Sam a poke while saying the word poke, reembodying a Facebook trope. Te twins are not at all averse to being together in the fesh; indeed, there are numerous touching scenes of them holding hands and snuggling together. Tey move seamlessly back and forth between virtual and embodied connections and between global and private languages. Like Hopgood and Kay, both Anaïs and Sam are living happy, successful lives as sophisticated young adults. When they connect, Sam has talked more with her parents about adoption than has Anaïs, and Sam has been back to Korea and knows her foster mother. Anaïs expresses some sadness and confusion about the silence around her adoption, and when she meets her foster mother in 20 3, she is greatly relieved to fnd that she was loved and well cared for in the gap between her birth and her adoption. Anaïs tears up more ofen than Sam (e.g., when listening to a welcoming speech at the IKAA Gathering in Seoul in 20 3); Sam is more prepared for their reunion’s revelations and less overwhelmed. Nonetheless, both young women are represented as equally thriving in cutting-edge, globally networked creative careers—Anaïs as a fashion design student whose cool clothes we see on parade, Sam as an actress in flms distributed internationally—and both have friendships and warm relations with their parents (Sam also has adopted siblings whom she loves). Establishing shots identify Los Angeles and London as vibrant global, multicultural cities, and the twins have a blast together in another such city, Seoul. Neither twin is seen as needy or lost. Even so, in this flm that is ofen fzzing over with giggly delight, dark moments arise, chiefy from the twins’ futile eforts to contact their birth mother. Early in the flm, Sam learns from her adoption agency that their birth mother disavows the twins; the camera lingers on Sam, who is uncharacteristically quiet and overcome, with tears on her face. Signifcantly, she receives this news over the phone, voice-to-voice with an adoption agency employee: the birth mother, lost to antiquated mores, is associated with old technology. Sam immediately shares this bleak news with Anaïs over Skype, and the twins are joined in sorrow for their birth moth-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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er’s feeling “that she has to, like, hide it.” Later, when they visit Korea, the social welfare agency confrms their birth mother’s refusal to acknowledge them; again the mood grows somber. Yet—much as Hopgood bonds with her sisters over Ba’s crazy doings and as Kay and her brother can share an afectionate skepticism about their father—the flm recuperates this loss for the further deepening of what the twins share. Te flm ends with them sitting closely side by side and writing their birth mother a letter—using old technology again—in case she ever changes her mind about meeting them. Tey note, “We are not angry that we were raised apart. We are just happy that we are together now.” (Ten they say, with giggles, though they do not write it, “P.S.—pop.”) Tis ending afrms that their loving family bond with one another will carry them forward into the future, independent of any relation to their birth parents; their shared sadness about their mother’s silence adds to a bond that was, in any case, already deeply afrmed. Tis flm’s representation of sibling connection is thus one predictable development of the reunion stories in the written memoirs. Trenka, Hopgood, and Kay—born in the 960s and early 970s—began their searches in a traditional way, by looking for their birth parents, and found themselves surprised by the pleasure of gradually developing ties with their siblings. In the twins’ story, from a newer generation (they were born in 987), the instantaneous global connectivity of the internet age situates the lost world of the birth parents ever further in the past and makes it ever less necessary to the creation of new family ties. In the places to which they return, Trenka, Hopgood, and Kay register the existence of powerful local traditions and unfamiliar Indigenous languages; witnessing and sometimes benefting from the erosion of traditions and languages by the forces of modernization and global English, these older writers convey difering attitudes, ranging from Trenka’s mourning to Hopgood and Kay’s acceptance and even gratitude. Futerman and Bordier, by contrast, born into a world already digital, global, and Anglophone, register no transition from tradition to modernity, from local to global. For them, diferences in culture and language appear more as decorative efects than as sources of deep psychological meaning. Te twins are only briefy haunted by the thought of their birth mother’s unmodern morals (“that she has to, like, hide it”). Although their travel to Korea and their connections with their foster parents are important features of the flm narrative, their familial bond does not depend on an origin located in the past: their primary connection is with each other and includes the global media environment that makes it possible.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Reunions with Siblings in Search Memoirs across Cultures | 89

Searches in China

While adoption from Korea, dating back to the 950s, has produced many birth family searches and reunions and a whole canon of memoirs, such as Trenka’s books and Liem’s and Futerman’s flms, adoption from China is mostly of more recent origin. Te cohort of adoptees who started leaving China in 99 , most of them girls and the largest number of them now in their teens and twenties, have just begun to search for their birth parents, creating evident demand for discussions such as the one mentioned at the opening of this essay, “Let’s Talk about Birth Parents in China,” sponsored by Families with Children from China.68 Searches for birth parents are notoriously difcult in China, owing to the closure or erasure of records and the illegality of relinquishments, which were almost always carried out secretly. Yet thanks to the research conducted by (among others) Kay Ann Johnson, whose book Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son: Abandonment, Adoption, and Orphanage Care in China (2004) revealed that most relinquishments of girls took place afer the birth of at least one other girl and were motivated by the one-child policy and the quest for a son, these young women know they may have siblings in China—an older sister, perhaps, or a younger brother.69 Although Toby Alice Volkman’s discussion of searches for “genetic kin” in China focuses largely on birth parent searches, she also notes that “if the birth mother is impossible to fnd, the longing for genetic connection may be transposed onto a search for sisters.”70 When adoptees from China look, their searches may echo Johnson’s title— wanting a birth mother, fnding a sibling. Although, to date, the few extant accounts of successful birth family searches in China have focused on the parents, a sibling imaginary emerging among this cohort confrms the evidence discussed in this essay.71 I ofer two brief examples. First, in a recent issue of the journal of the organization Families with Children from China, a young adoptee from China imagines her own birth and relinquishment from the point of view not of herself as a baby or of her birth mother but of her sister. Te adoptee’s short text comprises three brief fctional yet plausible scenes, in which the narrator’s newborn self and her birth mother appear obliquely, as seen or considered by the sister.72 In the frst two scenes, instead of “my mother,” the narrator references “my sister’s mother”; instead of “I,” she references “her unborn sister.” Te last scene starts with the sister’s point of view but moves beyond it, to picture their grieving mother directly and the narrator herself as “the child” or “the baby.” Initially locating the birth story’s emotional center of gravity in the bewildered, unhappy sister—a specta-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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tor, not a full participant in the tragic drama of relinquishment—provides an emotionally cool way into imagining scenes and characters that may be too hot to touch directly. Although the encounter takes place only in the writer’s and readers’ imaginations, this narrative choice accomplishes something like the swerve from parents to siblings in the birth family reunion stories in Trenka’s, Hopgood’s, and Kay’s memoirs and in Twinsters. Second, in the frst-ever study of successful birth parent searches in China, published by Wang, Ponte, and Ollen in 20 5, although the seven adoptive families were motivated by wanting information about the past, some were pleasantly surprised by discovering siblings, too. Meeting and maintaining relationships with the parents was sometimes emotionally fraught, yet adoptees were happy to fnd sisters who look like them, and one teenager “described maintaining regular online contact with one of her English-speaking sisters, chatting frequently about their shared life experiences.”73 Te authors of the study do not mention the Internetconnected siblings in their closing “Discussion” section, and the article’s title omits them, as if these connections did not rise to the level of signifcance. But perhaps it is the seeming insignifcance of sibling relationships that makes them so promising. In both the study by Wang, Ponte, and Ollen and the young Chinese adoptee’s fctional story, siblings appear as fgures of mediation and of potential identifcation who share the experience—which may be flled with grief or frustration—of being the same parents’ child. Te teens in the 20 5 study, like the adoptees and their siblings in all the works discussed at greater length in this essay, share the same global, Anglophone, interconnected world of today. While transnational adoption may have forever cut these adoptees’ ties to their country of origin and its local culture and language, thereby obstructing reunion with their birth parents, the ideology of multiculturalism that once endorsed and normalized that severing also enables new, alternative ties. In each of these cases, siblings create a contemporary—and thus potentially enduring—path to birth family connection. NOTES 1. In a newsletter distributed by email on January 7, 2016, Families with Children from China (https://www.fccny.org), announced the event “Let’s Talk about Birth Parents in China,” scheduled for January 30 in New York. Te announcement advertised, “What do we know about birth parents in China? Find out from researchers in a special

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Reunions with Siblings in Search Memoirs across Cultures | 91 discussion for adoptees only.” Te event, for adoptees thirteen and older, was conducted by researchers Iris Chin Ponte and Leslie Wang and therapist Amanda Baden. An earlier iteration took place in Boston in October 2015 (with Ponte, Wang, and a diferent therapist, Amy Nafzger). A recent study of seven successful China searches uses birth parents as its key term, even though each of the birth families included siblings: see Leslie Kim Wang, Iris Chin Ponte, and Elizabeth Weber Ollen, “Letting Her Go: Western Adoptive Families’ Search and Reunion with Chinese Birth Parents,” Adoption Quarterly 18, no. 1 (2015): 45–66. Te reasons the adoptees in the study most ofen gave for searching, perhaps also the reasons for the study’s focus on parents, were to discover the truth about the past and to compensate for a feeling of loss. 2. On this bias and on the recent movement to see siblings—contra Freud—as rivaling parents in psychic importance, see Juliet Mitchell, Siblings (Cambridge: Polity, 2003); Prophecy Coles, Te Importance of Sibling Relationships in Psychoanalysis (London: Karnac, 2003); Leonore Davidof, “Te Sibling Relationship and Sibling Incest in Historical Context,” in Sibling Relationships, ed. Prophecy Coles (London: Karnac, 2006), 17–47. 3. Margaret Homans, Te Imprint of Another Life: Adoption Narratives and Human Possibility (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2013). For signifcant recent readings of Te Language of Blood (none of which focuses on the siblings), see Mark Jerng, Claiming Others: Transracial Adoption and National Belonging (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010); Eun Kyung Min, “Te Daughter’s Exchange in Jane Jeong Trenka’s Te Language of Blood,” Social Text 26, no. 1 (2008): 115–33; Ina Seethaler, “Transnational Adoption and Life-Writing: Oppressed Voices in Jane Jeong Trenka’s Te Language of Blood,” Meridians 13, no. 2 (2015): 79–98; Jenny Heijun Wills, “Fictional and Fragmented Truths in Korean Adoptee Life Writing,” Asian American Literature 6 (2015): 45–59; and Wills, “Paradoxical Essentialism: Reading Race and Origins in Jane Jeong Trenka’s Asian Adoption Memoirs,” Canadian Review of American Studies 46, no. 2 (2016): 202–22. 4. Jane Jeong Trenka, Te Language of Blood (St. Paul, MN: Borealis Books, 2003), 98–99. 5. Trenka, 99. 6. Trenka, 99. 7. Trenka, 98. 8. David Eng, “Transnational Adoption and Queer Diasporas,” Social Text 21, no. 11 (2003): 1–37. 9. Trenka, Language of Blood, 116, 101. 10. Trenka, 101. 11. Trenka, 102. 12. Trenka, 103. 13. Trenka, 107. 14. Trenka, 126. 15. Trenka, 132. 16. Trenka, 133. 17. Trenka, 140. 18. Trenka, 141. 19. Trenka, 150. 20. Trenka, 155. 21. Trenka, 158.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

92 | Adoption and Multiculturalism 22. Trenka, 133. 23. Trenka, 219. 24. Accounts of traditional Confucian family structure invariably emphasize organizing hierarchies of gender and age by the principle of “flial piety,” meaning reverence toward elders and “obedience of women . . . to the eldest male,” that is, to their fathers, then to their husbands and sons; the wife’s duty is to her husband and his family, and “the whole concept of marriage was centred around family continuity and ancestral worship.” See Dae H. Chang in “Te Korean Family,” in Te Family in Asia, ed. Man Singh Das and Panos D. Bardis (London: Allen and Unwin, 1979), 292, 288. 25. See Miai Sung and Jaerim Lee, “Adult Sibling and Sibling-In-Law Relationships in South Korea: Continuity and Change in Confucian Family Norms,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 44 (2013): 571–87. Sung and Lee show that while tensions can arise among brothers (and among their wives) from contradictions between persisting Confucian hierarchies that place heavy responsibilities on the shoulders of the elder brother, on the one hand, and newly legislated equality among siblings, on the other, those relationships that were not so deeply implicated in Confucian hierarchy tend to thrive in the contemporary atmosphere of equality. 26. Eun Kyung Min, “English Speakers in Korea: A Short Literary History,” in Politics of English: South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Asia Pacifc, ed. Lionel Wee, Robbie B. H. Goh, and Lisa Lim (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2013), 282. Alastair Pennycook writes on the broad issue of the politics of global English, with reference chiefy to British postcolonies but with implications for the spread of American English alongside American power, in “Beyond Homogeny and Heterogeny: English as a Global and Worldly Language,” in Te Politics of English as a World Language: New Horizons in Postcolonial Cultural Studies, ed. Christian Mair (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003), 5: “While on the one hand, then, we may want to acknowledge the usefulness of English as a language of global communication, we clearly also need to acknowledge it as a language of global miscommunication . . . linked to inequality, injustice, and the prevention of communication.” 27. Jane Jeong Trenka, Fugitive Visions: An Adoptee’s Return to Korea (St. Paul, MN: Greywolf, 2009), 125–26. 28. Trenka, 128. 29. Trenka, 131. 30. Trenka, 177. 31. Trenka, 183. 32. Trenka, 109; Min discusses this passage in “English Speakers in Korea,” 282–83. 33. Trenka, Fugitive Visions, 109, 186. 34. Trenka, 189. 35. Trenka, 197. 36. Mei-Ling Hopgood, Lucky Girl (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2009), 1. 37. Hopgood, 11–12. 38. Hopgood, 35, 37. 39. Hopgood, 85. 40. Hopgood, 93. 41. Hopgood, 98. 42. Hopgood, 190, 236. 43. Hopgood, 223. Ba’s flial piety and his wish to be worshipped by male descendants

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Reunions with Siblings in Search Memoirs across Cultures | 93 make him a dutiful Confucian (on Confucian values, see n. 24 above). Ancestor worship was still the norm in Taiwan in the 1970s and 1980s, as was wives’ belief in the importance of having a son to continue the family line, although these values were decreasing, especially among the more educated; see A. Tornton, L. S. Yang, and T. Fricke, “Weakening the Linkage between the Ancestors, the Living, and Future Generations,” in Social Change and the Family in Taiwan, ed. Arland Tornton and Hui-Sheng Lin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 359–95. Nonetheless, that Ba’s “obsession” and Ma’s compliance are anachronistic by the 1990s and 2000s is shown by research on the falling birth rate and declining preference for sons in Taiwan during the decades when the sisters were born. See R. Freedman, M. C. Chung, T. H. Sun, and M. Weinstein, “Te Fertility Transition in Taiwan,” in Social Change and the Family in Taiwan, ed. Arland Tornton and Hui-Sheng Lin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 286–87; noting a decline between 1973 and 1985 in the number of wives “willing to have more than the number of children they preferred [generally 2 or 3] in order to have a son,” the authors write that “while the preference for sons was still very evident, its force was constrained by the preference for few children.” 44. Hopgood, Lucky Girl, 237. 45. Hopgood, 99–100. 46. Hopgood, 123. 47. Hopgood, 234. 48. Hopgood, 236. 49. Hopgood, 237. 50. Hopgood, 243. 51. Te emotional tone of Kay’s memoir is closer to Hopgood’s than to Trenka’s. Kay minimizes the racism experienced in her younger years; she fnds humor in some of the awkwardness of her discoveries; and her loving parents and her established professional success counterbalance any disappointments. 52. Jackie Kay, Red Dust Road (London: Picador, 2010). 53. Kay, 248–49. 54. Kay, 251. For an account of traditional Igbo social and family organization, see Joseph-Terese Agbasiere, “Kinship Relations and the Position of the Woman,” in Women in Igbo Life and Tought (London: Routledge, 2000), 76–92. Agbasiere (an Igbo woman anthropologist who revises the more androcentric observations of Edwin Ardener a generation earlier) emphasizes the importance of the mother in kinship and inheritance systems and the consequent maintenance of the distinction between full and half siblings. See also “Igbo Social Organization,” University of Manitoba, April 2002, https://www.umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/anthropology/tutor/case_studies/igbo/index. html 55. Kay, 251. Kay’s conclusion is also supported by the oldest woman in the nearby town of Oguta, whom Kay consults on the same trip: “It is not possible for an Igbo man not to acknowledge his blood” (Red Dust Road, 222). 56. Kay, Red Dust Road, 252. 57. Postindependence Nigeria—with over four hundred indigenous languages— continued to use English as the national language, despite the ofcial institutionalization alongside it of the three most widely used indigenous languages: Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa. In the 1960s and 1970s, English was the sole language of Nigerian education, and it continues to be the main language of law, civil service, and politics. Scholars debate

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

94 | Adoption and Multiculturalism whether the use of English should be further standardized (so that the citizenry can further beneft from globalization) or whether the public use of local languages should be increased, in the name of democratization. On the former position, see Wale Osisanwo, “Te English Language in Nigeria: A Blessing or a Cog in the Wheel of Progress?” (Ondo: Adeyemi College of Education, 2005). On the latter, see Olusola Babtunde Opeibi, “Language, Globalization, and Democratic Governance: English in Nigerian Political Discourse,” in Nigerian English in Sociolinguistic Perspectives: Linguistic and Literary Paradigms, ed. Oko Okoro (Lagos: Pumark Nigeria, 2010), 241–60. For a historical analysis of this debate, see Adebukunola A. Agnes Atolagbe, “National Language for Nigeria and the Issues at Stake: A Pragmatic Solution,” in Okoro, Nigerian English, 148– 58. 58. Kay, Red Dust Road, 211. 59. Kay, 215–16. 60. Kay, 267. 61. Kay, 272–73. 62. Kay, 275. 63. Kay, 276. 64. Kay, 207. See Agbasiere, “Kinship Relations,” for the traditional diferentiation among children of diferent mothers, including an expectation of friction among them. 65. Kay, Red Dust Road, 279. 66. Catherine E. McKinley, Te Book of Sarahs: A Family in Parts (New York: Counterpoint, 2002), 271. In her epilogue, McKinley writes that she and her half sisters “still intersect, but familyness is not automatic, and our diferences are great” (289). 67. Twinsters, directed by Samantha Futerman and Ryan Miyamoto, produced by Kanoa Goo, Samantha Futerman, and Ryan Miyamoto (Los Angeles: Small Package Films, 2015). Transnational birth sibling reunions among adoptees from China have occurred, too, thanks to the internet. 68. See n. 1. For another example, Wang, Ponte and Ollen record Brian Stuy’s report that his website, Research-China.org, which is devoted to helping adoptive families search in China, “has over 500 subscribed members” (“Letting Her Go,” 46). 69. However, Wang, Ponte, and Ollen found a wide range of sibling confgurations in the seven birth families they interviewed for “Letting Her Go.” 70. Toby Alice Volkman, “Embodying Chinese Culture: Transnational Adoption in North America,” in Cultures of Transnational Adoption, ed. Toby Alice Volkman (Chapel Hill, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 103–4. 71. Focus on birth parents rather than siblings can be seen also in two recent documentary flms recording successful searches: Daughters’ Return (2011), directed, produced, and written by Changfu Chang, and Somewhere Between (2012), directed and produced by Linda Goldstein Knowlton. See also Jenna Cook’s essay on meeting Wuhan birth parents (though not her own), “A ‘Lost’ Daughter Speaks and All of China Listens,” Foreign Policy, March 30, 2016, http://foreignpolicy. com/2016/03/30/a-lost-daughter-speaks-and-all-of-china-listens-adoption; and Yan Dongjie, “US Mother Finds Adopted Son’s Chinese Birth Parents on Fifh Day,” China Daily, updated January 21, 2016, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2016-01/21/ content_23176339.htm 72. Helen Na Lee-Righter, “How Do You Catch a Cloud and Pin It Down?” View:

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Reunions with Siblings in Search Memoirs across Cultures | 95 Writing and Art by Chinese Adoptees (Families with Children from China) 7, no. 1 (2015): 16. 73. Wang, Ponte, and Ollen, “Letting Her Go,” 60. REFERENCES Agbasiere, Joseph-Terese. “Kinship Relations and the Position of the Woman.” In Women in Igbo Life and Tought, edited by Joseph-Terese Agbasiere, 76–92. London: Routledge, 2000. Atolagbe, Adebukunola A. Agnes. “National Language for Nigeria and the Issues at Stake: A Pragmatic Solution.” In Nigerian English in Sociolinguistic Perspectives: Linguistic and Literary Paradigms, edited by Oko Okoro, 48–58. Lagos: Pumark Nigeria, 20 0. Chang, Dae H. “Te Korean Family.” In Te Family in Asia, edited by Man Singh Das and Panos D. Bardis, 277–3 9. London: Allen and Unwin, 979. Coles, Prophecy. Te Importance of Sibling Relationships in Psychoanalysis. London: Karnac, 2003. Davidof, Leonore. “Te Sibling Relationship and Sibling Incest in Historical Context.” In Sibling Relationships, edited by Prophecy Coles, 7–47. London: Karnac, 2006. Freedman, R, M. C. Chung, T. H. Sun, and M. Weinstein. “Te Fertility Transition in Taiwan.” In Social Change and the Family in Taiwan, edited by Arland Tornton and Hui-Sheng Lin, 286–87. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 994. Futerman, Samantha, and Ryan Miyamoto. Twinsters. Film produced by Kanoa Goo, Samantha Futerman, and Ryan Miyamoto. Los Angeles: Small Package Films, 20 5. Eng, David. “Transnational Adoption and Queer Diasporas.” Social Text 2 , no. (2003): –37. Homans, Margaret. Te Imprint of Another Life: Adoption Narratives and Human Possibility. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 20 3. Hopgood, Mei-Ling. Lucky Girl. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2009. Jerng, Mark. Claiming Others: Transracial Adoption and National Belonging. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 20 0. Kay, Jackie. Red Dust Road. London: Picador, 20 0. Lee-Righter, Helen Na. “How Do You Catch a Cloud and Pin It Down?” View: Writing and Art by Chinese Adoptees (Families with Children from China) 7, no. (20 5): 6. McKinley, Catherine E. Te Book of Sarahs: A Family in Parts. New York: Counterpoint, 2002. Min, Eun Kyung. “Te Daughter’s Exchange in Jane Jeong Trenka’s Te Language of Blood.” Social Text 26, no. (2008): 5–33. Min, Eun Kyung. “English Speakers in Korea: A Short Literary History.” In Politics of English: South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Asia Pacifc, edited by Lionel Wee, Robbie B. H. Goh, and Lisa Lim, 269–86. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 20 3. Mitchell, Juliet. Siblings. Cambridge: Polity, 2003. Opeibi, Olusola Babtunde. “Language, Globalization, and Democratic Governance: English in Nigerian Political Discourse.” In Nigerian English in Sociolinguistic Perspectives: Linguistic and Literary Paradigms, edited by Oko Okoro, 24 –60. Lagos: Pumark Nigeria, 20 0.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

96 | Adoption and Multiculturalism Pennycook, Alastair. “Beyond Homogeny and Heterogeny: English as a Global and Worldly Language.” In Te Politics of English as a World Language: New Horizons in Postcolonial Cultural Studies, edited by Christian Mair, 3– 7. New York: Rodopi, 2003. Seethaler, Ina. “Transnational Adoption and Life-Writing: Oppressed Voices in Jane Jeong Trenka’s Te Language of Blood.” Meridians 3, no. 2 (20 5): 79–98. Sung, Miai, and Jaerim Lee. “Adult Sibling and Sibling-In-Law Relationships in South Korea: Continuity and Change in Confucian Family Norms.” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 44 (20 3): 57 –87. Tornton, A, L. S. Yang, and T. Fricke. “Weakening the Linkage between the Ancestors, the Living, and Future Generations.” In Social Change and the Family in Taiwan, edited by Arland Tornton and Hui-Sheng Lin, 359–95. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 994. Trenka, Jane Jeong. Fugitive Visions: An Adoptee’s Return to Korea. St. Paul, MN: Greywolf, 2009. Trenka, Jane Jeong. Te Language of Blood. St. Paul, MN: Borealis Books, 2003. Volkman, Toby Alice. “Embodying Chinese Culture: Transnational Adoption in North America.” In Cultures of Transnational Adoption, edited by Toby Alice Volkman, 8 – 3. Chapel Hill, NC: Duke University Press, 2005. Wang, Leslie Kim, Iris Chin Ponte, and Elizabeth Weber Ollen. “Letting Her Go: Western Adoptive Families’ Search and Reunion with Chinese Birth Parents.” Adoption Quarterly 8, no. (20 5): 45–66. Wills, Jenny Heijun. “Fictional and Fragmented Truths in Korean Adoptee Life Writing.” Asian American Literature 6 (20 5): 45–59. Wills, Jenny Heijun. “Paradoxical Essentialism: Reading Race and Origins in Jane Jeong Trenka’s Asian Adoption Memoirs.” Canadian Review of American Studies 46, no. 2 (20 6): 202– 6.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Section 2

Interrupting Myths of Postraciality and Autochthony

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Shared and Divergent Landscapes of Transnational Adoption Politics and Critique Newspaper Reporting and Transnational Adoptee Interventions in Denmark and Minnesota Kim Park Nelson and Lene Myong

In this essay, we use newspaper reporting in Minnesota and Denmark to track the representations of transnational adoption and to analyze shared and divergent adoption rhetoric in reporting at each location. We also compare the cultural interventions and social critique around adoption, race, and immigration created by transnational adoptee activists, creative writers, and performers in both locations. Transnational adoption became a common form of family building among whites in Minnesota and Denmark in the 960s, a decade afer Korean adoption practice had been formalized at the end of the Korean War. Tis was the beginning of an era in which Korean overseas adoption practice would lead the way for other overseas adoption programs to become permanent, rather than temporary. Although Minnesota is a state in the much larger United States, its demographic similarities to Denmark are remarkable. Te populations of Minnesota and Denmark are of similar size and majority white.1 Both have a lengthy history of transnational adoption, and both have active adult adoptee communities that have engaged in public commentary and/ or critique on the topic of transnational adoption. All these factors allow for a comparison of adoption politics and discursive framing in the state of Minnesota and the country of Denmark. Te social and cultural landscapes in Denmark and Minnesota have supported transnational and transracial adoption at high rates; a culture of transnational/transracial adoption normalization in these “high adop99 Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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tion societies” may be underpinned by shared social norms of Lutheran secularism, homogenous whiteness, and political progressivism. As a result of the high incidence of adoption from Korea and other countries to Minnesota and Denmark, large numbers of transnationally adopted adults working within and alongside Asian American and immigrant Danish communities now have signifcant infuence on dialogues around the politics of inclusion and exclusion in both locations. While previous studies have focused on adoptee populations in the United States or in Denmark, our focus on comparing similar adoptee populations and social conditions around adoption between the nation of Denmark and the state of Minnesota is a new approach. Our analysis expands on the 974 work of Hwai Chun Kim, who compared data collected from two adoption agencies, Lutheran Social Services in Minnesota and Adoption Centre in Denmark.2 Kim’s study outlines the legal frameworks regulating adoption and the placement of Korean children with adoptive families in the 970s. Te main part of Kim’s study was built on questionnaires distributed to adopters with adopted children from Korea and intended to explore the motivations and social background of adopters and to “obtain a profle of the adopted children.”3 One interesting dimension of Kim’s study is that it shows a diference in adopters’ motivations between the two locations studied: while Minnesotan families adopting through Lutheran Social Services seem invested in the humanitarian act of “helping children who need a home,” Danish families adopting through Adoption Centre seem to be motivated by infertility and the desire to become parents, a theme that we also found in our comparative research. Kim’s study also shows that the Minnesota-based adopters are more willing to adopt children that are “hard to place”: older children, sibling groups, and children with disabilities. Kim’s study uses data from adoption agencies to explore diferences in motivations and adopter demographics during the early decades of transnational adoption from Korea. In the present study, we turn our attention to national and local newspaper reporting on the decades-long phenomenon of transracial/transnational adoption in Minnesota and Denmark, to examine the discursive framing of transnational adoption.4 Because adoption is a contemporary form of family building that relies on legal instruments and social acceptance and that has short and sometimes intermittent histories, the public, including adoption communities (consisting of adopters and adoptees) has little access to adoption histories, both personal and institutional. Newspaper reporting is one of the few publicly accessible forums through which we can learn about the history of adoption policy and practice in a

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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specifc location. While, by their nature, newspaper articles lack historical context and are transient, they provide a snapshot of a particular community’s response to a current issue—in our research, transnational adoption. At the same time, newspaper reporting can instruct readers in how to think about or react to current events. In the case of reporting about transnational adoption in Minnesota and Denmark, new practices of transnational adoption were portrayed as humanitarian and progressive. Mixed-race families, once a curiosity in both locations, became normalized. Reporting about transnational adoption in Minnesota and Denmark portrayed this novel mode of family formation as humanitarian and progressive and contributed to the normalization of the multiracial family, which had hitherto been a curiosity in both locations. Tough newspaper reporting, as a mainstream media vehicle, tends to refect normative social values about adoption, journalists seeking new angles on the practice have helped adoptee voices be heard as adoptee communities have coalesced. Eventually, reporting on adoption became a pathway through which adoptee communities could communicate with the public through their artistic, scholarly, or activist work. Material and Methods

Danish newspaper articles were found through searches in the databases of Mediestream (for articles published before 990), Infomedia (for articles published afer 990) and in Politiken’s own online archive. Te combined searches, concentrated on the time frame 945–20 5, resulted in digitalized versions of more than ffeen hundred articles from national and regional newspapers. Te articles were found by searching for the word adoption and cover domestic adoption (including forced adoption) and transnational adoption. Te archive of articles collected from Danish newspapers is not exhaustive of newspaper reporting from 945–20 5, as Mediestream and Infomedia do not include all newspapers within that time frame. While Infomedia contains all articles from the oldest Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende from 990 onward, articles written prior to 990 have yet to be digitized. It was possible to locate a limited number of the pre- 990 articles from Berlingske Tidende’s nondigitized archive, with assistance from Berlingske Research. Te examples from Denmark in this essay are drawn from diferent newspapers, including Politiken, Berlingske Tidende, Jyllands-Posten, Information, Aalborg Stifstidende, Aarhuus Stifstidende and Ekstra Bladet.5

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Minnesota newspaper articles were found through index and term searches of daily newspapers in the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis. Both daily newspapers in the Twin Cities, the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, are, like many American newspapers, the result of mergers between former competitors. Former St. Paul newspapers include the St. Paul Pioneer Press and the St. Paul Dispatch, which merged in 985 to form the St. Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch. Since 990, the publication has been known as the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Former Minneapolis newspapers include the Minneapolis Star ( 947–87), the Minneapolis Tribune ( 964–82), the Minneapolis Star and Tribune ( 982–87), and the Star Tribune ( 987–present). Digital access to full texts and the availability of term search goes back to 995 for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and to 986 for the Star Tribune. Tere is a card index for St. Paul newspapers from 967–80 and a printed index for Minneapolis newspapers from 964 to 986, but there are no indexes for 945–64, leaving a signifcant gap for newspapers in both cities. Search results yielded 237 articles between 95 and 20 5. Newspaper Reporting in the High Adoption Society

In both Minnesota and Denmark, a mix of social and demographic characteristics have converged to normalize and create favorable conditions for adoption, particularly transracial and transnational adoption. Prominent populations of white Scandinavians who practice secular Lutheranism support progressive politics, human services, and social welfare. Tose populations have historically been open to nonbiological forms of kinship and have established adoption agencies interested in engaging in local placement for overseas adoptees.6 On June 23, 974, an article reporting the proportionally high numbers of children adopted transnationally in the upper Midwest appeared in the Minneapolis Tribune under the headline “Area Adopts Many Foreign Tots.” Te article reports that a regional ofce of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service, responsible for the states of Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota, processed nearly four times the petitions for overseas adoption than surrounding regional ofces, a full 0 percent of the petitions for the nation (the three states covered by this regional ofce had less than 2.5 percent of the US population in 973). While the article does not speculate about why there was such concentrated interest in overseas adoption in these three sparsely populated states, it elaborates on

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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how readers can fnd out about how to adopt transnationally, and it works to dispel negative assumptions about adopting a child from overseas. In Minnesota, two large adoption agencies facilitated Korean adoption. Te frst was the Children’s Home Society, which began as the Children’s Aid Society in 889 and established a temporary Korean adoption program in 955, afer the Korean War, and a permanent program in 968. Te second was Lutheran Social Services of Minnesota, established in 900.7 According to staf writer Kim Ode of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, institutional connections also facilitated Minnesota-Korea connections for adoption. Kun Chil Paik, the founder of Korean Social Services, a stillprominent South Korean adoption agency, did his graduate work at the University of Minnesota and interned at Lutheran Social Services in the mid- 960s, before establishing a Korean adoption program with Lutheran Social Services in 967.8 Transnational adoption is historically rooted in war; this is true for both Minnesota and Denmark. In Minnesota, there is sustained emphasis on difcult conditions caused by wars in which the United States was directly involved. Both wartime and peacetime news on transnational adoption in the Twin Cities (the largest metropolitan area in the upper Midwest region including the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and North and South Dakota) focused on the pitiful conditions of so-called orphans in Korea and Vietnam and instructed readers on how to help, frst by directing aid to children in both countries, then by advocating for adoption from both countries. Humanitarian appeals, including the ones noted above, began this process of instruction to Minnesotans, alerting them to the child welfare crises in both South Korea and Vietnam as a direct result of Asian wars in which the United States was a key player.9 Te emergence of transnational adoption in Denmark is closely linked with trends in domestic adoption, as the number of Danish-born children relinquished for adoption declined afer World War II. During the 950s and early 960s, Danish newspapers eagerly reported on the discrepancy between the supply of and demand for adoptable children, ofen discursively framed as a “lack” or “shortage” of children, as waiting lists were long and stricter requirements, including home studies, were imposed on prospective adopters. Adopters were portrayed sympathetically, and many articles pursued the question of how the need to adopt could be satisfed by increasing the number of sending countries. In 950, Politiken published a short article titled “Tere Is a Need for Adoptable Children.”10 At the time, the private but state-funded organization Mødrehjælpen (Mothers’ Help) facilitated adoptions of Danish-born

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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children.11 In the article, a representative from Mødrehjælpen explains that because an increasing number of single mothers choose to keep their children, there is a shortage of adoptable children compared to the number of couples wishing to adopt. Te journalistic framing of this situation as an alarming need for adoptable children that begs to be managed and alleviated was indicative of an adopter-centered discourse that came to dominate Danish newspaper reporting on adoption in the following decades. Danish adoption history sheds light on a number of controversial and important issues seen across many adoptive countries: for example, not only how adopters and agencies have bypassed existing rules, but also how adopters have pushed for tighter regulation to bolster pro-adoption agendas.12 In the late 950s and early 960s, when prospective adopters faced years of waiting to adopt Danish-born children, many turned to postwar Germany, with the intention of fostering and later adopting children born to white German mothers and African American soldiers deployed by the US military.13 In many cases, adopters were able to bypass the Danish waiting lists and vetting procedures, but they also organized themselves in informal networks lobbying for tighter regulation through interviews and op-eds in Danish newspapers. Tis call for state recognition through juridical regulation and administrative procedures was not lost on Danish politicians. In 964, the Danish Ministry of Justice issued an authorization to Glemte Børn (Forgotten Children), making it the frst agency in Denmark to facilitate transnational adoptions.14 Te majority of articles from Minnesota and Denmark have promoted positive and ofen idealizing views of transnational adoption over the years. Te popularity of adoption has been mobilized through a range of afective discourses, from narratives of adoption as a “win-win” proposition and a humanitarian act, to portrayals of adoptive kinship as rewarding and “normal.” Local reporting, which refects and informs the changing civic culture in both Minnesota and Denmark throughout the history of transnational adoption in both locations, suggests that certain themes, such as adoption as child rescue, were common in both locations, while local contexts for these common tropes difer. Even though the practice of Danish transnational adoption began as a postwar phenomenon, we surmise that the “need for children” seems to have constituted a more common theme in early Danish newspaper reporting, whereas early Minnesota reporting framed foreign adoption as a project for “children in need” of adoption.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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A Need for Children/Children in Need

Two dominant themes that can be observed around notions of children for adoption are discussed in this section. In Denmark, the “need for children” is adopter focused. In Minnesota, a project of helping “children in need” is more child focused but, as we shall explain, ofen also represented through the perspectives of adopters. By the 960s, Korean overseas adoption, pioneered in the United States, was gaining in popularity in both Denmark and Minnesota. In Denmark, the availability of needy foreign children was contrasted to the lack of adoptable Danish children. In 964, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a feature article titled “4,000 Want to Adopt Children, but Only 0 Percent Succeed,”15 connecting the demand for adoptable children in Denmark with the image of endless numbers of suffering children in developing countries. “At this moment, the situation doesn’t make sense,” the article stated, “as there is a strong need for children in Denmark, while many children perish all over the world.”16 Te argument that a Danish demand for children could easily be satisfed if Danes were allowed to access an open-ended supply of foreign-born children came to dominate reporting on adoption in the following years. Te article’s subheading simply states, “8,600 Homeless Children in Korea,” yet the claim is never explained nor commented on in the article; rather, it is presented as indisputable and obvious fact. Te fact-like status of the devastating conditions faced by children in the developing world is used to position the waiting lists as deeply unfair and meaningless to both children and adopters. During the late 960s, a steady stream of Danish articles raised the prospect of mass adoption from Korea. At that time, Glemte Børn was eager to increase the number of adoptions from Korea, and representatives from the organization strenuously argued, in several articles, that while Sweden and Norway had managed to secure hundreds of adoptions from Korea, unfair bureaucratic obstacles created barriers for Danish couples wishing to adopt a Korean child. A 969 article in Aalborg Stifstidende mirrors the changing landscape of adoption. Under the headline “Received Two Children at the Same Time from Diferent Parts of the World,” Kirsten and Jens Christian Lund Jensen are interviewed about adopting two Black children, one from Germany and one from Korea.17 Te Lund Jensens refect on how they consciously made the choice to adopt a Black Korean child because they believed he would face a wretched

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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life if he were to grow up in Korea, yet they also stress that their decision to adopt is based on egoistic reasons. Te intertwined discourses of adoption as both egoistic need and an act that saves the life of a child can be found in many later articles, and it points to the proliferation of a “winwin” discourse casting adoption as the always and already meaningful answer to a complex set of problems. In contrast to the theme of the need for children in Denmark, Minnesota reporting focused much more on needful children, especially in connection with American wars in Asia. US involvement in Asian civil wars ultimately opened South Korea (afer armistice) and Vietnam (during the war and intermittently in the 980s and 20 0s) as sending countries for overseas adoption to the United States. Even before armistice agreements, a pictorial under the headline “ 00,000 Korean Children Are War Orphans” appeared in the Minneapolis Morning Tribune, on May 23, 953. Twenty-two years later, coverage of Operation Babylif at the end of the Vietnam War deliberately focused on child rescue from war conditions. As argued by Christina Klein and Arissa Oh, the image and idea of child rescue in US-Asian wars reframes those wars as humanitarian and liberatory to the American public and serves to distract a war-weary public from the more difcult images of unpopular wars, by refocusing the public’s attention on the salvation of children.18 For instance, on April 5, 975, the Minneapolis Tribune’s front-page coverage of the April 3 crash of a Babylif aircraf, thought to have killed at least two hundred on board, was balanced by a story of orphan rescue. Te headline “For Orphan in Twin Cities . . . It’s Love, Kisses and New Clothes” is placed inches away from the lead story, “200 Believed Dead in Orphan Plane Crash,” reminding readers that adoption rescue is still the dominant story, even on a day when many children lost their lives as a direct result of having been “lifed.” Te Minneapolis Star’s follow-up coverage of the Operation Babylif plane crash, published on the evening of April 5, featured a United Press International (UPI) pictorial titled “Te Lucky Ones.” Te photographic essay, with lengthy captions, includes four pictures of Vietnamese children in the embrace of white American mothers and one picture of a concernedlooking couple whose promised child was late because of a fight delay. Tese images appeared in the same section as extensive coverage of the crash, inlcuding stories of families in the Twin Cities metropolitan area awaiting adopted children from Vietnam who were unafected by the crash. Because of the UPI story’s proximity to the reports of the April 3 air disaster, the title “Te Lucky Ones” has double meaning. Of course, the Vietnamese children were “lucky” to have been on transportation other

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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than the plane that crashed, but only a small Associated Press column in the center of the page directly referenced the crash: “Area Women Survived Crash” reported about a transport worker from a Minneapolis suburb whose father had seen her alive on television afer the crash. Te other pictures in the UPI story were of children who had recently arrived for adoption. It is unclear if the article title means they were “lucky” to have not been on the crashed plane or just “lucky” to have been adopted to the United States; previous studies of Vietnamese adoptions indicate a combination of both sentiments.19 The Color-Blind Love of Adoption

Color blindness, or the denial of race as a category of importance, is imagined, by some, as an ideal of racial equality and, by others, as a common contemporary form of racism.20 Reporting on transnational adoption in Denmark and Minnesota is characterized by an embrace of color blindness as a heroic characteristic among adopters, ofen in contrast to racist conditions imagined in adoptees’ birth countries.21 Danish accounts tend to focus on what is perceived as a racist threat to children in other countries (rather than within Denmark), while Minnesota reporting is more responsive to racial issues within the multiracial and multicultural United States and posits that the greater threat to adoptees of color is within the United States. In the fall of 960, Politiken attempted to provide an in-depth perspective on the phenomenon of transracial adoptions from Germany to Denmark, with the feature article “Many Brown Children in Denmark.”22 According to the article, close to two hundred mixed-race Black23 children from Germany had already found homes in Denmark. Te article depicts potential German adoptees as children of mothers doing sex work but also as victims of a pervasive racism in German society: “Some [of the children] have been sitting in frst grade in a German school thinking whether that man who said they ‘should be burned because they are Negroes’ would be lurking outside the school gates.”24 Te invocation of Hitler’s Nazi regime as a fear piercing through mixed-race Black children in Germany is contrasted with the depiction of Danish families as providing these children with a loving home and an ordinary life without problems connected to race. Te article even speculates that the mixed-race Black adoptees from Germany may form a stronger and more intimate relation with their white parents because, as adopters, they have fought to have a child.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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While it was legal for prospective adopters to organize private adoptions on their own, it was in violation of Danish law to enlist assistance and help from adoption mediators operating without an authorization from the Danish Ministry of Justice. During the early 960s, many prospective adopters did, however, turn to such mediators who were knowledgeable of the German system of child welfare and could initiate contact between families in Denmark and the relevant institutions in Germany.25 In the 960s, a Danish woman, Tytte Botfeldt, facilitated many of the adoptions from Germany and quickly became a public fgure and highprofle advocate for transnational adoption. In “Many Brown Children in Denmark,” Botfeldt recalls that she became interested in the plight of Black German children during the 950s, when some of them were sent to Denmark to summer camps. She directly addresses the question of race: “It is absolutely not fair that children should be handicapped because of the color of their skin. We knew that many of the mulatto children in Germany were sufering.”26 Botfeldt also tells a story of how her eldest adoptive daughter, Moni, was called a racial slur on her frst day of school in Denmark, yet that event is framed not as a consequence of a pervasive Danish racism (like the racism in Germany) but as an individual act of a boy who “just wanted to say a hurtful thing.”27 Te Politiken article is illustrative of how Danish newspapers eagerly and openly reported on Botfeldt’s role in facilitating illegal adoptions during the early 960s. We note an absence of editorials or other reporting that called for her or other facilitators to be prosecuted. Botfeldt herself appeared unapologetic, and in a lengthy 963 interview titled “An Importer of Children,”28 she pleaded with the Danish lawmakers to institutionalize transnational adoption and thus to establish a system through which individuals and organizations could obtain authorization as adoption facilitators. Te notion of Denmark as a superior and racism-free haven for Black German children is repeated in an editorial in Politiken later the same year: “During their upbringing, mulatto children in Denmark will probably experience preferential treatment and pampering—for who does not fnd them adorable, and many in our country harbor a weakness for foreignness.”29 Tat editorial is aligned with Botfeldt’s position in other ways, as it also calls for state regulation—not with the intention to dismantle transnational adoption, but as a measure to secure adoptions. In the early 970s, much of the reporting on adoption was focused on the arrival of Korean children, and it illustrates how Danish color blindness was presented as the opposite of Korean race politics. In the spring of 970, Politiken ran a feature article titled “Meeting the New Parents,”30

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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framed as a classic arrival story, with a journalist reporting on witnessing how children are handed over to their adopters at Kastrup airport. Te article explains that mixed-race Black children from Korea are vulnerable to abuse because Koreans are “extremely conscious of race” and that girls are more likely to be abandoned, because of the Korean preference for sons over daughters. In contrast, the Danish adopters waiting in the airport are described as color-blind and welcoming. Laura Briggs argues that the visual iconography found in much photojournalism and television from the 950s and 960s in the United States worked to assemble ideological narratives about “rescue” that encouraged white Americans to adopt children of color.31 Her interpretation is consistent with how the visual images that accompany “Meeting the New Parents” underscore the notion of adoption as a rescue mission: a photographic teaser on the front page shows a Black Korean girl standing by herself and looking intently into the camera. Te caption reads, “She was given new parents,” then, in smaller print, “Yesterday 22 Korean children were liberated from their homelessness.  .  .  . Further reporting and photographs on page 9.” Te front-page teaser corresponds with a small photograph placed at the end of the article, depicting a young baby wrapped in blankets, lying down, and staring passively into the camera. Its caption reads, “It WAS a long journey.” Images of the liberated, vulnerable, and ultimately freestanding child thus begin and end the article, reminding Danish readers of the urgent necessity of these adoptions. Te article is also accompanied by three relatively large photographs that depict white Danish adopters embracing their newly arrived children. Te visual representation of transracial intimacy—white parents with their arms wrapped around children of color—reinforces the message of racial tolerance.32 During the 980s, sporadic reporting begins to touch on the question of transnational adoption and racism. A 985 article in Politiken reports on adopters’ worry that their adopted children of color will become objects of the growing xenophobia in Danish society, but not until the 990s did transnational adoptees themselves begin to be interviewed about racism.33 Much of that reporting presents adoptees’ experiences vis-à-vis the question of Danishness. In a lengthy 996 article in Berlingske Tidende, “Te Danes from Korea,” four Korean adoptees are interviewed and draw attention to sexualized racism, including how male adoptees face a struggle to be seen as attractive, while female adoptees are fetishized and assumed to be Tai sex workers. Danishness serves as the contextual framing of these experiences, as evidenced in the article’s title and opening lines: “Tey don’t have any doubt. Tey are Danes with a capital D. Tears are in their

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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eyes when ‘Kong Christian’34 is played at midnight New Year’s Eve.”35 Te essentializing construction of the transnational adoptee as deeply invested in national rituals and without ambivalence about their identity does not negate experiences with racism. On the contrary, accentuating the adoptee fgure as Danish works to construe the lived racism as unacceptable but also “misguided,” as if adoptees constitute the “wrong” targets of racism precisely because they are Danish. In Minnesota, themes of child rescue that were established in reporting about adoption during the Korean and Vietnam Wars were replaced, in the late 970s and 980s, by themes of transnational adoptees in need of rescue from a racist society and child welfare system that could prevent them from being adopted into white homes. Articles from that period posit transracial adoption as a solution to American racism, through the creation of mixed-race families. On November 26, 980, under the headline “Color Is No Barrier When Couple Falls in Love with Baby,” the St. Paul Dispatch ran a front-page story about a white couple who wanted to adopt a Black child whom they had been fostering for a year and a half. Te article describes the desire of the Twin Cities couple to adopt and explains how the policy of race matching, then practiced by social workers to instill African American identity in Black children by keeping them in black families, could pose a threat to the couple’s adoption plan. Less than six months later, on April 2 , 98 , another article in the Dispatch, titled “Adoptive Family Find Love Has No Race,” focused on the growing trend of Twin Cities families adopting from Korea. Tese two articles, so similarly titled, clearly show that the problem of adoption policies that create obstacles for white couples seeking to adopt Black children could be remedied by adoption of Asian children from South Korea instead of Black American children. Even without the news appeal of race relations or war, adoptive parents were considered heroically newsworthy just for adopting. Te many “arrival” stories or captioned photographs that appeared in Twin Cities newspapers throughout the 970s and 980s described white parents in the act of receiving adopted children from overseas at the airport, just as we found in Danish newspapers in the 970s. On June 9, 985, the Minneapolis Star Tribune printed the story “Adoption Created Family ‘Rainbow Coalition,’ Held Together by Love,” in which adoptive father Rich Cowles wrote lovingly about his adopted Korean and Indian children, making clear his perspective that love transcends racial diference. Interestingly, by the 980s, Minnesota adoption reporting locates the racial threat to children of color within the United States—not in the form of racial dis-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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crimination they might face, but in policies that would prevent their adoption into white families. Ironically, in Minnesota articles, the cultural preservation policies advocated by African American and Indigenous Indian communities in the 970s, while generally not explicitly named in reporting, constitute a racial threat in the eyes of white adopters, who are valorized for their color blindness in “saving” children from a society too preoccupied with racial diference to consider that a child of color’s imagined best interests are served by being raised in a white family. In the preceding examples, we see common constructions in Danish and US-based newspaper reporting in which white adopters are valorized for their color blindness in their willingness to adopt children of color.36 One of the key diferences between how this valorization is reported in Denmark and in Minnesota is the perceived source of racist harm to children. In Danish accounts from the 960s and 970s, racist politics and peoples outside Denmark (in Germany and Korea) are portrayed as the threat to Black German and Korean children. Te racial makeup in the state of Minnesota is similar to that of Denmark. However, because of the more prominently multicultural and multiracial makeup of the greater United States, multicultural discourses prevail, including competing discourses between dominant and minoritized racialized groups. In Minnesota, white adopters are still valorized for color blindness37 but perceive US race-aware Indigenous people and people of color (who are advocating for keeping children of color in tribal communities and with people of color) to be the most serious racist threat to their adoptions. Tis perception stands in contrast to the Danish example, which responds to imagined racist threats outside the adoptive nation. While weak multiculturalism, which celebrates diference to some extent, has dominated transnational adoption in Minnesota, Danish adoption practices have relied more on assimilationist logics; in both locations, however, color-blind ideologies that erase past or current racial or cultural oppression within the nation have been formative for transnational adoption practices.38 The Political (Im)mobilization of Adopters and Adoptees

Humanitarian discourses have never disappeared from newspaper reporting about transracial adoption in Denmark and Minnesota, but these discourses became less pronounced in newspaper reporting during the 980s in Denmark and the 990s in Minnesota, as transnational

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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adoptee numbers grew. Along with sentimental articles about arrivals and case stories detailing life in the adoptive family, newspapers then increasingly focused on the trials and problems facing adopters, including problems such as consumer fraud. As we shall see, particularly for adoptees articulating their experience in their own voices, the complexity of adoption is an important and underrepresented element in stories about the practice. Te Danish organization Adoption & Samfund (Adoption & Society) was founded by adopters in 977 and quickly became an infuential forum for adopter interests. Notably, the organization did not promote the same kind of “bleeding-heart” humanitarian idealism that supported the generation of adopters who founded the adoption agencies a decade earlier; the focus shifed to adopter rights. In a 977 op-ed titled “Unreasonable Rules for Adoptive Parents,” published in Aarhuus Stifstidende a board member from Adoption & Samfund argues that the handling of adoption cases is unfair and prolongs the adoption process.39 Tis formation of an adopter subject invested in gaining rights and fast-tracking access to adoption is mirrored in newspaper reporting at that time. Te framing of adopters as the victims of an unfair and rigid adoption system has since dominated Danish reporting on adoption. Tis adopter centrism has made use of the visual presence of adoptees; numerous photographs of children and the repeated mentioning of personal information, such as the names, age, and personal histories of adoptees, have given the fgure of the adoptee an obtrusive presence in the public domain.40 Te visual framing of the adoptee fgure as a child in need of rescue has worked to immobilize and silence the adoptee, enabling adopters and others to speak for and about adoptees.41 Not until the mid- 980s were adoptees interviewed in their own right, when representatives for Stamtræet (Family Tree), a newly founded organization primarily for Danish-born adoptees and frst mothers, began to appear in articles on adoption. Te founding of Stamtræet was one of the frst signifcant steps toward political mobilization among adult adoptees in Denmark and prompted a shif in media coverage, as new topics, such as search and reunion, became the focus of reporting. Stamtræet also voiced an important critique of the secrecy attached to “closed” adoptions, and members argued that adoptees reaching the age of eighteen should be given the right to access information about their frst families. In the 990s, Minnesota newspapers began to report on transnational adoption as a consumer issue, warning about waning availability of adoptable children overseas and about corruption in the transnational adoption

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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industry.42 On August 26, 990, the St. Paul Pioneer Press printed two such articles, “One Door Closing” (a reprint of an Orange County Register article) and “Changes Will Hamper Minnesota Agencies,” in direct response to an announcement by the South Korean government that it would end overseas adoption in 996—one of many attempts to end overseas adoption from Korea (rumors of which were also lamented in the Danish press).43 In addition to concerns that an end to Korean overseas adoption would strand children in need of families outside the adoption system, Pioneer Press staf writer Katherine Lanpher cites consumerist concerns over a proposed end to Korean-to-American transnational adoption. “Would-be adoptive parents already are turning to Latin American countries, the Philippines, and India,” writes Lanpher, who then notes that adoption from those countries could cost adopters up to twice as much as the current cost to adopt from Korea.44 On December 3 , 995, the Pioneer Press ran the front-page article “Te Baby Pipeline,” an exposé on local “baby fnding company” Dawn Bonn and Associates, which had placed over a thousand foreign-born children in Minnesota and other states since 976. Te article focuses on transnational adoption from Paraguay, which had recently halted its overseas adoption program amid charges of child stealing and trafcking. While the article was ostensibly reporting on a lawsuit against Bonn, it also included the harrowing testimonial of a couple who had adopted through Bonn, as well as a tip sheet for readers to use in evaluating their international adoption agency or broker. Contemporary Shifts: Adoptee Interventions and the Formation of a Community of Transnational Adoptees

In the 990s, the focus of Danish and Minnesotan newspaper reporting shifed as the generations of people who had been transnationally adopted in the 960s and 970s began to come of age. In Denmark (despite a continued emphasis on the “lack” of adoptable children) and in Minnesota, the media picked up on a diferent set of stories about adoptees themselves, including the emerging networks and cultural production created by adoptees. In both locations, adoptee interventions began to change adoption discourse in critical ways. In Minnesota, the Star Tribune’s frst article about an adult adoptee was printed in December 989. It told the story of Korean adoptee Steve Walker, who was raising money to return to South Korea to search for his Korean family. By the mid- 990s, coverage of the state’s ten to ffeen thou-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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sand Korean adoptees had transitioned from depicting transnational adoption as only an act of rescue to recognizing it as a practice that can have difcult consequences for adopted people. In the Star Tribune article “Cultural Exchange,” printed on December 0, 995, and focused on the adoption story of Korean adoptee Anne Hampe, staf writer Paul Levy states, “no state has been more aggressive and successful than Minnesota in accepting, placing and nurturing these neglected children, who surveys indicate, have prospered tremendously. But ofen, a heavy price was paid for that success—almost always by the children.” Troughout the 960s, 970s, and 980s, Minnesota newspapers depicted transnational adoption as contributing to a specifc political or social good: the Cold War fght against communism, the rescue of children from war zones, the social struggle against racism, or, at least, the promotion of racial awareness. When the focus of Minnesota reporting on transnational adoption switched, in the 990s, from focusing on the United States as the adoptive nation or on issues afecting adoptive parents to telling the stories of Minnesota transnational adoptees themselves, losses inherent in the process of adoption became apparent. Experiences that would become stock stories of adoptee narratives—for example, stateside experiences of racial discrimination, the search for frst parents, and the sense of being “between two cultures”—began to appear in reporting about Korean adoption in Minneapolis and St. Paul newspapers during that period. In Denmark in 990, Berlingske Tidende ran a short article titled “Club for Children from Korea,” describing the plans of Korean adoptee Søren Rose to start an organization for Korean adoptees. Rose, who is interviewed, says that adoptees may beneft from talking “about the problems, the advantages, and their experiences with being adopted Koreans.”45 Included in the article is the information that the frst meeting of Korea Klubben would take place on February 8, at 2:00 p.m., in Rose’s home. Rose was not the only adoptee who worked on building a community at that time. In an interview printed by Politiken a few months later, Korean adoptees Hwa Ja Jacobsen and Lotte Ran explain that they know each other from high school and would like to connect with other adoptees, no matter their birth countries. In both articles, the prospect of shared experiences and commonalities are highlighted as an obvious reason for adoptees to form a community. During the 990s, Korea Klubben was, by far, the most visible organization for adoptees in Danish newspapers, and members advanced a more nuanced picture of adoptee existence. Adoptees’ feelings of loss and mourn-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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ing began to appear in the reporting. In “Our Past Is a Big Absence,” published by Ekstra Bladet in 996, Korean adoptees are interviewed about their frst families and the lack of search assistance. One of the interviewees, Eva Tind, speaks about reuniting with her Korean family and questions the political underpinnings of adoptee existence: “It is so important to own your history, to know where you come from. Nobody has been able to tell us how our lives began. Did I cry when I was born? Was I a quiet baby? For us adoptees, the narrative about our lives begins in the airport. Te meeting with our adoptive parents constitutes a birth story, yet we also existed prior to our arrival in Denmark.”46 Interviews such as these are notable in that they made the frst families visible and, at the same time, upended narratives about frst families as always and already broken, dysfunctional, and “dead.” While representatives from Korea Klubben were mostly asked to serve as “case histories” by sharing their personal experiences with adoption (not to function as adoption experts), their narratives were crucial in imposing new understandings of adoption. Although Korea Klubben never defned itself as a political organization, it nonetheless emerged as a political stakeholder, voicing an explicit critique of the lack of postadoption services, the need for more adoption research, and, especially, the cultural paradigm of assimilation to Danishness that had been imposed on adoptees. “We had to become Danish, those of us who came as part of the frst wave,” the organization’s thenpresident Liselotte Hae-Jin Birkmose told Politiken in 2000.47 During the early 2000s, in parallel with Korea Klubben’s work, a more radical political platform was slowly carved out in mainstream Danish media as adoptee artists, scholars, and activists made themselves heard. For example, when Korean adoptee Maja Lee Langvad published her frst collection of poems, Find Holger Dane, in 2006,48 the collection was positively received by literary critics and it galvanized an emerging critique of transnational adoption. In an op-ed in Information in 2008, Lee Langvad questioned the moral legitimacy of the demand-driven industry of transnational adoption: “In respect of adoptees, adoptive parents, and biological parents, for whom international adoption has had horrifying personal consequences, I fnd it ignorant to label international adoption a good story.”49 Te articulation of a politicized and critical adoptee position during the past twenty years in Denmark has resulted in a shif in media coverage. Even though reporting still tends to centralize the adopter subject, adoptees have managed to introduce a more critical dimension to adoption discourse in the public domain. Tis change in discourse has resulted in the establishment of political networks and organizations. Adoptee-led

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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initiatives launched in 20 3 included the activist organization Adoptionspolitisk Forum (Adoption Political Forum, or APF) and the researchoriented Tænketanken Adoption (Tink Tank Adoption). Two years later, APF received funding from the municipality of Copenhagen to establish Adoptionshuset (Adoption House), a community center for adoptees.50 Tese organizations—products of a long tradition of adoption critique formulated by adoptees, reaching back to Stamtræet and Korea Klubben’s early years— became central stakeholders driving Denmark’s adoption debates in the years following critical media coverage in 20 2 exposing illegal and coercive methods, such as “child harvesting,” accompanying adoptions from Ethiopia.51 In Minnesota, the presence of a disproportionately high number of Korean and other transnational and transracial adoptees has manifested itself less in political engagement and more in the active arts communities in the Twin Cities, and this shif is refected in a change in reporting about transnational adoption in local newspapers. In 993, the frst main stage production for the frst Asian American theater company in the Twin Cities premiered. For its frst full production, Teatre Mu (later Mu Performing Arts) chose Mask Dance, a play about three Korean adopted women, interwoven with traditional Korean mask dancing. Playwright and director Rick Shiomi, then Mu artistic director, wrote, directed, and produced Mask Dance, based on workshop conversations with Korean adoptees in the newly formed company. A Japanese Canadian, Shiomi related to these stories as those of fellow Asian Americans, and thus was born a Minnesota Asian American community of artists whose core consciousness included Korean adoptee experiences. A story about Mask Dance appeared as part of the Star Tribune’s arts reporting on December 4, 993, under the headline “Teater Mu Gives Voice to Koreans in ‘Dance.’”52 For the frst time, Korean adoptees in Minnesota appeared in journalistic coverage not as part of white families or in search of Korean families but as part of an active Asian American community. Te Star Tribune covered the play’s reprise in 995 as well. Coverage of the next Mu production focusing on adoption appeared in the Star Tribune on October 6, 998, under the title “Fish Fulfllment: Legends of Japan and Korea Blend with a Minnesota Fish Story in a New Play for Teatre Mu, a Tale of Asian-American Identity Called ‘Te Walleye Kid.’”53 Te play mentioned was coauthored by Shiomi and Korean adoptee Sundraya Kase. Mu would reinterpret Walleye Kid twice more as a musical, in 2005 and 2008, and the local newspapers reviewed subsequent runs.54 In 20 and 20 4, Mu opened its theater seasons with plays written by

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Korean adoptees about Korean adoption. Te Star Tribune’s review of Four Destines on October 2 , 20 (titled “Adoption Satire Mostly Hits Mark”)55 marks the frst time the newspaper reviewed (rather than covered the production of) a Mu adoption-themed production. Reviews and other coverage of Korean adoptee cultural production dominated the newspaper’s adoption coverage afer 2005. Six of ten stories about Korean adoption published in the St. Paul newspaper between 2005 and 20 2 focused either on Mu productions about adoption or on publications by local Korean adoptee authors, memoirist Jane Jeong Trenka and poet Sun Yung Shin. Both St. Paul and Minneapolis newspapers reviewed the Mu Performing Arts production of Middle Brother by Korean adoptee Eric Sharp in September 20 4, praising its “heartfelt and ofen compelling exploration of the subject of Korean adoption”56 and noting the nowcommon trope of the play’s main adoptee character: “Billy feels like he’s in the middle of two cultures.”57 All the press coverage discussed in this section demonstrates a shif from emerging voices of adoptees focusing on community-building issues of racialized identity formation and negotiations of kinship, to a politicized artistic movement organized around a critique of transnational adoption that emphasizes adoptee experience and lived realities over stereotypical images of Asian immigrants, including adoptees. Conclusion: Adoption Tropes in Newspaper Reporting

Although Denmark and Minnesota are very diferent culturally, economically, and socially, the two locations have key similarities that, we argue, have infuenced both places to become high adoption societies—but not without tensions. In this essay, we have traced newspaper reporting on transnational adoption in both locations to show the emergence and then normalization of transnational adoption in both locations, as well as how large numbers of adult adoptees have infuenced local culture and politics. We have found common tropes in reporting about transnational adoption, especially that of transnational adoption as child rescue, either from adverse conditions in countries of origin or from racial bias in birth countries or inside the adoption industry. Tough rescue narratives dominate in reporting in both locations, Denmark and the United States have had diferent political positions on adoption in relation to sending countries. US involvement in the Korean and Vietnam Wars resulted in war rescue narratives in adoption reporting

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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from those countries. Danish newspapers were more likely than Minnesota reporting to depict childlessness as the primary crisis to be solved. Because reporting before the 990s was also largely focused on adopters, it is not surprising that the trope of child rescue is used in both locations to support arguments in favor of transnational adoption as a solution to overseas child welfare issues. Both types of rescue narrative portray Denmark or Minnesota as superior environments for child-rearing when compared to birth nations. In both locations, the adopter society is imagined to be more concerned about child welfare and to be more racially just than the sending society. Considering the predominance of whiteness in both Denmark and Minnesota,58 we understand accusations of racism directed toward sending nations to be performative of a liberal whiteness superiority construct wherein assimilation and color blindness (itself a form of racism, as described by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva)59 are embraced as solutions to racism. Since the 990s, we note a shif from adopter-centered reporting as the press allowed groups of adult transnational adoptees in Denmark and Minnesota to articulate the transnational adoption experience as their own. Adoptee-centered accounts serve as potent counternarratives60 to both adopter-centered discourses and child rescue tropes that predominated in previous transnational adoption reporting. NOTES Lene Myong’s contribution to this essay has been funded by the Velux Foundations and the research project A Study of Experiences and Resistance to Racialization in Denmark (SERR), grant no. 10321. 1. Minnesota, at the time of our analysis, had a population of approximately 5.5 million, and Denmark’s population is approximately 5.7 million. About 25 percent of Minnesotans report Scandinavian ancestry; almost 35 percent report German ancestry. See United States Census Bureau, “B11001: Household Type (Including Living Alone),” 2010–2014 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates, US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey Ofce, 2014, available at American FactFinder, http://factfnder2.census.gov. Te fgures available in 2020 were collected from 2018 and are listed at: https://data.census.gov Statistics Denmark does not collect data based on race, but as of 2017, the population of Denmark was 5,748,769; this includes 570,581 immigrants and 170,991 descendants (of immigrants). Te total numbers of immigrants and descendants include both “Western” and “non-Western” backgrounds. See Danmarks Statistik, Indvandrere i Danmark 2017, accessed December 6, 2017, http://www.dst.dk/publ/indvandrereid. Transnational adoptees are not included in the categories of immigrants and descendants, but it is estimated that between twenty-fve and thirty thousand children have been transnationally adopted to Denmark since the end of World War II.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Shared and Divergent Landscapes of Transnational Adoption | 119 2. Hwai Chun Kim, “Intercountry Adoption: American and Danish Parents Who Adopted Korean-Born Children.” (PhD diss., Ohio State University, 1974). Adoption Centre later changed its name to AC Børnehjælp. 3. Kim, 100. 4. A similar methodology to ours has been used in Kathryn A. Sweeney and Rachel L. Pollack, “Colorblind Individualism, Color Consciousness, and the Indian Child Welfare Act: Representations of Adoptee Best Interest in Newspaper Coverage of the Baby Veronica Case,” Sociological Quarterly 58, no. 4 (2017): 701–20. For more on the use of newspaper articles in historical and sociological research, see Bonnie M. Miller, “A Primer for Using Historical Images in Research,” American Periodicals 27, no. 1 (January 2017): 73–94; Frank D. Durham, “News Frames as Social Narratives: TWA Flight 800,” Journal of Communication 4 (1998): 100. 5. Politiken, Berlingske Tidende, and Jyllands-Posten are leading broadsheet newspapers. Whereas Politiken has a history of social liberalism and center-lef orientation, Berlingske Tidende occupies a conservative stance, and Jyllands-Posten takes a liberal and center-right position. Information appeals to a more narrowly defned readership and is ofen perceived as lef-wing. Aarhuus Stifstidende and Aalborg Stifstidende are both regional newspapers based in Århus and Aalborg, the second and fourth largest cities in Denmark. From 1999, Aalborg Stifstidende has been named Nordjyske Stifstidende. Ekstra Bladet is a tabloid pursuing a sensationalist and “disclosing” form of journalism. 6. Kim Park Nelson, Invisible Asians: Korean American Adoptees, Asian American Experiences, and Racial Exceptionalism (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2016), 102. For a discussion of liberal multiculturalism in adoption, see Tobias Hübinette, “From Orphan Trains to Babylifs: Colonial Trafcking, Empire Building, and Social Engineering,” in Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption, ed. Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin (Cambridge, MA: South End, 2006), 139–49. 7. Kim Ode, “Flood of Adopted Korean Babies Ebbs: Tousands of Youngsters Were the Unwanted Afermath of War,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, December 24, 1989, 1E; Park Nelson, Invisible Asians, 102. 8. Ode, “Flood of Adopted Korean Babies Ebbs.” 9. Tere is ample evidence that newspaper reporting of international adoption has had instructive intent. For a discussion of the 1955 Ebony article “How to Adopt Korean Babies,” see Eleana Kim, Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 55. For fndings that newspaper accounts of adoption infuence adopter decision-making, both discouraging them from adopting domestically and encouraging them to adopt internationally, see Heather Jacobson, “Framing Adoption: Te Media and Parental Decision Making,” Journal of Family Issues 35, no. 55 (2014): 654–76. 10. Ing, “Der er mangel på adoptivbørn,” Politiken, September 22, 1950, n.p. 11. Mødrehjælpen was established in 1924 as a private organization, but legislation passed by the Danish Parliament in 1939 paved the way for Mødrehjæpen to receive state funding to provide its services nationwide, including counseling services for women with regard to family planning, abortion, and divorce. 12. See Amalie Linde, Amalie Kønigsfeld, and Mathilde Hørmand-Pallesen and their pioneering work on transnational adoptions from Germany to Denmark, Børneim-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

120 | Adoption and Multiculturalism porten: Et mørkt kapitel i fortællingen om international adoption (Copenhagen: Kristeligt Dagblads Forlag, 2013). 13. At the time, the German region involved was the Bundesrepublik Deutschland (BRD). In Race afer Hitler: Black Occupation Children in Postwar Germany and America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), Heide Fehrenbach notes that in the early 1960s, more Black German children were placed with Danish families than sent to the United States. In Børneimporten Linde, Kønigsfeldt, and Hørmand-Pallesen estimate that two to three thousand German children were adopted by Danish citizens from the late 1950s to the late 1970s. 14. Te present essay uses the name under which the originally named Dansk Hjælpeorganisation for Glemte Børn soon came to be known. 15. Kit, ”4000 ønsker Adoptivbørn, men kun 10 pCt. får dem,”Jyllandsposten, November 15, 1964, sec. 3, 6. 16. Kit, 6: “Situationen er i øjeblikket den helt meningsløse, at der er et stort behov for børn i Danmark, mens mange børn gaar til grunde verden over.” 17. Helle Gräs, “Fik to børn samtidig fra hver sin verdensdel,” Aalborg Stifstidende, November 16, 1969, sec. 1, 4. 18. Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Arissa H. Oh, To Save the Children of Korea: Te Cold War Origins of International Adoption (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015). 19. Nathalie Cherot, “Storytelling and Ethnographic Intersections: Vietnamese Adoptees and Rescue Narratives,” Qualitative Inquiry 15, no. 1 (2009): 113–48; Indigo Williams Willing, “Beyond the Vietnam War Adoptions: Representing Our Transracial Lives,” in Outsiders Within: Racial Crossings and Adoption Politics, ed. Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin (Cambridge, MA: South End, 2006), 275–85. 20. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefeld, 2014). 21. As argued by Ulf Hedetof, “‘Danish multiculturalism’ is an oxymoron,” and Danish immigration policies are assimilationist in the sense that Danish cultural and historical identity is imposed on immigrants and descendants. See Ulf Hedetof, “Multiculturalism in Denmark and Sweden,” Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) Policy Brief, December 2006. Historically, Danish assimilationist policies have been intertwined with ideologies of color blindness and denials of Danish racism. See, e.g., Peter Hervik, Te Annoying Diference: Te Emergence of Danish Neonationalism, Neoracism, and Populism in the Post-1989 World (New York: Berghahn Books, 2011). 22. Edward Clausen, “Masser af brune børn i Danmark,” Politiken, October 9, 1960, 33. 23. For decades, Danish newspapers used the term mulatbørn; a direct translation would be “mulatto children.” 24. Clausen, “Masser af brune børn i Danmark,” 33: “Nogle har siddet I en førsteklasse i en tysk skole og kun tænkt på, om den mand der sagde, at de ‘snart skulle brændes fordi de var negre’ også stod uden for skoleporten i dag.” 25. See Linde, Kønigsfeldt, and Hørmand-Pallesen, Børneimporten. 26. Clausen, “Masser af brune børn i Danmark,” 33: ”Det er jo helt urimeligt at børn skal ha’ et handicap på grund af en hudfarve. Vi vidste at mange af disse mulatbørn i Tyskland havde det forfærdeligt.”

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Shared and Divergent Landscapes of Transnational Adoption | 121 27. Clausen, 33: “Bare for at sige noget sårende.” 28. Servus, “En Børneimportør taler ud,” Politiken, February 20, 1963, 7. 29. “Mulatbørn: Tilfældighed eller plan, når børn skal vælges,” editorial, Politiken, October 26, 1963, 13: “Mulatbørn i Danmark vil sandsynligvis opleve, at de under deres opvækst ofere vil blive foretrukket og forkælet—for hvem synes ikke de er yndige, og mange i vort land har tilmed en svaghed for det fremmedartede.” 30. Spango. “Mødet med de nye forældre,” Politiken, April 29, 1970, sec. 1, 19. 31. Laura Briggs, “Mother, Child, Race, Nation: Te Visual Iconography of Rescue and the Politics of Transnational and Transracial Adoption,” Gender and History 15, no. 2 (2003): 179–200. 32. For a discussion of racial tolerance, see Johanna Gondouin, “Feminist Global Motherhood: Representations of Single-Mother Adoption in Swedish Media,” in Critical Kinship Studies, ed. Charlotte Kroløkke et al. (Landham, MD: Rowman and Littlefeld, 2016), 101–16. 33. Joan Jacobsen, “Fremmedhadet lurer på adoptivbørnene,” Politiken, July 28, 1985, sec. 3, 3. 34. “Kong Christian” refers to the royal anthem of Denmark, “Kong Christian stod ved højen Mast,” written by Johannes Ewald in 1778. 35. Bente Linnea Friis, “Danskerne fra Korea,” Berlingske Tidende, March 10, 1991, sec. 3, 4. 36. In the United States, such reporting was augmented by numerous memoirs in which adoptive parents contested the image of the adoptive placement as generating a second-class family, by depicting themselves as heroic in their parenting of adopted children. See Rachel Rains Winslow, Te Best Possible Immigrants: International Adoption, Social Policy, and the American Family 2017). 37. For in-depth analysis of color blindness, including a reimagining of transracial adoption as a form of “violent love,” see Kit Myers, “Race and the Violence of Love: Family and Nation in U.S. Adoptions from Asia” (PhD diss., University of California, San Diego, 2013). 38. For more on the problem of multiculturalism in transracial adoption contexts, see Park Nelson, Invisible Asians, chap. 10, “An Adoptee for Every Lake: Multiculturalism, Minnesota, and the Korean Transracial Adoptee.” 39. Skov Christensen, Povl. “Urimelige adoptionsregler.” Aarhuus Stifstidende, December 1, 1977, sec. 1, 30–31. 40. Verónica Anzil noted the centrality of adopters in her analysis of Spanish newspaper reporting between 1997 and 2011: “Adopting ‘Imaginaries’: International Adoption in the Spanish Press,” Adoption and Fostering 37, no. 1 (2013): 71–82. Emphasis on adopters and deemphasis of adoptees were identifed by Jennifer Potter in her analysis of American newspaper reporting between 1993 and 2003: “Adopting Commodities: A Burkean Cluster Analysis of Adoption Rhetoric,” Adoption Quarterly 16, no. 2 (2013): 108–27. 41. For a critique of visual framing in adoption, see Briggs, “Mother, Child, Race, Nation.” 42. In her analysis of US reporting on transnational adoption between 1990 and 2010 (“Framing Adoption”), Jacobson reports that 71 percent of the articles she analyzed were negative, warning of the potential dangers of transnational adoption to adopters.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

122 | Adoption and Multiculturalism 43. None of the attempts have ever been realized, as Korean overseas adoption continues to this day. 44. “Changes Will Hamper Minnesota Agencies,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, August 26, 1990. 45. Annette Hagerup, “Klub for børn fra Korea,” Berlingske Tidende, January 30, 1990, sec. 4, 3. 46. Karen Seneca, “Vores fortid er et stort hul,” Ekstra Bladet, February 28, 1996, sec. 1, 26. 47. Edel Hildebrandt, “Koreanske adoptivbørn: Vi skulle være danske,” Politiken, February 4, 2000, sec. 1, 4: “det var danske, vi skulle være, vi der kom med den første bølge.” 48. Maja Lee Langvad, Find Holger Danske (Copenhagen: Borgen, 2006). 49. Maja Lee Langvad, “International adoptioner en industri,” Information, June 16, 2008, sec. 1, 2–3. 50. As this chapter is fnalized in late 2019 Adoptionshuset and Tænketanken Adoption are no longer active and operating. 51. As a direct result of the exposure of illegal adoptions, DanAdopt and AC Børnehjælp were forced to merge and form a “new” adoption agency, Danish International Adoption (DIA), in 2015. Organizations representing critical adoptees have been vigorously opposed to the political agreement that enforced this solution. In March 2016, the Danish Ministry of Social Afairs decided to prohibit future adoptions from Ethiopia. 52. Mike Steele, “Teater Mu Gives Voice to Koreans in ‘Dance,’” Minneapolis Star Tribune, December 4, 1993, sec. E, 3. 53. Barbara Haugen, “Fish Fulfllment: Legends of Japan and Korea Blend with a Minnesota Fish Story in a New Play for Teater Mu: A Tale of Asian-American Identity Called ‘Te Walleye Kid,’” Minneapolis Star Tribune, October 16, 1998. 54. Dominic P. Papatola, “‘Walleye Kid’ Charming but Rough-Hewn,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, March 13, 2005, sec. A, 19; David Hawley, “‘Walleye Kid’ Is Great Fin, er, Fun,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, January 23, 2008. 55. Rohan Preston, “Adoption Satire Mostly Hits Mark,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, October 21, 2011, sec. B, 2. 56. Lisa Brock, “Review: Korean Adoptee Returns to Homeland in ‘Middle Brother,’” Minneapolis Star Tribune, September 16, 2014, http://www.startribune.com/reviewkorean-adoptee-returns-to-homeland-in-middle-brother/275133291/ 57. Chris Hewitt, “‘Middle Brother’ Review: Sharp’s Play Insightful, Ambitious,” St. Paul Pioneer Press, September 15, 2014, https://www.twincities.com/2014/09/15/middle-brother-review-sharps-play-insightful-ambitious 58. Park Nelson, Invisible Asians. 59. Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists. 60. See Catherine Ceniza Choy, Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption in America (New York: New York University Press, 2013), chap. 5, “To Make Historical Teir Own Stories.” REFERENCES Anzil, Verónica. “Adopting ‘Imaginaries’: International Adoption in the Spanish Press.” Adoption and Fostering 37, no. (20 3): 7 –82. Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Shared and Divergent Landscapes of Transnational Adoption | 123 Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefeld, 20 4. Briggs, Laura. “Mother, Child, Race, Nation: Te Visual Iconography of Rescue and the Politics of Transnational and Transracial Adoption.” Gender and History 5, no. 2 (2003): 79–200. Brock, Lisa. “Review: Korean Adoptee Returns to Homeland in ‘Middle Brother.’” Minneapolis Star Tribune, September 6, 20 4. http://www.startribune.com/review-ko rean-adoptee-returns-to-homeland-in-middle-brother/275133291/ Cherot, Nathalie. “Storytelling and Ethographic Intersections: Vietnamese Adoptees and Rescue Narratives.” Qualitative Inquiry 5, no. (2009): 3–48. Choy, Catherine Ceniza. Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption in America. New York: New York University Press, 20 3. Clausen, Edward. “Masser af brune børn i Danmark.” Politiken, October 9, 960, 33. Durham, Frank D. “News Frames as Social Narratives: TWA Flight 800.” Journal of Communication 4 ( 998): 00. Fehrenbach, Heide. Race afer Hitler: Black Occupation Children in Postwar Germany and America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. Friis, Bente Linnea. “Danskerne fra Korea.” Berlingske Tidende, March 0, 99 , sec. 3, 4. Gondouin, Johanna. “Feminist Global Motherhood: Representations of Single-Mother Adoption in Swedish Media.” In Critical Kinship Studies, edited by Charlotte Kroløkke, Lene Myong, Stine W. Adrian, and Tine Tjørnhøj-Tomsen, 0 – 6. Landham, MD: Rowman and Littlefeld, 20 6. Gräs, Helle. “Fik to børn samtidig fra hver sin verdensdel.” Aalborg Stifstidende, November 6, 969, sec. , 4. Hagerup, Annette. “Klub for børn fra Korea.” Berlingske Tidende, January 30, 990, sec. 4, 3. Haugen, Barbara. “Fish Fulfllment: Legends of Japan and Korea Blend with a Minnesota Fish Story in a New Play for Teater Mu: A Tale of Asian-American Identity Called ‘Te Walleye Kid.’” Minneapolis Star Tribune, October 16, 1998. Hawley, David. “‘Walleye Kid’ Is Great Fin, er, Fun.” St. Paul Pioneer Press, January 23, 2008. Hedetof, Ulf. “Multiculturalism in Denmark and Sweden.” Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) Policy Brief, December 2006. Hervik, Peter. Te Annoying Diference: Te Emergence of Danish Neonationalism, Neoracism, and Populism in the Post-1989 World. New York: Berghahn Books, 20 . Hewitt, Chris. “‘Middle Brother’ Review: Sharp’s Play Insightful, Ambitious.” St. Paul Pioneer Press, September 5, 20 4. https://www.twincities.com/2014/09/15/middlebrother-review-sharps-play-insightful-ambitious/ Hildebrandt, Edel. “Koreanske adoptivbørn: Vi skulle være danske.” Politiken, February 4, 2000, sec. , 4. Hübinette, Tobias. “From Orphan Trains to Babylifs: Colonial Trafcking, Empire Building, and Social Engineering.” In Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption, edited by Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin, 39–49. Cambridge, MA: South End, 2006. Ing. “Der er mangel på adoptivbørn,” Politiken, September 22, 950, 8. Jacobsen, Joan. “Fremmedhadet lurer på adoptivbørnene.” Politiken, July 28, 985, sec. 3, 3. Jacobson, Heather. “Framing Adoption: Te Media and Parental Decision Making.” Journal of Family Issues 35, no. 5 (20 4): 654–76. Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

124 | Adoption and Multiculturalism Kim, Eleana. Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 20 0. Kim, Hwai Chun. “Intercountry Adoption: American and Danish Parents Who Adopted Korean-Born Children.” PhD diss., Ohio State University, 974. Kit. “4000 ønsker Adoptivbørn, men kun 0 pCt. får dem.” Jyllandsposten, November 5, 964, sec. 3, 6. Klein, Christina. Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Lee Langvad, Maja. Find Holger Danske. Copenhagen: Borgen, 2006. Lee Langvad, Maja. “International adoptioner en industri.” Information, June 6, 2008, sec. , 2–3. Linde, Amalie, Amalie Kønigsfeldt, and Matilde Hørmand-Pallesen. Børneimporten: Et mørkt kapitel i fortællingen om international adoption. Copenhagen: Kristelig Dagblads Forlag, 20 3. Miller, Bonnie M. “A Primer for Using Historical Images in Research.” American Periodicals 27, no. (20 7): 73–94. “Mulatbørn: Tilfældighed eller plan, når børn skal vælges.” Editorial. Politiken, October 26, 963, 3. Myers, Kit. “Race and the Violence of Love: Family and Nation in U.S. Adoptions from Asia.” PhD diss., University of California, San Diego, 20 3. Myong, Lene, and Nina Trige Andersen. “From Immigration Stop to Intimizations of Migration: Cross-Reading the Histories of Domestic(ated) Labor Migration and Transnational Adoption in Denmark, 973–20 5.” Retfærd 38, no. 3 (20 5): 62–79. Ode, Kim. “Flood of Adopted Korean Babies Ebbs: Tousands of Youngsters Were the Unwanted Afermath of War.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, December 24, 989, E. Oh, Arissa H. To Save the Children of Korea: Te Cold War Origins of International Adoption. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 20 5. Papatola, Dominic P. “‘Walleye Kid’ Charming but Rough-Hewn.” St. Paul Pioneer Press, March 3, 2005, sec. A, 9. Park Nelson, Kim. Invisible Asians: Korean American Adoptees, Asian American Experiences, and Racial Exceptionalism. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 20 6. Potter, Jennifer E. “Adopting Commodities: A Burkean Cluster Analysis of Adoption Rhetoric.” Adoption Quarterly 6, no. 2 (20 3): 08–27. Preston, Rohan. “Adoption Satire Mostly Hits Mark.” Minneapolis Star Tribune, October 2 , 20 , sec. B, 2. Rains Winslow, Rachel. Te Best Possible Immigrants: International Adoption, Social Policy, and the American Family 20 7. Seneca, Karen. “Vores fortid er et stort hul.” Ekstra Bladet, February 28, 996, sec. , 26. Servus. “En Børneimportør taler ud.” Politiken, February 20, 963, 7. Skov Christensen, Povl. “Urimelige adoptionsregler.” Aarhuus Stifstidende, December , 977, sec. , 30–3 . Spango. “Mødet med de nye forældre.” Politiken, April 29, 970, sec. , 9. Steele, Mike. “Teater Mu Gives Voice to Koreans in ‘Dance.’” Minneapolis Star Tribune, December 4, 993, sec. E, 3. Sweeney, Kathryn A., and Rachel L. Pollack. “Colorblind Individualism, Color Con-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Shared and Divergent Landscapes of Transnational Adoption | 125 sciousness, and the Indian Child Welfare Act: Representations of Adoptee Best Interest in Newspaper Coverage of the Baby Veronica Case.” Sociological Quarterly 58, no. 4 (20 7): 70 –20. Willing, Indigo. “Beyond the Vietnam War Adoptions: Representing Our Transracial Lives.” In Outsiders Within: Racial Crossings and Adoption Politics, edited by Jane Jeong Trenka, Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin, 275–85. Cambridge, MA: South End, 2006. Yngvesson, Barbara. Belonging in an Adopted World: Race, Identity, and Transnational Adoption. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 20 0.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Civilizing Missions and Mimicry in Sweden’s Colonial Present Exploring the Construction of the Transnational/-racial Adoptee as a Mimic Swede Richey Wyver

International Adoption and Sweden

It may seem something of an irony that Sweden, a country that has long nurtured a national identity based around antiracism and imagined exclusion from Europe’s history of colonialism, is one of the world’s leading demand countries (per capita) of non-Western children on the international adoption market.1 Since the 950s, close to sixty thousand children, predominantly children of color from countries in Africa, South America, and South and East Asia, have been adopted to Sweden.2 While the seemingly insatiable demand for children of color from the Global South by white adults in the West and the continued existence of the adoption industry raise serious criticism from feminist and postcolonial standpoints,3 international adoption still largely remains a noncontroversial and uncontested practice in Sweden. While Sweden has dominated the global adoption market as a major demand country, the national commitment to adoption goes beyond healing infertility and fulflling fantasies of rescuing nonwhite children. Exploring the role of adoption in producing the national (Swedish) body, Barbara Yngvesson argues that Sweden made an explicit commitment to the adoption project as a means of producing a multicultural nation.4 Tis commitment is certainly apparent in early discussions on whether to expand the international adoption program, as it was endorsed as being a way of introducing a safe version of “multicultural126 Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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ism” into Sweden, with the visible presence of the transracial adoptee providing a means of educating white Swedes about nonwhite bodies. For example, a 963 report by Rädda Barnen (Save the Children) suggested that international adoption could give Swedish citizens “greater knowledge about and understanding of the problems of foreign nations” and “potentially, over time, less repudiation of people whose appearance difers sharply from that of Scandinavians”.5 In other words, the nonwhite bodies of transracial adoptees could not only produce multiculturalism in the home of the adoptive parents but also could shape a new Swedish antiracist society, with their bodies connecting the white family to the third world and to histories of racial oppression. Indeed, international adoption has been absolutely central to the imagining of Sweden as a multicultural, antiracist, color-blind nation, where visible diferences are not seen and where the concept of race is not just approached critically but has actually been erased altogether.6 Yet using the foreign transracial adoptee’s body to fulfill “multicultural” fantasies is dependent on what is a violent contemporary colonial project: Tobias Hübinette, for instance, outlines the adoption industry’s alarming similarities to the transatlantic slave trade and argues that he, in line with other postcolonial scholars, sees the “involuntary transferal of hundreds of thousands of non-Western children on a worldwide scale after formal decolonization as a clear reflection of a global colonial reality and racial hierarchy, as a grim reminder of the still existing astronomical power imbalance between the West and its former colonies.”7 In this chapter, I take this notion of international adoption as a contemporary colonial reality as a starting point. Exploring the idea of the adoptee’s body as being “civilized” through adoption, I examine how the construction and interactions of transnational/transracial adoptees in Sweden can be understood in terms of mimicry, as conceived by postcolonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha8. My analysis is based on a close reading of a selected number of passages from Längtansbarnen (The longed for / longing children), by white adoptive parent Kerstin Weigl ( 997), and from the autobiographical novel Gul utanpå (Yellow on the outside), by Korean adoptee Patrik Lundberg (20 3). I begin with a brief overview of the concept of mimicry, before following the story of the civilizing of the adopted body and its (re)construction as a mimic Swede. Finally, I explore the threat that the adoptee poses both to the white Swede and to the adoption mission itself—that is, when mimicry turns to menace.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Of Mimicry and Adoption

Mimicry can be understood as a system of colonial reform, regulation, and discipline, built around a discourse constructed on an ambivalence and dependent on constant slippage.9 Te mimicking subject, or mimic, is a colonized body that is desired and constructed to play a role of a “reformed, recognizable Other,” being almost the same, but not quite—or “almost the same, but not white.”10 It is an efective tool of colonial discipline, as the mimic is caught between being not quite the same and being not quite diferent: that is, the mimic can never quite be a part of the colonizers and can never quite identify with the colonized. Te mimic is fxed in a permanent state of frantically slipping between these two poles of nonrecognition and not-quiteness.11 However, despite mimicry’s efectiveness, its ambivalent nature leaves the colonizer and the authority of the colonizing mission under threat, as mimicry is both resemblance and menace at the same time.12 Bhabha introduces the mimic subject through a text in which British colonialist Charles Grant proposed a system of partial reform in English civilizing missions in India.13 Grant’s proposal was built around the formation of colonized Indians as subjects with an English-style sense of identity and behavior, subjects formed though mission education taught in the English language, and partial Christian subjects versed, as Grant put it, in the “imitation of English manners.”14 Tis partial reform—this formation of partial Christians, partial Englishman—was, however, expected to be empty: Grant’s goal was to create subjects whose “imitation of English manners will induce them to remain under our protection.”15 Along similar lines, Lord Macaulay’s infamous “Minute” on Indian education aimed to create a reformed colonial subject, through creating “a class of interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern—a class of persons Indian in blood and color, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and intellect.”16 Both Grant’s partial Englishmen and Macaulay’s class of interpreters are shaped to become what Bhabha describes as “appropriate objects of a colonialist chain of command; authorized versions of otherness.”17 In relation to transracial adoptees, the process of civilizing rebuilds the adoptee from a body of complete otherness to a mimic Swede, to become rather like the class of mimics proposed by Macaulay and Grant: the Korean adoptee, for example, may fulfll much of the mimic criteria, constructed to be Swedish in tastes, opinions, morals, and intellect—but is Korean in blood and color. In other words, transracial adoptees in Sweden

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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are almost Swedish, but not quite. Matters are complicated in the Swedish adoption context, wherein adoptees are molded to regard themselves as if they were (almost) white Swedish. Te Korean blood and color becomes problematic and tends to be strongly disavowed, both as it highlights an undesired diference between the adoptee and the adoptive parents and because acknowledging this diference runs counter to the Swedish colorblind antiracist discourse where visible diferences are not “seen.” Rather than being able to identify themselves as Korean, transnational/transracial adoptees become translated into versions of white Swedishness. Postcolonial scholar Pal Ahluwalia makes the connection between transnational/transracial adoption and mimicry: “Transracial adoptees grow up in cultures and societies that problematize their very diference— these children grow up thinking and trying to be the same as everyone else, only to be confronted by racism which challenges their conception of self. As ‘mimic children,’ these adoptees are the same but not quite.”18 Te problematization of racial diference is particularly relevant in the Swedish context, where the combination of a powerful pro-adoption discourse with a discourse of color-blindness makes the establishment of a positive nonwhite Swedish identity something of an impossibility for adoptees of color, as does the fact that an adoptee is ofen raised as the only nonwhite person in an exclusively white environment. Te adoptee’s diference is problematized by the adoptee and the adopter, by the pro-adoption and color-blind discourses, and by both racism and antiracism. Yet the transnational/transracial adoptee is desired for their diference, and that diference is always visible, however much it is disavowed. Civilizing the Third World Body

Te translation of the adoptee into a mimic subject begins with a process of civilizing in its most violent form, taking place on the very body of the adoptee. It is, I suggest, a process justifed by a belief that the nonwhite body can and should be civilized and controlled by the white West, an assumption driven by the belief that, to paraphrase Gayatri Spivak, the brown child must be rescued from the brown woman by the white woman.19 Adoption begins with an initial act of almost unimaginable violence: a child is removed from their mother, family, and nation, permanently. Te child then becomes a commodity, transferred through a series of “middlemen,” including child fnders, agency-run maternity homes and baby reception centers, and foster families. Trough a chain of fnancial

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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transactions, the child becomes the permanent property of a family of white strangers in Sweden. Upon arrival, they are systematically—and suddenly—stripped of their language, cultural heritage, and both familial and national history. Tey are renamed, and a new language and culture are forced on them. Teir history is, in other words, entirely rewritten. From a child with a mother, a homeland, an ancestry, and a preadoption personality, they are constructed as something that efectively began to exist on the day they arrived in Sweden, almost as if, before that, they were just lying in a distant country waiting to be rescued. Te notion of the adoptee’s body as a “blank slate” on which a version of Swedishness can be unproblematically transcribed is facilitated by color-blind national fantasies in which the acknowledgment of a nonerasable preadoption cultural, racial, or even genealogical heritage is envisaged as “essentialist” and “biologist” or even “racist.” Te violent deconstruction and dramatic reconstruction of the adoptee can be seen as a colonial translation process.20 Te body of the adoptee is translated from that of a Korean “orphan,” for example, to that of a Swedish adoptee; at the same time, a translation of the superior “Swedishness” is forcefully imposed on the adoptee’s body, covering and correcting (if not erasing) its less-valued “Koreanness.” As postcolonial scholar Robert Young explains, “Under colonialism, the colonial copy becomes more powerful than the indigenous original that is devalued. It will even be claimed that the copy corrects defciencies in the native version.”21 Indeed, a major theme of adoption is the belief in replacing an adoptee’s original culture, society, language, people, and family with “better” versions. Regardless of how or why the adoptee became separated from their parents, regardless of their family status, regardless of the obvious psychological traumas of separation and adoption, to ofer a child the opportunity to grow up with a “good” family in Sweden is seen as always a superior alternative to being raised in a non-Western country. Te need to translate and civilize the adoptee’s body has been a key feature of international and transracial adoption throughout history. It is best summed up in a quote from Richard Pratt,22 a central fgure in the systematic mass removal and forced assimilation of Indigenous children into white settler families in the United States in the late 800s: “Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”23 Te child in Pratt’s example can only be “saved” if his Indigenous culture and origin is removed and replaced with a version of American whiteness. Young argues, “Translation becomes part of the process of domination, of achieving control, a violence carried out on the language, culture, and people being translated.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Te close links between colonialization and translation begin not with acts of exchange, but of violence and appropriation, of ‘deterritorialization.’”24 International adoption fts neatly into this description, with the separation of child from mother and family as the violent act and with the forced removal of the child from its country and people constituting the deterritorialization process. Young outlines the importance of renaming in the civilizing process, describing it as “an act of power and appropriation” that also serves to desacralize geographical sites in colonized areas.25 Renaming is also a feature of the adoption civilizing process, with the changing of the adoptee’s foreign name to a (white) Swedish name being the normal practice. As with the renaming of sites, the renaming of a person can act as a means of domination, appropriation, and desacrilization: renaming disregards any meaning in the adoptee’s original given name, as well as the possibility that the name could be auspicious; it also disregards the signifcance of the adoptee’s language. Placing a Swedish name on the adoptee of color also condemns her to a lifetime of being forced to explain her nonwhite body with a name that does not match her appearance.26 Te name change can also be seen as an act of claiming ownership. Te new name indicates that the child no longer belongs to its mother, its community, its people, its nation; the child now belongs to its adoptive parents, to its adoptive family, and, above all, to Sweden and the West. Te violent civilizing of the body, combined with its sudden, dramatic, and permanent placement as an isolated nonwhite body in spaces of exclusive whiteness in Sweden, subjects the adoptee of color to the splitting so central to Bhabha’s work on hybridity, ambivalence, and mimicry. From the moment the adoptee is placed on Swedish soil, they are subjected to demands of fulflling an array of dramatically contrasting roles, expectations, and identities: at once an orphan and someone who has living parents, a wanted child and an unwanted child, a child separated by arguably the greatest trauma of all (the primal wound) but expected to be a cure for the trauma of infertility, a rescued child who is also a replacement child, a product of an (imagined) illicit or irresponsible act of sexual passion or even prostitution as well as of reproductive failure and paperwork, part of a racist project and part of an antiracist project, a subject of everyday racism and racial stereotyping while a subject of postracial myths and color blindness.27 While all of these aspects contribute to a shattering of the adoptee’s self and condemn them to a life caught in between, a life of constant slippage, the split racial and ethnic identity of the adoptee is of particular interest: the adoptee is required to be both a

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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white Swede (or an almost white Swede among white Swedes) and, at the same time, a commodifed, exotic, fetishized object. The Irony of Adoption

While I began this essay by stressing the irony of Sweden’s role in the international adoption trade, Eleana Kim has described adoption itself as “at root, tragically ironic.”28 Kim contrasts the sense of shared humanity that adoption can produce with the creation, reinforcement, and magnifcation of massive inequalities between sending and receiving countries, noting the simultaneous production of “closeness and distance, identifcation and diference, common humanity, and base inequality.”29 Similarly, Bhabha stresses the irony that lies at the very heart of the civilizing mission of colonialism, which exists within a discourse that, in his words, “speaks with a tongue which is forked.”30 Mimicry emerges within this ironic discursive setting. Severed from familial, cultural, and linguistic ties to their countries of origin, transnational/racial adoptees cannot be seen to bridge cultures in the way that Grant’s and Macaulay’s mimics could; they do, however, serve a purpose in constructing the identities of not only the adopting parents but also the Swedish nation. Indeed, perhaps the greatest irony of all in Swedish transnational/racial adoption is that it is widely seen as not a colonial project but an antiracist one. While I, in line with other postcolonial scholars, have approached adoption as a colonial industry, dependent on a belief in racial hierarchies and white supremacy and on the maintenance of understandings of meaningful racial diference, it actually serves as an integral part of constructing the Swedish national myth of antiracism and multiculturalism, while supporting Sweden’s perceived exemption from European colonial and racial projects. Indeed, the process involving the removal of children from mothers and families of color in the Global South to create families for white adults in the West can be seen as a fundamental key element of the Swedish idea of international solidarity and of being the “third world’s benefactor.” Perhaps surprisingly, massscale international adoption is traditionally a project of Sweden’s progressive liberals and lefists, with adopters looking not only to rescue children of color but also to create “multicultural” and “antiracist” families.31 Prior to the 20 4 general elections in Sweden, all major political parties stated that they were in favor of international adoption. Feministiskt initiativ (the Feminist Initiative) and Miljöpartiet (the Green Party), two

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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parties advertising themselves as being antiracist and feminist, were particularly enthusiastic about the adoption industry, with Miljöpartiet stating, “We are just positive about adoptions.”32 At the other end of the political spectrum, the far-right populist Sweden Democrats, a party with roots in Sweden’s neo-Nazi movement and still associated with racism and Nazism, used two adult adoptees of color in an election campaign video, as an advertisement for the party’s “antiracist” credentials.33 Te video’s message was that the adoptees were authorized versions of otherness, almost white, living under threat from unauthorized versions of otherness—probably mainly Muslims, as Islamophobia is central to the party’s identity. Apparently, the international adoptee, in her role as a mimic Swede, can be appropriated for both racist and antiracist projects within the same political and national arena. “It Is the Exotic Children I Want”

Te Swedish adoptee of color is almost the same, but not quite—or almost the same, but not white. Tis not-quite whiteness is of great signifcance and further complicates the adoptee’s position. However careful the deletion of blood ties, original name and background details, and frst language has been in the civilizing mission of adoption, and however carefully the adoptee’s white Swedish identity has been built, one factor cannot be whitewashed: the problematic ethnic signifer of the adoptee’s appearance. While the adoptee’s diference may be disavowed, denied, or deleted, this diference makes the adoptee desirable in the frst place; while experiences of racism and fetishism are increasingly discussed, it is important to remember that racism and fetishism fuel the adoption phenomenon itself.34 For instance, the racialized fetishism of female East Asian adoptees in their daily lives in Sweden, as investigated by Frank Lindblad and Sonja Signell (2008), should not be separated from the incredible desire for the East Asian female body though adoption. Te nature of this desire is also captured in Kerstin Weigl’s book Längtansbarnen ( 997), an autobiographical account of a white Swedish woman adopting children of color from East Asia interspersed with interviews with other adopters and adoption professionals. Te author is a well-known Swedish journalist, and the book is something of an adoption classic: it has been reprinted twice and is cited among course literature on parenting by the governmental Family Law and Parental Support Authority (MFoF).35 It can also be seen as a guide for prospective adopters, as it closely details the whole

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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adoption procedure. Te book follows Weigl’s journey from dealing with infertility to adopting transnationally/transracially, and with her deeply personal account of her experiences and decisions, it provides valuable insight into the desires and fantasies of the white adopter. Te title can be seen to capture both the idea of children longed for (by the adoptive parents) and the notion of children that long for something—perhaps to be rescued by white Swedish parents. In my reading of Weigl’s text, the key theme is the problematic desire for the exotic body and the desire to civilize that body into a mimic Swede, “a subject of a diference that is almost the same but not quite.”36 Without irony, Weigl describes herself fantasizing over children of color while looking through an adoption agency’s magazine, which features adoptive parents’ photos of their adopted children. Without taking of my coat, I sit down at the kitchen table. Expectation warms my stomach. On the last page [of an adoption agency’s magazine], a portrait gallery of pictures of happy children at Swedish pine tables, in sandboxes, as Lucias, sometimes also as teenagers, with dark eyes under a white student cap. I love those pictures. I need pictures to keep the fantasy going, to have faith that the child can become real. “Child porn,” says Sigge. He smiles at my hunger. I read: “. . . Our charmer Sebastian, born July 24th, came home with us from Hanoi 28th October.” Lucky them, the kid was just three months old. I scrutinize the little face. Isn’t he a little puny? And a guy too; maybe I would prefer a girl. Boys who will just grow to 1.60 meters tall and just wear size 39 shoes—would they have a chance with a Swedish girl? “Tis is our wonderful daughter Josephina, she came home with us 3rd September from Cali, Colombia.” God, so small and cute. And black. Would you dare? . . .  But this one: “Our dream princess Maria, born June 3rd, came home with us 21st July.” Her! I would like to have one like that! So little, so cute. A little Vietnamese. . . . It is the exotic children I want. More beautiful than something we could create ourselves. A tight Vietnamese profle, with the distinctive cheekbones. Or maybe an explosive South American, smooth and cofee colored?37 Weigl’s descriptions of both the children and her anticipation carry great and largely undisguised sexual meanings that would surely be Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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unthinkable when discussing white Swedish children. Her images of the “exotic” child placed in settings that are both racially white spaces and literally white-colored spaces: the white Lucia dress, the white student cap, the paleness of pine tables and sand; highlight the exotic diferences of the child. At the same time, Weigl’s physical stimulations (“expectation warms my stomach,” “my hunger”) and the sexual undertones of “expectation” and “fantasy” (“it is the exotic children I want,” “Child porn”) leave us with an unpleasant but transparent understanding of the child’s fetishization (and, one might add, fantasized hypersexualization) before the child has even been chosen, let alone arrived in Sweden. Weigl also gives us a clear understanding of the acceptability of choosing and purchasing a child as an exotic commodity and, through her stereotyping, the acceptability of racial categorizing, profling, and hierarchical structuring. She writes of the Asian (Vietnamese) boy, “Isn’t he a little puny?”; of the Colombian girl, “God, so small and cute. And black. Would you dare?”; of the East Asian girl, “So little, so cute. A little Vietnamese”; of the South American boy, “explosive . . . , smooth and cofee colored.”38 We can see fantasies of the adoptee as a mimic Swede emerging through Weigl’s images of the child in Swedish rites of passage (entering the sandbox, being Lucia, graduating) and even in the child’s expected sexual encounters: “Boys who will just grow to .60 meters tall and just wear size 39 shoes—would they have a chance with a Swedish girl?” Note here the nonsexuality of the East Asian male and the possible refection of Weigl herself as the white Swedish girl.39 Te expectation is for the adoptee to desire and have heterosexual relationships with white Swedish girls: as mimic Swedes, the adoptees are meant to be (almost) Swedish (in choice of partners and in performance in national rituals), but not quite: they get to wear the white graduating cap, but they look out from under it with dark eyes. Sebastian from Hanoi may not be suitable as a mimic Swede, as his “puniness” and the expected growth of someone of his “race” may not be compatible for reproducing Swedishness. White on the Inside

Gul utanpå (Yellow on the outside), an autobiographical novel by Korean adoptee Patrik Lundberg (20 3), captures the development of the adoptee into a “mimic Swede,” along with the frictions of being trapped between a not-quite-white Swedishness and a not-quite otherness. While Weigl’s text discussed in the preceding section exemplifes the adopter’s desire for the mimic body, Lundberg’s text demonstrates the performance of mimicry, Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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through a continuous production of excess and disavowal: an excess of Swedishness, in its simplifed mimic version, combines with an excess of diference, highlighted by Lundberg’s experiences of racism—a diference constantly disavowed through a “ 00 percent (white) Swedish” narrative. Te title of the book refers to a passage where Lundberg describes himself as being likened to a banana: white on the inside, yellow on the outside.40 Te book is very much about identity and the mismatch between a racial identity imposed by others and one’s own perceptions of self. Te main narrative revolves around the narrator’s trip to Korea as a twenty-four-year-old exchange student, during which he explores his background, confronts his country of birth, and meets his Korean family for the frst time. However, Lundberg’s life in Sweden, including his experiences of everyday racism and always being labeled “Chinese,” is a constant theme running throughout the book. Te narrator’s overall message is, as the title suggests, that he feels culturally and ethnically (white) Swedish, as Swedish as the implied reader in fact, but is prevented from full Swedishness by other people’s (mis)readings of his Asian appearance. Te narrator is at pains to emphasize his Swedishness, even firting with rightwing nationalism as he strives to distance himself from Asianness and prove to the reader that he is as Swedish as them, as white as them. Te Lundberg character sees himself as a chameleon and highlights his broad range of acquaintances, “from Christians to petty criminals” and even Nazis.41 Te book opens with him at a skinhead party, and he boasts the populist Sweden Democrats’ leader Jimmie Åkesson as a former student teacher and great infuence on his own writing.42 He portrays himself as being able to ft into a variety of groups and roles, some of them sharply contrasting (“I am a feminist, but at the same time I like standing in a group of supporters yelling that the opposing team are a bunch of wimps”), yet he also gives the impression that he never quite fts in completely.43 When growing up, he gets to be among other youngsters that “don’t look Swedish,” but the children of immigrant families in a suburb of his hometown, Sölvesborg, see him as completely Swedish: to them, he notes, “I was just a Swede, a Svensson with a house and a car.”44 His vegan friends call him “Pat the brat,” and his football friends call him “Communist” or “Redskin.”45 Tis existence as chameleon, or perhaps failed chameleon, is explored by Trinh T. Minh-ha, in discussing the role of the colonized: “‘Be like us.’ Te goal pursued is the spread of a hegemonic disease. ‘Don’t be us,’ this self-explanatory motto warns. Just be ‘like’ and bear the chameleon’s fate, never infecting us but only yourself, spending your days muting, putting

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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on/taking of glasses, trying to please all and always at odds with myself, who is no self at all.”46 Minh-ha’s chameleon certainly echoes Bhabha’s construction of mimicry, which might be paraphrased, “Be like us, but don’t be us. Be almost same, but not quite.” Scholar Kit Myers, a Hong Kong American adoptee, fnds that Minh-ha’s description resonates with his own experiences of straining to be like those around him: “I felt like a (failed) chameleon. Te task of silencing myself and putting on masks, trying to ‘please all’ produced ‘myself who was no self at all.’”47 Because Lundberg is raised (almost) white, as (almost) a white Swede, and schooled in white Swedish thoughts, values, and attitudes, his knowledge of his origins and of Korea is produced through the white Swedish gaze: Korea is something exotic, strange, perverse, and crazy. Within this discourse, the phenomenon of adoption becomes acceptable; the white Swedish adoptive parents become the only “real” parents, while the strange man and woman at the other end of the earth who lost their child to the adoption trade lose signifcance. With his struggle to keep up the mimic Swede camoufage, Lundberg tends to overcommunicate his Swedishness, his enthusiasm perhaps fueled by the combination of a desperate need to survive and ft in and a deep internalized racism. Te narrator portrays Korea as something comical and ridiculous, and he draws on Sinophobia and problematic stereotypes of China and Chineseness as a means of establishing and communicating his own Swedishness. Sinophobia is a strong theme throughout the book, with Lundberg’s Chinese roommates in Korea being objects of ridicule. Troughout his stay in Korea, they and China develop into a ridiculous enemy, whom Lundberg, representing Swedishness, is continually bravely standing up to, educating, and outwitting. He humiliates the roommates, recounting their initial misunderstanding of the toilet system, and threatens them with violence on more than one occasion.48 Tis narrative is sharply contrasted with Lundberg’s accounts of his own experiences of racism in Sweden, where he is ofen called or treated as “Chinese.” His need to overcommunicate Swedishness seems to be a product of the space of ambivalence, slippage, and uncertainty in which the mimic is trapped. Young argues that “when an original culture is superimposed with a colonial or dominant culture through education, it produces a nervous condition of ambivalence, uncertainty, a blurring of cultural boundaries, inside and outside, and otherness within,” and I suggest that this condition is very much refected in Lundberg’s text.49 When he arrives in Korea, Lundberg presents himself as the ordinary Swede abroad: he is frustrated by the fact that Koreans speak Korean, not

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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English; he is very apprehensive about the food, shocked at the lack of vegetarian options; and he constantly highlights the absurd elements of Korea and its people for his Swedish audience’s comic relief (his female fellow students dressed in Hello Kitty clothes, girls wearing makeup at the breakfast table, people out shopping dressed as comic book characters).50 His point is made clear: I am not one of “them”; I am one of “us.” One of Ohad David and Daniel Bar-Tel’s generic features of collective identity is “perception of the uniqueness of the collective and its distinction from other collectives,” and I believe that Lundberg’s ridicule of Korea and Koreanness shows an attempt to align himself with his Swedish readers, to appeal to their shared notions of the uniqueness of Swedishness by identifying their shared notions of diference toward Koreanness.51 While distancing himself from Koreanness, he also strives to emphasize the attitudes, norms, and values he shares with Swedish readers. Tis emphasis comes in the shape of regular comparisons between the “sane” way of doing things in Sweden and the “insane” norms of Korea (e.g., “in Sweden it is illegal to beat your children”) and also through a pining for clichéd representations of Swedish culture (e.g., watching Donald Duck on Christmas Eve and eating pea soup).52 Language is a key component of a shared culture and a shared collective identity, and it is interesting to see that Lundberg, who otherwise presents himself mostly as a model university student, paints a sharp contrast when it comes to his Korean language classes: he is hopeless at learning Korean and confesses to getting almost zero marks on tests and to struggling with even the very basics.53 Te impression here is that the narrator is emphasizing that he does not have an innate ability to speak Korean, that his natural language (his mother tongue) is Swedish and, thus, that he simply is Swedish. Along similar lines and with the achievement of similar ends, Lundberg jokes about the Koreans’ supposed difculty in diferentiating between the sounds of r and l when speaking English, again showing the reader that his language is not Korean, since he does not make these “Korean” mistakes when he speaks English. Still, however Swedish Lundberg portrays himself, however Swedish he feels, his daily encounters in Sweden are characterized by everyday racism and by being treated as an East Asian Other. By describing his experiences of being spoken to in English, called “fucking Chinese,” afectionately nicknamed “Bruce Lee” at work, and forced to explain his nonwhiteness through intimate questioning by strangers, he leaves the impression of living a tense, fraught existence, never quite allowed to belong.54 It is as if his Swedishness is constantly being interrupted: despite

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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his strong self-identifcation as Swedish, he says, “I have been called Chinese daily for twenty-fve years.”55 In many ways, Lundberg’s narrative resounds with Young’s argument that “though you may assimilate white values, you never quite can be white enough.”56 From Mimicry to Menace

As a system of colonial control, mimicry depends on ambivalence: mimicry must, Bhabha notes, “continually produce its slippage, its excess, its diference”; by never quite allowing mimics to establish themselves as same or diferent, mimicry becomes most efective.57 However, as well as controlling and disciplining, the ambivalent nature of the mimic poses a continued risk to the colonizer and the civilizing mission itself: mimicry, Bhabha states, “is at once resemblance and menace.”58 A major menace of mimicry comes from its challenge to norms, with mimics posing a threat to both “‘normalized’ knowledges and disciplinary powers.” 59 In the Swedish adoptee context, the threat comes in the shape of a body of color in an exclusively white space, speaking perfect Swedish and identifying fully as Swedish, challenging the meaning of Swedishness and blurring the boundaries of belonging. Mimicry also moves to menace when the mimic returns the colonizer’s partial gaze, producing a “partial vision of the colonizer’s presence.”60 Te ambivalence of mimicry fxes the colonized as a partial, incomplete, virtual presence, meaning that the colonizer’s own presence, which is dependent on that of the colonized, is also trapped in an uncertainty of slippage and ambivalence.61 Mimicry becomes subversive to the whole colonial mission as it slips into mockery, with the colonizer becoming the observed while the colonized becomes the observer.62 Finally, mimicry conceals what is behind the mask, so to speak. Te ambiguity of the mimic places the colonizer in a tense, nervous position from which the colonizer can never be sure what lies beneath the mimic’s exterior. But there is nothing, no essence or fxed identity, behind the mask of mimicry.63 Te mimic adoptee is in constant slippage between an exulted, privileged position of being almost white and a problematic position as an almost nonwhite person. Tough having access to the exclusive spaces of whiteness and Swedishness seldom aforded to other non-Western immigrants, the mimic adoptee is degraded and discriminated against as an exoticized other, out of place in white spaces, but not able to identify with other oppressed nonwhite groups.64 Although the model Other, the autho-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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rized version of otherness, the adoptee is subjected to the racism, fetishism, and degradation usually aforded to nonauthorized versions of otherness. Tis contradiction can be explained, to some extent, by the threat, or menace, the mimic adoptee poses. Te menace of the adoptee/mimic is not intentional or intended, nor should it be seen as an active, calculated threat to the adoption project. It is perhaps best described as the fear, invoked in the white Swedish populace, that the transracial adoptee mimic has the potential to be an insurgent and to disrupt fantasies of Swedish multiculturalism, antiracism, and color blindness, as well as the adoption project itself. I here explore the adoptee as mimic and menace through a common form of everyday racism experienced by adoptees of color in Sweden, which I call “intimate questioning.” Interrogation by strangers about the racial and ethnic origins of the adoptee generally begins with the question “Where are you from?” When the adoptee explains that he or she is from Sweden, the interrogator almost inevitably says, “No. Where are you really from?” Te dialogue then proceeds to personal questions about adoption, root searching, and even the adoptee’s relationship with his or her parents. In interviews with adult transracial adoptees, both Lindblad and Signell (2008) and Hübinette and Tigervall (2009) found this to be the most prevalent form of everyday racism presented by their informants. Hübinette and Tigervall describe it as “the constant bombardment of questions regarding the national, regional, ethnic and racial origin of the adoptees.”65 An interviewee in Lindblad and Signell’s study describes being asked “Where do you come from? Have you been back in your home country and things like that. A lot of personal matters I would certainly not ask an ordinary Swede about.”66 Patrik Lundberg points out that all of his adopted friends regularly fnd themselves subjected to intimate questioning. Trough example dialogue, he expresses the impact such questioning has on his own day-to-day life.67 Stranger:68 Where do you come from? Patrik: Malmö. Stranger: Ok. But where do you come from originally? Patrik: Sölvesborg. In Blekinge. Stranger: No you don’t! Patrik: Yes, I promise! Stranger: But you know what I mean. Patrik: No. Stranger: Don’t play dumb. You understand what I mean.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Patrik: Aha. I was adopted from Korea when I was nine months old. Stranger: North or South Korea? Patrik: South Korea. Stranger: Tat’s lucky. In North Korea, they’re communists. Patrik: Yes . . . I was certainly lucky there! Stranger: Do you speak Korean? Patrik: No. Stranger: Have you met your real parents? Patrik: My real parents live in Sweden.69 Te question opening Lundberg’s example dialogue and interactions like it carries signifcant meaning about belonging and nonbelonging. Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin argue that while appearing to be an innocent question, “‘where do you come from?’ carries the implicit rejection ‘you are not like us’ and underlines the assertion ‘you do not belong here.’”70 Philomena Essed discusses the same question as an expression of everyday racism experienced by Black women in the Netherlands: beneath the question, she explains, is the desire for an explanation, for an answer to the question “What are you doing here?”71 Such questioning stems frst from a racial categorization (this is a Black woman) and then from an assumption (this Black woman does not belong here and perhaps should not even be here).72 In Lundberg’s dialogue, the stranger begins by frst denying and then deconstructing Patrik’s Swedish ethnic and national identity, leading Patrik on a journey back to his place of “belonging,” the place of “real parents” and real mother tongue. Te process of deconstructing the adoptee is a punishment, a disciplining act to put the adoptee, Patrik, in his “correct place”— not as a Korean, but as a mimic Swede. Lundberg is forced to confess that he is not a full Swede and then to confrm his almost Swedishness, through his not speaking Korean and through his “real parent” comment. What compels the white Swede to discipline and deconstruct the adoptee of color ?Te adoptee, a body of color in a white space, presents themself as the same as the white Swede. On a broader level, this challenges the white Swede’s notions of boundaries of belonging and of the norms and values of Swedishness, bringing their identity as a white Swede into question. Bhabha notes that “the desire to emerge as ‘authentic’ through mimicry . . . is a fnal irony of partial representation”: the white Swede’s interaction with the adoptee of color challenges the white Swede’s desire to be “authentic,” that is, to be the authentic holder of Swedishness and of authority.73 Te white Swede’s (white) Swedish self is produced in relation

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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to the adoptee’s otherness. Yet, as the adoptee is a partial presence with an identity in constant negotiation, fuctuating frantically between almost (but not quite) diference and almost (but not quite/white) sameness, the presence and authority of the white Swede becomes ambivalent too. Indeed, as the mimic adoptee returns the partial gaze, the white Swede’s presence is revealed as being partial: the white Swede’s self is split; their authority and authenticity, dependent on the adoptee’s diference, is shattered; in efect, the white Swede is also exposed as a mimic. Tis imminent threat to the white Swede’s identity and sense of belonging could provoke a desperate reaction to discipline the mimic adoptee, to urgently try to reposition the adoptee and fx them in such a place from which the white Swede can reassert their own authenticity, control, power, and authority. While not exclusive to adoptees, intimate questioning is interesting to examine in an adoption context, as it is so widely reported in accounts by adoptees. As a “criticism” of adopted existence in Sweden, it is regarded as acceptable because it avoids structural challenges to adoption and focuses solely on the behavior of one isolated individual who is, in efect, challenging the normality of adoption. In recollections of intimate questioning, the interrogator becomes the threat to Swedishness in a way, by challenging the assimilation project of adoption and the myth of color blindness. Whereas the white Swede becomes the challenge to the civilizing mission of adoption, adoptees fulfll their mimic Swede duties by recalling (and publishing) their own insistence that they are good Swedes—that they are from somewhere else but feel Swedish, that their white Swedish adoptive parents are their real parents, and that the nonwhite birth parents and non-Western country from which the adoptees have been “rescued” are not relevant to the adoptees’ identity as Swedes. Efectively, adoptees’ accounts of racism actually serve to strengthen, rather than challenge, the pro-adoption discourse. According to Bhabha, mimicry also menaces when it turns to mockery and parody, when the observer becomes the observed, de-authorizing authority by mimicking it, challenging and radically reevaluating “the normative knowledges of the priority of race, writing, history.”74 Te mimic Swede then threatens to undermine the colonial civilizing mission of adoption itself, the very notion of adoption as the pillar of Swedish multiculturalism, antiracism, and international solidarity. Te fear of this menace could explain the reaction adult adoptees face when they voice criticism of the adoption system and the adoption industry or when they bring stories of child thef and corruption, trafcking, racism, and abuse

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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to public light. On the rare occasions that a critically thinking adoptee voice is heard in the media, it is swifly and ruthlessly crushed by a powerful pro-adoption lobby, including white adoptive parents and individual adoptees brought in to counter the critical voice with their personal stories of contentment, gratitude, and love, backed up by the powerful ideology of color-blind antiracism. As Eleana Kim notes, when critically thinking adoptees attempt to discuss adoption issues, they are labeled as bitter, angry, “unhappy malcontents” and pitted against “happy, well-adjusted adoptee[s]”; consequently, discussions about macro-level, structural injustices and power relations in adoption are reduced to matters of individual psychology and life history.75 With this crushing of adoptees’ voices comes the fnal irony of the adoption mission: when adoptees raised by and socialized into white Swedishness address questions of adoption by turning to the tenets of the Swedishness they are supposed to mimic (antiracism, anticolonialism, feminism, and progressive lef-leaning liberalism), the fear and the violence they invoke almost beggars belief. For example, adoptee blogger Paula Dahlberg describes how she faced unprecedented anger and threats afer publishing an article on the need to address adoption corruption. Even more disturbing, for daring to critically address the Swedish adoption project from a postcolonial feminist perspective in his work, Tobias Hübinette faced protests at his PhD thesis defense and threats of serious violence, eventually becoming ostracized from the academic community in Sweden.76 Te emergence of a refexive, critical adoptee voice seems to inspire a desperate and almost irrational terror in wide areas of the white Swedish populace and in the Swedish society at large. When the observed becomes the observer, when the researched becomes the researcher, the mimic adoptee poses arguably the greatest threat of all: a threat to split, challenge, and even rupture, from the inside, the very foundation of white progressive Swedishness, making a mockery of the civilizing mission of adoption itself as adoptees reveal its colonial origins and underpinnings. Conclusion

In this essay, I have highlighted the irony at the heart of the Swedish international and transracial adoption project and argued that a civilizing process translates adoptees to almost—but not quite—white Swedes. Trough that process, they are reconstructed as mimic Swedes. Mimicry renders

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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adoptees condemned to a constant negotiation and renegotiation of their split identity, as they spin between being almost but not quite the same and almost but not quite diferent. Like Macaulay’s translators and Grant’s partial imitators, the “dark eyes under a white student cap” described by white Swedish adoptive mother Kerstin Weigl and the nationalist adopted Swede characterized as “white on the inside” by Korean adoptee Patrik Lundberg ft Bhabha’s description of “authorized versions of otherness.” But they are also the partial objects that challenge the normal colonial discourses in which they would be “inappropriate” colonial subjects. As model Others (repetitions of the colonizer, repetitions of white Swedes), they disrupt understandings of cultural, racial, and historical diferences and contradict Swedish notions of national boundaries and hierarchies. At the same time, they forever threaten to return the partial gaze, posing a constant risk to the colonizer and the civilizing mission; these nonwhite bodies, as authorized matter out of place in exclusive white spaces and contexts, are the mimic subjects who “menace the narcissistic demand of colonial authority.”77 Te menace of the mimic adoptee is an undesired by-product of mimicry. Te adoptee has no control over the fear of the transracial adoptee as an insurgent body with the potential to upset the white fantasies of the “good” progressive Swedishness that transported and translated its body into white Swedishness in the frst place. However, I believe that it is worth considering and refecting on whether the menace of the mimic could be harnessed, organized, and consciously employed as part of a future anticolonial and antiracist struggle against the Swedish adoption project and the disturbing color-blind antiracist and multicultural desires that drive it.

NOTES 1. Andreas Johansson Heinö, “Democracy between Collectivism and Individualism. De-nationalisation and Individualisation in Swedish National Identity,” International Review of Sociology 19, no. 2 (2009): 303–4; Tobias Hübinette and Carina Tigervall, “To Be Non-white in a Colour-Blind Society: Conversations with Adoptees and Adoptive Parents in Sweden on Everyday Racism,” Journal of Intercultural Studies 30, no. 4 (2009): 336. 2. Statistics Sweden, “Krafig minskning av adoptioner från Kina under 2011” [Great increase in adoptions from China during 2011], accessed February 25, 2014, https://www.scb.se 3. See, e.g., Tobias Hübinette, Comforting an Orphaned Nation: Representations of International Adoption and Adopted Koreans in Korean Popular Culture (Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, 2005); Jane Jeong Trenka, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Civilizing Missions and Mimicry in Sweden’s Colonial Present | 145 Yung Shin, eds., Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption (Cambridge, MA: South End, 2006). 4. Barbara Yngvesson, “Transnational Adoption and European Immigration Politics: Producing the National Body in Sweden.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 19, no. 1 (2012): 332. 5. Adoption av utländska barn [Adoption of foreign children] (Stockholm: Statens Ofentliga Utredningar, 1967), 16. 6. Hübinette and Tigervall, “To Be Non-white”. 7. Hübinette, Comforting and Orphaned Nation, 28. 8. Homi K. Bhabha, Te Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 122. 9. Bhabha, 122. 10. Bhabha, 122, 131. 11. Bhabha, 122. 12. Bhabha, 123. 13. Grant, 1792, cited in Bhabha, Location of Culture. 14. Cited in Bhabha, 124. 15. Cited in Bhabha, 124. 16. Macaulay, 1935, cited in Bhabha, Location of Culture, 124. 17. Bhabha, Location of Culture, 126. 18. Pal Ahluwalia, “Negotiating Identity: Post-Colonial Ethics and Transnational Adoption,” Journal of Global Ethics 3, no. 1 (2007): 61. 19. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Teory: A Reader, ed. Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman (Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994), 93. 20. Robert J. C. Young, Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 21. Young, 140. 22. Pratt founded the Castle Indian School in Pennsylvania in 1879. Te school was the frst of over a hundred used in the systematic removal and assimilation of Native American children in the United States; K. Myers, “Te Intimacy of Tree Settler Nations: Colonialism, Race, and Child Welfare,” Gazillion Voices, accessed August 11, 2014, https://gazillionvoices.com 23. Jill E. Tomkins, “Finding the Indian Child Welfare Act in Unexpected Places: Applicability in Private Non-parent Custody Actions,” University of Colorado Law Review 81 (2010): 1119–85. 24. Young, Postcolonialism, 140, 141. 25. Young, 141. 26. See, e.g., Dan Höjer and Lotta Höjer, Stålmannen, Moses och Jag [Superman, Moses and I] (Sweden: Sveriges Utbildningsradio AB, 2010), 109. 27. For discussions of the “orphan myth” that lies at the heart of the demand-driven adoption industry, see Kathryn Joyce, Te Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafcking, and the New Gospel of Adoption (New York: PublicAfairs, 2013); Eleana Kim, Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). Te primal wound is the lifelong trauma inficted on victims of adoption loss by the separation of child from mother afer birth. See Nancy Newton Verrier, Te Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child (Baltimore: Gateway, 1993).

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

146 | Adoption and Multiculturalism 28. Kim, Adopted Territory, 76. 29. Kim, 76. 30. Bhabha, Location of Culture, 122. 31. Hübinette and Tigervall, “To Be Non-white,” 336. 32. Miljöpartiet, private correspondence, 2014. 33. Sverigedemokraterna, Låt er inte tystas [Don’t let yourselves be silenced], September 4, 2014, video, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-AXL8DDBBk 34. Tobias Hübinette, “A Critique of Intercountry Adoption,” in Adoptionland: From Orphans to Activists, ed. J. Myung Ja, M. A. Potter, and A. L. Vance (Scotts Valley, CA: CreateSpace, 2014), Kindle; Frank Lindblad and Sonja Signell, “Degrading Attitudes Relating to Foreign Appearance: Interviews with Swedish Female Adoptees from Asia,” Adoption and Fostering 32, no. 13 (2008): 46–59. 35. MFoF (Myndigheten för familjerätt och föräldrarskapsstöd) is the Swedish government body that oversees international adoptions to Sweden. See Socialstyrelsen, Att bli förälder till ett barn som redan fnns [Becoming a parent to a child that already exists]. 2007. 36. Bhabha, Location of Culture, 122. 37. Kerstin Weigl, Längtansbarnen: Adoptivföräldrar berättar [Te longed for / longing children: Adoptive parents talk] (Stockholm: Nordstedts Förlag AB, 1997), 58, 59. Translations from the original Swedish are my own. 38. Weigl, 58, 59. 39. Hübinette, “Critique of Intercountry Adoption.” 40. Patrik Lundberg, Gul utanpå [Yellow on the Outside] (Stockholm: Raben och Sjögren, 2013), 47. 41. Lundberg, 160. 42. Lundberg, 9, 19. 43. Lundberg, 161. 44. Lundberg, 23. 45. Lundberg, 143. 46. Trinh T. Minh-ha, “Te Language of Nativism: Anthropology as a Scientifc Conversation of Man with Man,” in Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989). 47. Myers, “Intimacy of Tree Settler Nations.” 48. Lundberg, Gul utanpå, 46, 75. 49. Young, Postcolonialism, 23. 50. See, e.g., Lundberg, Gul utanpå, 29, 32–33, 35, 116. 51. Ohad David and Daniel Bar-Tel, “A Sociopsychological Conception of Collective Identity: Te Case of National Identity as an Example,” Personality and Social Psychology Review 13 (2009): 362. 52. Lundberg, Gul utanpå, 101, 114. 53. David and Bar-Tel, “Sociopsychological Conception,” 367; Lundberg, Gul utanpå, 57. 54. Lundberg, Gul utanpå, 24–25, 27, 190, 195. 55. Lundberg, 208. 56. Young, Postcolonialism, 23. 57. Bhabha, Location of Culture, 122. 58. Bhabha, 123.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Civilizing Missions and Mimicry in Sweden’s Colonial Present | 147 59. Bhabha, 123. 60. Bhabha, 126. 61. Bhabha, 123. 62. Bhabha, 89. 63. Bhabha, 126. 64. Hübinette and Tigervall, “To Be Non-white”; Lindblad and Signell, “Degrading Attitudes.” 65. Hübinette and Tigervall, “To Be Non-white,” 344. 66. Lindblad and Signell, “Degrading Attitudes,” 51. 67. Lundberg, 26. 68. I have added names to the dialogue, for clarity. 69. Lundberg, Gul utanpå, 25–26. 70. Trenka, Oparah, and Shin, Outsiders Within, 7, 8. 71. Philomena Essed, Understanding Everyday Racism: An Interdisciplinary Teory (London: Sage, 1991), 190. 72. Essed, 190. 73. Bhabha, Location of Culture, 126. 74. Bhabha, 123. 75. Kim, Adopted Territory, 256. 76. See, e.g., Paula Dahlberg, “Jag blev inte räddad, jag blev bestulen på en tillhörighet [I wasn’t saved, I was robbed of a belonging].” Vardgagsrasismen [Te everyday racism], November 23, 2014, https://vardagsrasismen.com/2014/11/23/jag-blev-inte-raddadjag-blev-bestulen-pa-en-tillhorighet/; Tobias Hübinette, “Om att vara forskare och activist” [On being a researcher and an activist], Arena 28, no. 4 (2011): 18–19. 77. Bhabha, Location of Culture, 126. REFERENCES Adoption av utländska barn [Adoption of foreign children]. Stockholm: Statens Ofentliga Utredningar, 967. Ahluwalia, Pal. “Negotiating Identity: Post-Colonial Ethics and Transnational Adoption.” Journal of Global Ethics 3, no. (2007): 55–66. Bhabha, Homi K. Te Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 994. Czarniawska, Barbara. Narratives in Social Science Research. London: Sage, 2004. Dahlberg, P. “Jag blev inte räddad, jag blev bestulen på en tillhörighet” [I wasn’t saved, I was robbed of a belonging]. Vardgagsrasismen [Te everyday racism] (blog), November 23, 20 4. https://vardagsrasismen.com/20 4/ /23/jag-blev-inte-raddad-jagblev-bestulen-pa-en-tillhorighet David, Ohad, and Daniel Bar-Tal. “A Sociopsychological Conception of Collective Identity: Te Case of National Identity as an Example.” Personality and Social Psychology Review 3 (200): 354–79. Essed, Philomena. Understanding Everyday Racism: An Interdisciplinary Teory. London: Sage, 99 . Heinö, Andreas Johansson. “Democracy between Collectivism and Individualism: Denationalisation and Individualisation in Swedish National Identity.” International Review of Sociology 9, no. 2 (2009): 297–3 4.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

148 | Adoption and Multiculturalism Höjer, Dan, and Lotta Höjer. Stålmannen, Moses och Jag [Superman, Moses and I]. Sweden: Sveriges Utbildningsradio AB, 20 . Hübinette, Tobias. “A Critique of Intercountry Adoption.” In Adoptionland: From Orphans to Activists, edited by J. Myung Ja, M. A. Potter, and A. L. Vance. Scotts Valley, CA: CreateSpace, 20 4. Hübinette, Tobias. Comforting an Orphaned Nation: Representations of International Adoption and Adopted Koreans in Korean Popular Culture. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press, 2005. Hübinette, Tobias. “Disembodied and Free-Floating Bodies Out-of-Place and Out-ofControl: Examining the Borderline Existence of Adopted Koreans.” Adoption and Culture: Te Interdisciplinary Journal of the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture , no. (2007): 29–62. Hübinette, Tobias. “Om att vara forskare och activist” [On being a researcher and an activist]. Arena 28, no. 4 (20 ): 8– 9. Hübinette, Tobias, and Carina Tigervall. Adoption med förhinder: Samtal med adopterade och adoptivföräldrar om vardagsrasism och etnisk identitet [Adoption with obstacles: Conversations with adoptees and adoptive parents on everyday racism and ethnic identity]. Botkryka: Mångakulturellt Centrum, 2008. Hübinette, Tobias, and Carina Tigervall. “Adoption with Complications: Conversations with Adoptees and Adoptive Parents on Everyday Racism and Ethnic Identity.” International Social Work 53, no. 4 (20 0): 489–509. Hübinette, Tobias, and Carina Tigervall. “To Be Non-white in a Colour-Blind Society: Conversations with Adoptees and Adoptive Parents in Sweden on Everyday Racism.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 30, no. 4 (2009): 335–53. Joyce, Kathryn. Te Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafcking, and the New Gospel of Adoption. New York: PublicAfairs, 20 3. Kim, Eleana. Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 20 0. Lindblad, Frank, and Sonja Signell. “Degrading Attitudes Relating to Foreign Appearance: Interviews with Swedish Female Adoptees from Asia.” Adoption and Fostering 32, no. 3 (2008): 46–59. Lundberg, Patrik. Gul utanpå [Yellow on the outside]. Stockholm: Raben och Sjögren, 20 3. Minh-ha, Trinh T. Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009. Myers, Kit. “Te Intimacy of Tree Settler Nations: Colonialism, Race, and Child Welfare.” https://www.academia.edu/9248870/Te_Intimacy_of_Tree_Settler_ Nations_Colonialism_Race_and_Child_Welfare Socialstyrelsen. Att bli förälder till ett barn som redan fnns [Becoming a parent to a child that already exists]. Stockholm: Socialstyrelse, 2007. Spivak, Gayatri. “Can Te Subaltern Speak?” In Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Teory: A Reader, edited by Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, 66– . Hertfordshire: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 994. Statistics Sweden. “Krafig minskning av adoptioner från Kina under 20 ” [Great increase in adoptions from China during 20 ]. Accessed February 25, 20 4. https:// scb.se

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Civilizing Missions and Mimicry in Sweden’s Colonial Present | 149 Sverigedemokraterna. Låt er inte tystas [Don’t let yourselves be silenced]. September 4, 20 4. Video. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-AXL8DDBBk Trenka, Jane Jeong, Julia Chinyere Oparah, and Sun Yung Shin, eds. Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption. Cambridge, MA: South End, 2006. Tomkins, Jill E. “Finding the Indian Child Welfare Act in Unexpected Places: Applicability in Private Non-parent Custody Actions.” University of Colorado Law Review 8 (20 0): 9–85. Verrier, Nancy N. Te Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child. Baltimore: Gateway, 993. Weigl, Kerstin. Längtansbarnen: Adoptivföräldrar berättar [Te longed for / longing children: Adoptive parents talk]. Stockholm: Nordstedts Förlag AB, 997. Yngvesson, B. 20 2. “Transnational Adoption and European Immigration Politics: Producing the National Body in Sweden.” Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies 9, no. : 327–45. Young, Robert J. C. Postcolonialism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

From Adoptee to Trespasser The Female Asian Adoptee as Oriental Fantasy Kimberly McKee

Families formed through transnational, transracial adoptions are ofen touted as exemplars of multiculturalism. First documented in the post– World War II period with the adoptions of children from Hong Kong and Japan, international adoption from Asian countries became formalized as a routine method of family creation in the post–Korean War era with the adoption of Korean children into Western families.1 Alongside domestic, transracial adoptions of Black and Indigenous children into white homes, these early adoptions signalled the beginning of a discourse celebrating the transcendent color-blind love of transracial families in the mid- to late-twentieth century in the United States. Te families were seen as early harbingers of a multicultural discourse that would become popularized at the end of the twentieth century. Yet this particular understanding of adoption operated outside of the racism pervading American society. Michael Cullen Green writes, “Te Cold War imperatives that encouraged the cultural celebrations of the adoption of Asian orphans and abandoned white-Asian children . . . did not extend to Afro-Asians.”2 Anti-Black racism impacted the “adoptability” of mixed Korean-Black children by white adoptive parents with many of these children entering Black families and being considered “hard to place.” As the adoption of Korean children entered the American imaginary in the late 950s, American citizens wrestled with domestic race relations. Te year 955 saw the brutal murder of Emmett Till, a fourteenyear-old African American boy who allegedly whistled at a white woman.3 Tis occurred a year before the incorporation of Holt Adoption Program (now known as Holt International Children’s Services), whose work 150 Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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became synonymous with the adoption of Korean children. US naturalization rights were not granted to all Asian ethnics until the 952 Immigration and Nationality Act.4 Failure to contextualize the anti-Black racism and anti-Asian xenophobia in the United States throughout the twentieth century overlooks the impact of this discourse on the experiences of adoptees of color in white families. Te racial diference produced by transracial adoptions lef a profound mark on the American psyche. Te presence of nonwhite children in the care of white adoptive parents began prior to the legalization of interracial marriage at the federal level.5 Te juxtaposition of transracial adoptive families and mixed-race or interracial families reveals the contradictory and sometimes hypocritical understandings of American conceptualizations of race. While adoptive families even now embrace the multicultural nature of their kinship, transnational and transracial adoption illustrate the ways in which the color line is transgressed. Adoptees routinely discuss how their families failed to protect them from racism and racial microaggressions in their extended families and local communities. Some adoptees even openly recount instances of racism within their immediate families. Teir testimonies expose the limits to color-blind thinking and the speciousness of multiculturalist idealism. As the twenty-frst century progressed, discourses of color-blindness continued to be disrupted and critiqued by members of the adoption community even afer the election of President Obama in 2008, which many people believed marked the beginnings of a postracial era in the United States.6 While color-blind ideologies are rarely accepted at face value by adoptive parents today, numerous adoptees and critics note that the fallacy of multiculturalism was evident long before this critical shif occurred. Te limitations of color-blind love were demonstrated by actress Mia Farrow’s castigation of her adopted Korean daughter Soon-Yi Previn in 992 when the world learned of Previn’s afair with Farrow’s then long-term partner, American flm director Woody Allen. Farrow quickly distanced herself from her daughter and created a new narrative, pathologizing Previn as a defective, intellectually disabled adoptee.7 It seems as if the love Farrow professed for her daughter upon her adoption was contingent and, perhaps, never really present. Tis example refects adoptees’ precarious positionings within their families—their presence contingent on fulflling specifc behavior and norms of what it means to be a “good” child. Farrow’s treatment of Previn throughout 993 and the decades afer illustrates the ways the adoptive mother constructed her former daughter as the Other, Orientalized woman. Racialized and gendered assumptions

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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of Asian womanhood became inextricably linked to Previn’s body, as she could not shed the stereotype of an Oriental, hypersexual Asian woman. Previn’s body was no longer understood as that of a celebrated child of multicultural America, tied to the transcendence of previous racial strife via the civil rights movement. Farrow’s treatment of Previn exposed the hypocrisy of color-blind families—celebrated bastions of multiculturalism—when Previn’s afair with Allen reifed Orientalist fantasies of dangerous Asian sexuality whereby the adopted Asian daughter seduces the father. Transnational, transracial adoption thus became perverted, as did the multiculturalist idealism on which it rests. Adding to the insidiousness of this situation, the exposure of the sexual relationship between Allen and Previn coincided with allegations and a state investigation that Allen molested his adopted seven-year-old white daughter, Dylan Farrow, at Mia Farrow’s Connecticut home. Although Connecticut state’s attorney Frank Maco never fled formal charges against Allen, Mia and Dylan maintain that the abuse occurred.8 Te juxtaposition between Mia’s reaction to the alleged molestation of Dylan and Mia’s rendering of Previn clearly underscores the uneven nature of legibility an Asian adoptee can face within the adoptive family. To examine the multiple dimensions of incest in transracial, transnational adoptive families, this essay elucidates the ways in which Asian adoptees are simultaneously incorporated as family during childhood but fnd themselves existing outside of traditional kinship constructions in adulthood. Tis latter positioning is why Allen’s afair with Previn is not frequently framed as incest, for the adult Asian adoptee is seen as both the forever foreigner and hypersexual Asian/“Oriental” woman. Te latter characterization is particularly insidious, as Previn never had the opportunity to assert her innocence. She automatically became cast as predator, with little to no recourse to be considered anything else. In this essay, I frst discuss the role of Orientalism in shaping public perceptions of adoptees and how this Orientalist understanding results in the Asian adoptee’s precarious position as a member of their adoptive family. I then interrogate how contemporary constructions of incest are limited and place primacy on the biological. Rhetorics of assumed Asian American hypersexuality and incest expose how the multicultural family is a fallacy, as exemplifed through the adoptive family’s failure to protect Previn. She was envisioned as neither the legible daughter of Farrow nor a plausible victim of a sexual predator. I contend that the hypocritical response to the transracial, sexual transgression between Allen and Previn unveils the limitations of color-blindness and multiculturalism, exposing adoptive

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

From Adoptee to Trespasser | 153

families’ exemplar multicultural status as tenuous at best. I conclude this essay by discussing how transnational, transracial adoption refects banal multiculturalism, whereby racial and cultural diferences are superfcially addressed with minimal examination of how these familial structures transgress racial boundaries. Yet I am cautious of locating the adoptive family within this strand of multiculturalism, as Farrow’s rebuke of Previn elucidates the limits and potential failures of banal multiculturalism. The Adoptee as Oriental Seductress

In the eyes of white American society, the adult Asian adoptee is interchangeable with any other Asian American woman. As much as adoptive parents would like to pretend that their little “China dolls” do not become Asian women, the female adoptee’s body cannot be seen outside of racialized and sexualized depictions of women of Asian descent.9 To render them as exceptions to this stereotyping ignores the reality that adult adoptees transform into people of color outside of the protective shield provided by their adoptive families. Many female Asian adoptees discuss instances of mistaken identity as, for example, the girlfriend or wife of their father or brother. Tese moments of misrecognition recently entered public discussions, as female Asian adoptee bloggers openly discuss the impact such assumptions have on their negotiation of familial relationships.10 American anxiety over Asian women is refected as far back as the Page Law in 875, which targeted the Chinese working class, with an implicit focus on curbing the immigration of Chinese women.11 Tis particular focus on women was rooted in the belief that all Chinese women were sexually available and dishonorable, since many of the women living in Chinatowns across the United States were trafcked into sex work.12 Many Japanese women entering the Pacifc Northwest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also found themselves ensnared in sex trafcking.13 Te Orientalist gaze dominates representations of Asians and Asian Americans in US popular culture and can be linked to the sustained legacies of colonization, imperialism, and militarism in Asia. Edward Said importantly articulated that Orientalism is based on constructing the Orient and the Occident—the West—as opposites of one another, whereby the Orient is home to wanton lust and dangerous sexual desires. Embodying the exotic, the Orient was a construction of Western imagination.14 Asian women are all too ofen depicted in the historical imaginary as sex workers or sneaky, devilish conspirators (with their mischievous Asian male coun-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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terparts, such as Fu Manchu) who use sex to achieve success.15 Te Dragon Lady and Lotus Blossom stereotypes arise from this early construction of Asian womanhood as being linked to dangerous sexuality. Tose particular stereotypes exacerbate notions of “the Oriental” and rely on the visibility of diference. Te Dragon Lady caricature depicts Asian women as overly aggressive, devious, hypersexualized, manipulative, and driven for domination; the Lotus Blossom stereotype of a “China Doll, Geisha Girl, shy Polynesian beauty” exacerbates the notion of Asian women as exotic, submissive, polite, and the image of “erotic possibilities.”16 Like other women of color, Asian American women are positioned against the white female norm of chasteness and purity.17 Western feminism is predicated on the experiences of white womanhood, which was constructed in comparison to the “sexual licentiousness” and availability of Asian American women and other women of color.18 Te hypersexualization of Asian American women is framed through interactions with white male heterosexual subjects. Tracing the beginnings of Asian American women’s hypersexualization in American media to pornography, Celine Parreñas Shimizu writes, “Trough stag flms we can know about the fantasy circulating about hypersexual Asian women. Te flms isolate what is defned as desirable about racial diference in sex—the face, Orientalist objects, the racialization of certain sexual acts themselves, and the specifc fantasy about Asian women’s bodies.”19 Tis emphasis in the United States on the Oriental beauty’s sexual prowess and diference from white women directly relates to how sex tourism abroad shapes the male gaze on Asian women’s bodies. From accounts of sex workers near military bases in countries such as South Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines to Hollywood representations of the Far East and Asians in America, individuals of Asian descent cannot escape reductive constructions of what they should be like.20 Not only have American media and cultural producers perpetuated and racialized the sexual objectifcations of those women via Dragon Lady and Lotus Blossom imagery, but they have homogenized and reduced Asian American women into a faceless group. Asian American women must then actively assert their identities as individuals independent of societal stereotypes. Regardless of the length of time women of Asian descent live in the United States as citizens, residents, or immigrants, they continually fnd themselves depicted as the exotic Other— subject to racialized sexual harassment, assault, and Asian fetishes.21 Tis positioning as Other afects transracially adopted Asian Americans in a unique way. Jodi Kim contends that “the demand to ‘rescue’ Asian girls from a more putatively pernicious Asian patriarchy” fueled the

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

From Adoptee to Trespasser | 155

earliest Korean adoptions, alongside Cold War politics and a desire to participate in the fght against the spread of communism.22 Rhetoric of saving female Korean children was part of a broader mainstream American desire to sentimentalize the plight of orphaned children. In doing so, the discourse allowed everyday Americans to examine adoptees’ losses through a lens that absolves the US government and military from facilitating their statuses as adoptable subjects. Eleana J. Kim writes, “Children lef homeless or orphaned during the war were constructed in the American media as objects of humanitarian concern and became major benefciaries of overseas charity following the war.”23 Te positioning of those children as vulnerable waifs generated the conditions to encourage adoption. Over the course of the twentieth century, the status of potential adoptees as feminized orphans seeking rescue persisted. From Operation Babylif in April 975 to the rise of adoption of infants from China in the 990s, such feminization primed the American public to accept international adoptions from Asia. Saving the child (not preserving families) became the motto for many in the humanitarian, adoption world. Asian adoptees are also privileged migrants in their circumvention of historically racially discriminatory immigration legislation.24 Most relevant here is the fact that early understandings of Asian women’s guilelessness and beauty arguably captured prospective adoptive parents’ Orientalist imaginations as well. Tose sexualized notions of Asian women framed American perceptions of adoptees. In her analysis of early adoptions from Korea, SooJin Pate argues that “the code of militarized prostitution creates a gaze and culture that constructs female orphans in the image of the gijichon women [town prostitutes serving military camps], thereby turning the child into an object of pleasure and desire.”25 She further contends, Although these children did not provide sexual services like gijichon women, female orphans worked to lif the morale and spirits of American GIs by performing similar roles as entertainer and hostess. Indeed, gijichon women were euphemistically called “hostesses” and “special entertainers.” As hostess and entertainer, the female orphan’s primary duty was to make the solider feel honoured, happy, and appreciated by ensuring that he was the focus of attention and that he had an enjoyable visit.26 Tis initial iteration of the female orphan as hostess, entertainer, and ambassador solidifes the Orientalist image of adult Asian femininity and

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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frmly establishes adoptee otherness through similar (though diferently motivated) notions of availability and possession. Te female orphan, according to Pate, found herself turned into a dolllike caricature. Te commodifcation of orphan adoptees allowed for their fetishization as consumable objects. Pate notes, Because the Oriental doll connotes femininity, exoticness, delicateness, silence, and docility, these very descriptions become assigned to the female orphan. As a fetishized commodity, separated from the material conditions of productions, these characteristics seem inherent and natural to the child rather than fabricated from racist, sexist, and imperialist notions about Asian female bodies.27 As a commodity, the female adoptee became a surrogate for easing tensions brought between South Korea and the United States by American military presence and other neocolonial interactions. Her status as a child provides a less erotic and more palatable method for the two countries to establish friendly relations. Yet we cannot fully disentangle the female adoptee from her adult counterpart, because the adult adoptee is at risk of becoming the stereotype attached to that counterpart. Ofen, female adoptees recount, in adoptee-only spaces (and beyond), that their adoptive parents police their sexuality as a result of their birth mothers’ alleged promiscuity.28 Pate’s analysis of the female adoptee body ofers an important critique of what it means when we sexualize the female orphan regardless of age. To disregard how the female orphan adoptee and gijichon woman are two sides of the same coin overlooks the ways in which Asian women’s bodies are objectifed by the Orientalist gaze from childhood into adulthood. Te Asian woman never exists outside of hypersexual constructions of femininity or gendered performance. Western society only sees her as a commodity eligible for fetishization. Yet the treatment of the Asian female fgure difers depending on age. As Pate argues, the desire to support adoptees is absent upon adulthood, as they are no longer “worthy of rescue” as “exceptional state subjects.”29 In adulthood, these women become the actualized version of the Oriental fantasy within the family; Asian women’s bodies are read as a seductive threat within the public imaginary. Adoption, Kinship, and Incest

Due to the primacy placed on biological relatedness, adoptive families are ofen seen outside of normative constructions of incest, because incest is Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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framed historically in terms of consanguinity. Te lack of genetic ties in adoptive families lead people to assume that incest cannot occur among the family members. Tis notion exposes the outdated nature of conceptualizations of incest that overlook how adoptive families are equal to biological families. To diminish the possibility of incest frmly cements the notion that adoption is less than and unequal to biological relatedness, while simultaneously overlooking the psychological trauma of incest.30 Tis erroneous assumption does great damage to how we understand sexual violence in adoptive families. Tese are also families wherein the adoptee may be reluctant to disclose abuse, out of fear of rejection. Ofen, the abuse adoptees undergo may not result in the perpetrator being punished or in adoptees being protected from future abuse.31 To better understand how this essay deploys the lens of incest, I foreground the psychological dimensions of incest as a site of power diferentials and exploitation, not predicated on the biological. I draw from the work of Judith Lewis Herman and Lisa Hirschman, who defne incest as “any sexual relationship between a child and an adult in a position of paternal authority.”32 Tey further write, “What matters is the relationship that exists by virtue of the adult’s parental power and the child’s dependency.”33 Tis defnition of incest recognizes how sexual violence functions in non-normative families, including in adoptive families. As a result, sexual violence occurring within these families is legitimized and no longer rendered outside the realm of possibility. A discussion of power allows adoptive families to enter mainstream conceptualizations of incest without becoming mired in discourses concerning genetics and biology. Te lens of incest ofers an opportunity to reconfgure how adoptive families are constructed and discussed in wider conversations concerning abuse. Because adoptive families are traditionally positioned as the better option in comparison to adoptees’ biological families, the adoptive family is constructed to serve as a reprieve and respite from the poverty and degradation associated with birth families. In that positioning, adoptive families are imagined as normal, biological families as dangerous. Caroline Knowles writes, “Te normal family is what the dangerous family is not: it is not poor; it is not the object of welfare scrutiny; it is not a single-parent form; it is not black; and it has no psychopathology. Te normal family is rarely directly considered. . . . Normality is also about families being able to meet their own needs without outside help (from the social welfare system).”34 As a result, any type of sexual abuse, including incest, is considered an anomaly and out of public purview, because it is believed that these families—screened and vetted by adoption agencies—could not be potential perpetrators of illicit abuse. Children in these exploitative relaWills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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tionships lack the ability to consent, given the position of authority of the adult. Expanding on this notion, Herman and Hirschman contend, Because a child is powerless in relation to an adult, she is not free to refuse a sexual advance. Terefore, any sexual relationship between the two must necessarily take on some of the coercive characteristics of a rape, even if, as is usually the case, the adult uses positive enticements rather than force to establish the relationship. Tis is particularly true of incest between parent and child: it is a rape in the sense that it is a coerced sexual relationship. Te question of whether force is involved is largely irrelevant, since force is rarely necessary to obtain compliance. Te parent’s authority over the child is usually sufcient to compel obedience. Similarly, the question of the child’s “consent” is irrelevant. Because the child does not have the power to withhold consent, she does not have the power to grant it.35 In this discussion of children and their lack of power, it is important to recognize that incest is fundamentally sexually exploitative as well as violent. Te parental fgure in this relationship relies on manipulating the parent-child relationship. Tis manipulation exposes how the lens of power is useful in considering incestuous relationships within adoptive families. Such an expanded defnition of incest validates the experiences of adoptees without minimizing the sexual abuse as somehow unfamilial because genetic ties are absent.36 Particularly in father-daughter incestuous relationships, we ofen see victim blaming normalized as part of mainstream society’s sexist control of women’s sexuality. Afer Victor Nabokov’s Lolita, this narrative became more prominent in discussions of sexuality and girlhood. Tis fctitious fantasy has cemented itself as real and a legitimate construction of young women’s culpable sexuality. Discussing and defning the trope of the “seductive daughter,” Herman and Hirschman note that she “lives on, an active inhabitant of the fantasy life of the millions of ordinary citizens who constitute the readership of Chic, Hustler, Playboy, Penthouse, and the like.”37 Yet Herman and Hirschman are more concerned with the fact that the trope has infltrated professional clinical literature. A few authors were apparently troubled by a need to account for those cases in which sexual relations between children and adults had undeniably occurred. In general, these investigators tended to

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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focus on qualities in the child victims, which might have fostered the development of an incestuous relationship. Tey, too, conjured up the image of the magical child, the nymphet, who has the power to entrap men.38 Placing blame on the child absolves the adult from wrongdoing. “As late as the mid- 970s,” Steven Angelides fnds, “psychiatric studies cited evidence that young children were capable of seduction and commonly engaged in it.”39 Children were then believed to be naturally precocious, and according to Angelides, “child sexuality, however (poorly) conceived, was widely accepted as normative.”40 Emphasis on children’s sexuality condones the predation of adolescent bodies by adults. In many ways, it gives way to a genre of barely legal pornography featured in adult magazines. Tis trope also sets the stage of applauding older men’s relationships with younger women. Te media’s depictions of Soon-Yi Previn when her relationship with Allen became public knowledge invoked the stereotype of the seductive daughter. Her age—nineteen—fed into the constructions of a barely legal nymphet. Tis particular narrative become intertwined with dominant discourse’s portrayal of Asian American women’s hypersexuality. Caroline Knowles writes, Narratives are simply stories, versions of events, people, and places. Tey are a kind of discourse, and like discourses, they “generate” social phenomena, so we can say that they are constitutive. But narratives (unlike discourses) are also performative in that people live their lives through them. Indeed, lives are . . . confgured and reconfgured through narratives, in which people make sense of themselves and the world around them.41 In conversation with one another, the trope of the seductive daughter and the Lotus Blossom stereotype thus cemented Previn’s status as perpetrator. Represented as someone who was never coerced or encouraged to take nude Polaroids of herself, she is framed as a willing and consensual participant in the afair.42 Te narrative is that she seduced Allen, the father fgure in her life.43 Previn was always a sexual subject in ways that Dylan Farrow was not constructed in the public imaginary. While some of this diference may be contributed to age, attributing it to age alone is a red herring, since Korean orphans and adoptees are sexualized even in childhood.44 Race cannot be

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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overlooked in our understanding of the public’s reaction and even Farrow’s response to the afair between Previn and Allen. Previn’s status as always sexual underscores how the adopted Asian child is never really allowed to be a child. Even as a minor, Previn’s sexual experiences were translated through the lens of adult standards of sexual promiscuity. The Moral Panic of (Alleged) Molestation

As mentioned above, white women’s sexuality has overwhelmingly been constructed as pure, while women of color are routinely positioned as hypersexual. Tat juxtaposition reiterates the logics of colonization and imperialism.45 Western understandings of white women’s purity were constructed through the production of the hypersexual, soiled woman of color.46 Tis narrative girding female sexualities cannot go overlooked when considering incest and the adoptive family. Te case of Soon-Yi Previn reveals a false notion of multicultural families, as the purported notion that “love is color blind” in adoption disintegrated between Mia Farrow and her daughter in the afermath of the scandal. As Farrow publicly critiqued Allen, she also furthered the media’s insinuations that Previn seduced him, while simultaneously casting her as intellectually disabled.47 Here, I am particularly interested in Mary Tomas’s examination of banal multiculturalism and girlhood. For Tomas, banal multiculturalism is rooted in the everydayness of multicultural rhetoric with little nuance, context, or explanation. Te celebration of diference is limited to tokenized moments of inclusivity with little to no historicity of racial injustice.48 Kate Driscoll Derickson argues that banal multiculturalism operates through the denial and silencing of past and present forms of racial inequality, fattening diference under the guise that equality is achieved in neoliberal society.49 I suggest that this form of multiculturalism is employed within adoptive families like Farrow and Allen’s. Banal multiculturalism allows adoptive parents to celebrate the racial diference of their families and to claim their progressive stance on issues of race with little to no examination of how racial diference and cultural diversity function within their children’s lives. Tis particular strand of multiculturalism refects the co-optation of multicultural rhetoric and celebrations of diversity and inclusivity. In this regard, banal multiculturalism difers from critical multiculturalism, which, according to Tomas, “contends that only profound social, economic, and political change will bring about

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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the achievement of diversity and equality.”50 Critical multiculturalism requires adoptive parents to deliberately engage in activities that ensure racial diference is not minimized or tokenized, whereas banal multiculturalism allows adoptive parents to superfcially acknowledge racial difference while simultaneously deploying color-blind love. We cannot assume this banal multiculturalism goes unnoticed. Tomas writes, “Te efects of everyday saturation of uncritical banal multiculturalism are palpable. Multiculturalism shapes contemporary forms of racialization and racial identifcations; it racializes subjects within a narrow defnition of cultural expression.”51 Similarly, in a discussion of multiculturalism, Will Kymlicka notes that multicultural policies need to account for “the structure of institutions (e.g., the language, calendar, and uniforms that they use), and the content of schooling and media, since all of these take the majority culture as the ‘norm.’”52 Banal multiculturalism ofen takes form in white adoptive families’ celebration of racial diference and creating ethnically mixed households, even as they are unprepared or resistant to grappling with the efects of societal racism directed toward their transracially adopted children. Tis particular understanding of multiculturalism fueled the fetishization of Asian adoptable children and can be seen in the ways in which Farrow created a racially diverse household with little to no understanding of how race afected her adopted children’s lived realities. To ensure a critical discourse on race, adoptive families must be cognizant of how multicultural rhetoric is deployed and reconstituted in shaping the institutions with which their children engage. Although the present analysis only examines American multicultural eforts, I argue that, given the increase of Far Right political movements in the Global North, all adoptive families, regardless of location, must be attune to how racial discourse functions in these increasingly hostile climates. For transracial adoptees like Previn, we see the limitations of multicultural rhetoric in the ways in which adoptees are simultaneously seen as persons of color in adulthood or without the appearance of white parents during childhood as well as bestowed white privilege vis-à-vis their white adoptive parents. We see this contradiction as the narrow conceptualizations of what it means to be “Asian” are deployed and employed to mold Previn into two tropes: the rescued orphan and seductive daughter. Adoptees are welcome when they fulfll the fantasy of reproducing the future.53 In adulthood, however, they become trespassers in their own families, as they come to represent the potential Oriental fantasy. Tis fantastical pos-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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sibility circumscribes their adult existence because adoptive families are unprepared and ill-equipped to recognize how the hypersexualization and racialization of women of Asian descent afect female adoptees from Asia. Banal multiculturalism shapes how the public and Farrow understand Previn. Te false celebration of racial inclusivity fails to protect Previn from processes of racialization. Farrow’s own deployment of gendered and raced stereotypes to describe Previn underscores the ways in which banal multiculturalism exposes the limits of multicultural rhetoric. If adoptive parents overlook their own racial biases and how racism informed their adoption decisions, they are complicit in systems of oppression that afect their children. Tomas writes, “Fantasies of racial harmony, nonracist spatiality, or nonracism in one’s own self are ideals that are rarely realized in society.”54 Te female Asian adoptee will forever be linked to Orientalist notions of Asian womanhood. Disentangling these narratives from her would require an erasure of race through the denial that racial diference impacts our lived realities. As Black feminists have demonstrated, one cannot disentangle one’s intersectional identities from one another.55 To pretend one can overlooks centuries of US Orientalism whereby persons of Asian descent remain the Other. Consequently, I suggest that transracial, transnational adoption refects the breakdown of multiculturalism at the microlevel. Adult adoptees routinely recount that they regularly experienced racial microaggressions within their families and communities although their parents considered themselves progressive. Te ideals espoused by Americans concerning the racial progress made by adoptive families overlooks how these families failed, in practice, to prepare adoptees to negotiate a racist world. Whether adoptive families are unable to recognize how female adoptees from Asia are exoticized and hypersexualized unlike their white peers or to fully grasp what it means to be considered the perpetual foreigner in a country that one considers home, adoptive parents inaction to racism underscores the limits and potential failures of banal multiculturalism. White adoptive parents were blinded by a false sense of color blindness and by rhetorical claims that love can conquer all and that we are all the same underneath our skin color. In their desire to display diversity, adoptive parents failed to understand how inclusion and equity go hand in hand. When considering Previn’s intersectional identity, we must also examine the ways in which white girlhood is revered in American society, as the transracial adoptee is always compared to that construction and can never just be herself. Te transracial adoptee and the cultural whiteness bestowed

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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by her white adoptive parents cannot be made visible without accounting for the role whiteness has in developing her identity. Tomas notes, In the context of American girlhood, the feminine is idealized through the priorities of capitalism and whiteness and not least of all heteronormativity. Tose who are “racialized” as minorities and as others to the white ideal must deal constantly with the devaluations that frame their social visibility and contextualize their daily practices.56 Girls and women of color are thus always seen as deviating from the norm.57 Tey can never be pure, because they never were pure based on traditional constructions of American girlhood and femininity. Tis uneven positioning of femininity and understandings of sexuality became important when the afair between Previn and Allen came to light. Her perceived adult status as a college student positioned her diferently than if she were younger, even as her age became a point of contention.58 Yet a discussion about legal age is a red herring and overlooks how, even today, the ages of eighteen to twenty-two are uniquely framed in American popular culture as young adolescents emerge into young adults. More and more, that age-group and even people in their midtwenties are seen as part of an extended adolescence that exists in a liminal space between childhood and adulthood, because of changing economic times whereby young adults are fnding themselves returning to live home with their parents.59 I suggest that because she was constructed as an adult, Previn fell victim to racialized understandings of Asian women: she was no longer a girl but a sexual being. Discussing the change in her relationship with Previn in the weeks afer learning of the afair, Farrow writes, She was my child, but I could not help her. I could scarcely look at her. We had become something else to each other. We had to go through this separately. In anger she threatened to kill herself. In anger I told her I hated her. It was a relief when she went back to college. I loved her, I missed her, and I worried for her, but it was hard for me to be near her.60 Even as she states that she loved her daughter, this does not discount the fact that in the subsequent months, Farrow and her supporters continuously doubted Previn’s intellectual capacity.61 Farrow framed her daughter

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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as intellectually disabled, as a method to erase her subjectivity. An antagonistic relationship was created and solidifed. Refecting on the months prior to learning about the afair, Farrow notes, “Now I understood the reason for the dramatic change in her attitude the previous year, the new little laugh of superiority, the smugness, and the coldness to the other kids.”62 Tis revelation positions Previn as a threat. She became someone with a secret, who reveled in knowing that she won the afection of her mother’s partner. Tis positioning enabled an adversarial relationship whereby mother and daughter were in competition for the attentions of the same individual, rather than allowing a view of the daughter as a victim of a sexual predator. Te multicultural experiment that is transracial adoption failed to protect Previn. Her existence troubled what it meant to be part of the American family, because she was seen as deviating from the norm. Positioning her as a singular actor, the scandal failed to interrogate how her adoptive parents failed in their eforts to protect their child from falling vulnerable and instead reacted with blame and jealousy. In comparison to her reaction to the afair between Previn and Allen, Mia Farrow donned her protective mother hat as she sought to protect her daughter Dylan from Allen. Tis protection was seen both before and afer the initial accusation of molestation occurred. In her memoir, Mia provides the groundwork that positions Allen as someone with indecent intentions for his adopted daughter, framing him as “obsessed” and overly afectionate on the verge of inappropriateness.63 Allen’s behavior is framed as predatory in this instance. Consequently, when he is accused of sexually molesting Dylan in Mia’s Connecticut home, these allegations seem unsurprising. Not only did Mia request an investigation into the matter, but she also sought the adoption dissolutions of Dylan and her other two children, Moses and Satchel, whom Allen had adopted less than a year prior to the allegations. Te present critique is not ofered as a tool to minimize or cast doubt on what happened between Dylan Farrow and Woody Allen. Rather, I am invested in how whiteness, racial diference, and sexuality are constructed. Mia Farrow overlooked the alleged bonds shared between adopted daughter and adoptive mother for one child while protecting another. In abandoning one child, Farrow did what all adoptees fear. While we may never know the inner workings of the relationship between Mia Farrow and Soon-Yi Previn, the erasure of this maternal bond cannot go unnoticed. Legally, the adoption still stands, as there are no accounts of the dissolution of her adoption of Previn. When a woman abandons one of her adopted children and then continues to adopt transracially and interna-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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tionally (as Farrow did following the 992 scandal), a question should be raised concerning what it means to parent. Te limitations of assimilation rhetoric that encouraged adoptive parents to treat their adopted ofspring as “just like their very own” are exposed. Even more disconcerting, Allen supporters claim that Previn and Allen never had a familial connection. Following the renewed interest in Allen’s alleged molestation of Dylan Farrow, Robert B. Weide, a long-term friend of Allen’s, publicly declared that no father-daughter relationship existed between Allen and Previn, since he never married Farrow nor adopted Previn.64 Tis same logic was invoked in 992, when the scandal frst emerged in the public eye. In a defense of Allen, Michael Lewis writes, “[His sexual relationship with Previn] was not child abuse. And it was not incest, for Allen was never a father to Soon-Yi Previn. Allen’s crime was to fall in love in a way for which society was not really prepared.”65 Tese sentiments refect Allen’s initial assertion, “It wasn’t like she was my daughter.”66 Yet this overemphasis on the lack of legal relationship between Allen and Previn is an insufcient frame in which to understand their sexual relationship. When one considers the power dynamics between Allen and Previn and how their roles exist within feminist constructions of incest (as ofered by Herman and Hirschmann and discussed above), we must recognize the vulnerability of Asian adoptees to psychological grooming for incest and sexual abuse. By delegitimizing what transpired between Allen and Previn as abuse, we become complicit in delegitimizing other familial bonds. Discussing the rise of remarriage and nonnormative families, James B. Twitchell writes, “What makes these sexual limits currently so important to consider is that the blending of families has removed much of the psycholinguistic potency of the names. . . . [H]ence barriers have become less distinct. ‘Father’ may really mean ‘stepfather’ or even ‘second stepfather.’”67 Undermining these other relationships occurs when we focus only on genetics and not on the ways in which men in nonnormative families cast paternal roles through fnancial and emotional support. Furthermore, given Farrow’s primary custody of her eldest six children, one cannot reasonably suggest that Allen did not cast a paternal shadow in their lives, especially when considering Mia’s multiple eforts to integrate Allen into their family. Conclusion

Deviant, foreign, hypersexual—these three adjectives implicitly shaped how the media and even her mother understood Soon-Yi Previn afer the

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Polaroid photos of her naked body surfaced. Te case study of the dissolution between Previn and Farrow’s relationship as mother-daughter and the eventual marital union of Previn and Allen highlight the complexities of adoption, kinship, and sexuality. In this case, discourse concerning the erotics of Asian womanhood intertwined with the trope of the seductive daughter. Tese pathological constructions allowed for Previn to be positioned as her mother’s adversary for Allen’s afections. Previn was unable to be cast as a victim of sexual predation, because of the way in which stereotypes of Asian American women’s sexuality penetrated and circulated American popular culture. Orientalism prevailed. At the same time, constrained defnitions of incest prevented spectators of this family afair from seeing how Allen’s initiation and continuation of a sexual relationship with Previn was predatory given the uneven power dynamics between the pair. Overemphasis that she was neither biologically nor legally related to Allen facilitated the positioning that a consensual relationship arose. Tat argument fails to recognize how Allen’s actions and his supporters’ line of reasoning delegitimize adoptive and nonnormative kinship formations as somehow less real than their biologically or legally related counterparts. Tose familial relationships that fail to adhere to standards of traditional kinship structures are thus undermined. Tis essay demonstrates the failures of the multicultural adoptive family. A supposed site for color-blind love, the transracial adoptive family is always bound by race. Regardless of whether adoptive parents claim to “not see racial diference” within the adoptive family, society deploys racial scripts onto these families. Adoptive parents are also implicated in the racialization of the family vis-à-vis the Orientalist rhetorics that infuence their adoptions from Asia. Tus adoptive families are not bastions of multicultural celebrations; rather, they should be viewed as primary sites to witness the limits of banal multiculturalism. NOTES 1. Catherine Ceniza Choy, Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption in America (New York: New York University Press, 2013); Eleana J. Kim, Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). 2. Michael Cullen Green, Black Yanks in the Pacifc: Race in the Making of American Military Empire afer World War II (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010), 89. 3. Devery S. Anderson, Emmett Till: Te Murder Tat Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2015).

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

From Adoptee to Trespasser | 167 4. Te act included immigrant quotas restricting the number of individuals migrating from Asia to a mere 2,990 people. See Sucheng Chan, Asian Americans: An Interpretive History (Boston: Twayne, 1991), 146. 5. Te US Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia (1967) concerning antimiscegenation laws occurred nearly twenty years afer the frst transracial adoption was documented in Minnesota in 1948. 6. Te election of President Obama in 2008 and his reelection in 2012 signaled to some that perhaps the election of a Black president meant the United States had moved beyond its racist and troubled history. For more information concerning critiques of postracial discourse, see Michelle Alexander, Te New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2012); Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Equality in America, 4th ed. (New York: Rowman and Littlefeld, 2013). 7. Kimberly McKee, “‘Let’s Not Get Hysterical’: Was He Even Her Father?,” Feminist Formations 30, no. 2 (2018): 147–74. 8. Mia Farrow, What Falls Away: A Memoir (New York: Bantam Books, 1997); Dylan Farrow, “An Open Letter from Dylan Farrow,” New York Times, February 1, 2014, http:// kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/an-open-letter-from-dylan-farrow/ 9. See Celine Parreñas Shimizu, Te Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/ American Women on Screen and Scene (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007); Eleanor Ty, Te Politics of the Visible in Asian North American Narratives (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004). 10. Mila, “Hey Mom, Tey Don’t See Your Little Girl, Tey See an Asian Woman . . .” Lost Daughters, March 19, 2013, http://www.thelostdaughters.com/2013/03/hey-momthey-dont-see-your-little-girl.html; Grace Newton, “I Am Not My Dad’s Girlfriend,” Red Tread Broken, August 19, 2014, https://redthreadbroken.wordpress.com/2014 /08/19/i-am-not-my-dads-girlfriend/ 11. Shirley Jennifer Lim, A Feeling of Belonging: Asian American Women’s Public Culture, 1930–1960 (New York: New York University Press, 2006). 12. Gary Y. Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994). 13. Kazuhiro Oharazeki, Japanese Prostitutes in the North American West, 1887–1920 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016). 14. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). 15. See Sheng-Mei Ma, Te Deathly Embrace: Orientalism and Asian American Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010). 16. Renee E. Tajima, “Lotus Blossoms Don’t Bleed: Images of Asian Women,” in Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings by and about Asian American Women, ed. Asian Women United of California (Boston: Beacon, 1989), 309. 17. Candace West and Sarah Fenstermaker, “Doing Diference,” Gender and Society 9, no. 1 (1995): 8–37, https://doi.org/10.1177/089124395009001002 18. Yen Le Espiritu, Asian American Women and Men: Labor, Law, and Love (Tousand Oaks: SAGE, 1997), 112. 19. Parreñas Shimizu, Hypersexuality of Race, 103. 20. Shilpa S. Dave, Indian Accents: Brown Voice and Racial Performance in American Television and Film (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2013); Maria Höhn and Seungsook Moon, Over Tere: Living with the U.S. Military Empire from World War Two

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

168 | Adoption and Multiculturalism to the Present (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010); Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Jin-kyung Lee, Service Economies: Militarism, Sex Work, and Migrant Labor in South Korea (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010); Sheridan Prasso, Te Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, and Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient (New York: PublicAfairs, 2005); Venny Villapando, “Te Business of Selling Mail-Order Brides,” in Asian Women United of California, Making Waves, 324–25. 21. Sumi K. Cho, “Asian Pacifc American Women and Racialized Sexual Harassment,” in Making More Waves: New Writing by Asian American Women, ed. Elaine H. Kim, Lilia V. Villanueva, and Asian Women United of California (Boston: Beacon, 1997); Karen D. Pyle and Denise L. Johnson, “Asian American Women and Racialized Femininities: “Doing” Gender across Cultural Worlds,” Gender and Society 17, no. 1 (2003): 33–53, https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243202238977 22. Jodi Kim, Ends of Empire: Asian American Critique and the Cold War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 169. 23. E. J. Kim, Adopted Territory, 48. 24. Kimberly McKee, “Monetary Flows and the Movements of Children: Te Transnational Adoption Industrial Complex,” Journal of Korean Studies 21, no. 1 (2016): 137– 78. 25. SooJin Pate, From Orphan to Adoptee: U.S. Empire and Genealogies of Korean Adoption (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), 57. 26. Pate, 57. 27. Pate, 94. 28. Tese adoptee-only spaces ofer female adoptees a respite from discourse that assumes adoptees should always be grateful for their adoptions, even when they are subject to sexual harassment, fetishization, and the Orientalist gaze by their adoptive parents. For an example of this phenomenon, see Jane Jeong Trenka, Te Language of Blood (Minneapolis: Graywolf, 2003). 29. Pate, From Orphan to Adoptee, 88. 30. McKee, “Let’s Not Get Hysterical.” For a discussion of sexual abuse and children, see Sandra Kim, “10 Ways to Talk to Your Kids about Sexual Abuse,” Everyday Feminism, February 6, 2014, http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/02/10-ways-to-talk-to-yourkids-about-sexual-abuse/ 31. Nicole Soojung Callahan. “Why Dylan Farrow’s Adoption Matters.” Salon, February 11, 2014, http://www.salon.com/2014/02/11/why_dylan_farrows_adoption_matters/; Maggie Jones, “Adam Crapser’s Bizarre Deportation Odyssey,” New York Times Magazine, April 1, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/01/magazine/adamcrapsers-bizarre-deportation-odyssey.html?_r=0; Elizabeth Kim, Ten Tousand Sorrows: Te Extraordinary Journey of a Korean War Orphan (New York: Doubleday, 2000). 32. Judith Lewis Herman and Lisa Hirschman, Father-Daughter Incest (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 70. 33. Herman and Hirschman. While incest does not solely occur at the hand of male perpetrators, the present inquiry focuses on father-daughter incest. 34. Caroline Knowles. Family Boundaries: Te Invention of Normality and Dangerousness (Peterborough: Broadview, 1996), 73–74. 35. Herman and Hirschman, Father-Daughter Incest, 27. Caroline Knowles notes,

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

From Adoptee to Trespasser | 169 “[Child abuse] implicates parents as perpetrators of violent, uncaring, or sexually predatory acts directed at children in social spaces where nurturing is supposed to occur” (Family Boundaries, 37). 36. For a more expansive Foucauldian analysis of incest and power dynamics, see Vikki Bell, Interrogating Incest: Feminism, Foucault, and the Law (London: Routledge, 1993). 37. Herman and Hirschman, Father-Daughter Incest, 39. 38. Herman and Hirschman, 39. 39. Steven Angelides. “Feminism, Child Sexual Abuse, and the Erasure of Child Sexuality,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 10, no. 2 (2004): 144, https://doi. org/10.1215/10642684-10-2-141 40. Angelides, 145. 41. Knowles, Family Boundaries, 37. 42. For a more detailed discussion of the Polaroids and the discovery of the photos by Farrow, see M. Farrow, What Falls Away. 43. Mia Farrow’s encouragement and establishment of family traditions that included Allen (e.g., celebrating birthdays at the Russian Tea Room) cemented his father fgure status. While not an overly afectionate, “fatherly” man, Allen engaged with the various Farrow ofspring in a manner that suggests a minimum level of participation as Mia actively tried to facilitate a relationship between Allen and her children. In regard to Previn, although Allen initially rebufed requests that the pair spend time together, he and Previn began attending New York Knicks basketball games when she demonstrated an interest in the sport during her high school years. For this narrative, see M. Farrow, What Falls Away. 44. I am not eliding children’s sexuality, a critique that Angelides (“Feminism”) ofers regarding feminist analyses of incest and molestation. Rather, I am interested in how the perceived sexual prowess of a child is used and misused to justify treatment of Soon-Yi Previn and Dylan Farrow in the media. Caroline Knowles writes, “Abuse has forced us to think about the boundaries between what childhood can and cannot be allowed to be. Te social demand to identify and deal with child abuse has forced a distinction between endangered and normal childhood” (Family Boundaries, 82). 45. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Context (London: Routledge, 1995); Ann Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). 46. McClintock, Imperial Leather. 47. Tis public discussion occurred as part of eforts to demonstrate the incompetence of Previn, believed to have an IQ slightly below average; see Marion Meade, Te Unruly Life of Woody Allen: A Biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999), 207. Te developmental delays recounted in public discourse may directly relate to the psychological impact of institutional care on Soon-Yi. Yet these delays may also refect existing intellectual disabilities. Te continual discourse concerning her alleged lowlevel intelligence creates an ableist rhetoric that dismisses efects of what it must have been like to be adopted as an older child into a home without continuity of care due to her mother’s acting schedule and divorce from composer André Previn. Postadoption services ill-equipped Mia Farrow to understand intellectual disabilities, in contrast to

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

170 | Adoption and Multiculturalism the ways in which physically disabled children’s needs are discussed within adoption processes. For a deeper discussion of Soon Yi’s intellectual disabilities and its impact on the public perception of her relationship with Allen, see McKee, “Let’s Not Get Hysterical.” 48. Mary E. Tomas, Multicultural Girlhood: Racism, Sexuality, and the Con icted Spaces of American Education (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011). 49. Kate Driscoll Derickson, “Te Racial Politics of Neoliberal Regulation in PostKatrina Mississippi,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 104, no. 4 (2014): 895, https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2014.912542 50. Tomas, Multicultural Girlhood, 5. 51. Tomas, 4–5. 52. Will Kymlicka, “Liberal Complacencies,” in Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? Susan Moller Okin with Respondents, ed. Joshua Cohen, Matthew Howard, and Martha C. Nussbaum (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 33. 53. Kimberly McKee, “Real versus Fictive Kinship: Legitimating the Adoptive Family,” in Critical Kinship Studies, ed. Charlotte Kroløkke, Lene Myong, Stine Wilum Adrian, and Tine Tjørnhøj-Tomse (London: Rowman and Littlefeld International, 2015). 54. Tomas, Multicultural Girlhood, 77. 55. Kimberle Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241–99, https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039; Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Tought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 2000). 56. Tomas, Multicultural Girlhood, 15. 57. For a deeper discussion of racial innocence and childhood of white and Black children, see Robin Bernstein, Racial Innocence: Performing Childhood and Race from Slavery to Civil Rights (New York: New York University Press, 2011) 58. McKee, “Let’s Not Get Hysterical.” 59. Kay Hymowitz, “‘Pre-Adulthood’ Separates the Men from the Boys,” NPR, February 28, 2011, http://www.npr.org/2011/02/28/134134731/As-America-ChangesManhood-Does-Too; Kim Parker, “Te Boomerang Generation: Feeling OK about Living with Mom and Dad,” Social & Demographic Trends, Pew Research Center, March 15, 2012, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/03/15/the-boomerang-generation/ 60. M. Farrow, What Falls Away, 259. 61. McKee, “Let’s Not Get Hysterical.” 62. M. Farrow, What Falls Away, 263. 63. M. Farrow, 233–34. 64. Robert B. Weide, “Te Woody Allen Allegations: Not So Fast,” Te Daily Beast, January 27, 2014, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/27/the-woody-allenallegations-not-so-fast.html 65. Michael Lewis, “Te Very Last Lover,” New Republic 207, no. 14 (1992): 11. 66. Dennis Hevesi, “Woody Allen Tells His Side to a Magazine,” New York Times, August 23, 1992, http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/23/nyregion/woody-allen-tells-hisside-to-a-magazine.html 67. James B. Twitchell, Forbidden Partners: Te Incest Taboo in Modern Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 9.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

From Adoptee to Trespasser | 171 REFERENCES Alexander, Michelle. Te New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: New Press, 20 2. Anderson, Devery S. Emmett Till: Te Murder Tat Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 20 5. Angelides, Steven. “Feminism, Child Sexual Abuse, and the Erasure of Child Sexuality.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 0, no. 2 (2004): 4 –77. https://doi. org/10.1215/10642684-10-2-141 Bell, Vikki. Interrogating Incest: Feminism, Foucault, and the Law. London: Routledge, 993. Bernstein, Robin. Racial Innocence: Performing Childhood and Race from Slavery to Civil Rights. New York: New York University Press, 20 . Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Equality in America. 4th ed. New York: Rowman and Littlefeld, 20 3. Callahan, Nicole Soojung. “Why Dylan Farrow’s Adoption Matters.” Salon, February , 20 4. http://www.salon.com/2014/02/11/why_dylan_farrows_adoption_matters/ Chan, Sucheng. Asian Americans: An Interpretive History. Boston: Twayne, 99 . Cho, Sumi K. “Asian Pacifc American Women and Racialized Sexual Harassment.” In Making More Waves: New Writing by Asian American Women, edited by Elaine H. Kim, Lilia V. Villanueva, and Asian Women United of California, 64–73. Boston: Beacon, 997. Choy, Catherine Ceniza. Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption in America. New York: New York University Press, 20 3. Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Feminist Tought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York: Routledge, 2000. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 ( 99 ): 24 –99. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039 Dave, Shilpa S. Indian Accents: Brown Voice and Racial Performance in American Television and Film. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 20 3. Derickson, Kate Driscoll. “Te Racial Politics of Neoliberal Regulation in Post-Katrina Mississippi.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 04, no. 4 (20 4): 889–902. https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2014.912542 Espiritu, Yen Le. Asian American Women and Men: Labor, Law, and Love. Tousand Oaks: SAGE, 997. Farrow, Dylan. “An Open Letter From Dylan Farrow.” New York Times, February , 20 4. http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/01/an-open-letter-from-dylan-farrow/ Farrow, Mia. What Falls Away: A Memoir. New York: Bantam Books, 997. Green, Michael Cullen. Black Yanks in the Pacifc: Race in the Making of American Military Empire afer World War II. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 20 0. Hagedorn, Jessica. Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthropology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction. New York: Penguin Books, 993. Herman, Judith Lewis, and Lisa Hirschman. Father-Daughter Incest. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 98 .

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

172 | Adoption and Multiculturalism Hevesi, Dennis. “Woody Allen Tells His Side to a Magazine.” New York Times, August 23, 992. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/23/nyregion/woody-allen-tells-his-side-toa-magazine.html Höhn, Maria, and Seungsook Moon. Over Tere: Living with the U.S. Military Empire from World War Two to the Present. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 20 0. Hymowitz, Kay. “‘Pre-Adulthood’ Separates the Men from the Boys.” NPR, February 28, 20 . http://www.npr.org/2011/02/28/134134731/As-America-Changes-ManhoodDoes-Too Jones, Maggie. “Adam Crapser’s Bizarre Deportation Odyssey.” New York Times Magazine, April , 20 5. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/01/magazine/adam-crapsersbizarre-deportation-odyssey.html?_r=0 Kim, Eleana J. Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 20 0. Kim, Elizabeth. Ten Tousand Sorrows: Te Extraordinary Journey of a Korean War Orphan. New York: Doubleday, 2000. Kim, Jodi. Ends of Empire: Asian American Critique and the Cold War. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 20 0. Kim, Sandra. “ 0 Ways to Talk to Your Kids about Sexual Abuse.” Everyday Feminism, February 6, 20 4. http://everydayfeminism.com/2014/02/10-ways-to-talk-to-yourkids-about-sexual-abuse/ Klein, Christina. Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Knowles, Caroline. Family Boundaries: Te Invention of Normality and Dangerousness. Peterborough: Broadview, 996. Kymlicka, Will. “Liberal Complacencies.” In Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? Susan Moller Okin with Respondents, edited by Joshua Cohen, Matthew Howard, and Martha C. Nussbaum, 3 –34. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 999. Lee, Jin-kyung. Service Economies: Militarism, Sex Work, and Migrant Labor in South Korea. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 20 0. Leong, Karen. Te China Mystique: Pearl S. Buck, Anna May Wong, Mayling Soong Chiang, and the Transformation of American Orientalism. Oakland: University of California Press, 2005. Lewis, Michael. “Te Very Last Lover.” New Republic 207, no. 4 ( 992): . Lim, Shirley Jennifer. A Feeling of Belonging: Asian American Women’s Public Culture, 1930–1960. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Ma, Sheng-Mei. Te Deathly Embrace: Orientalism and Asian American Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 20 0. Mazumdar, Sucheta. “A Women-Centered Perspective on Asian American History.” General introduction to Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings by and about Asian American Women, edited by Asian Women United of California, –22. Boston: Beacon, 989. McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York: Routledge, 995. McKee, Kimberly. “‘Let’s Not Get Hysterical’: Was He Even Her Father?” Feminist Formations 30, no. 2 (20 8): 47–74. McKee, Kimberly. “Monetary Flows and the Movements of Children: Te Transnational Adoption Industrial Complex.” Journal of Korean Studies 2 no. (20 6): 37–78. McKee, Kimberly. “Real versus Fictive Kinship: Legitimating the Adoptive Family.” In Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

From Adoptee to Trespasser | 173 Critical Kinship Studies, edited by Charlotte Kroløkke, Lene Myong, Stine Wilum Adrian, and Tine Tjørnhøj-Tomse, 22 –36. London: Rowman and Littlefeld International, 20 5. Meade, Marion. Te Unruly Life of Woody Allen: A Biography. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 999. Mila. “Hey Mom, Tey Don’t See Your Little Girl, Tey See an Asian Woman . . .” Lost Daughters, March 9, 20 3. http://www.thelostdaughters.com/2013/03/hey-momthey-dont-see-your-little-girl.html Newton, Grace. “I Am Not My Dad’s Girlfriend.” Red Tread Broken, August 9, 20 4. https://redthreadbroken.wordpress.com/2014/08/19/i-am-not-my-dads-girlfriend/ Oharazeki, Kazuhiro. Japanese Prostitutes in the North American West, 1887–1920. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 20 6. Okihiro, Gary Y. Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 994. Parker, Kim. “Te Boomerang Generation: Feeling OK about Living with Mom and Dad.” Social & Demographic Trends, Pew Research Center, March 5, 20 2. http:// www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/03/15/the-boomerang-generation/ Parreñas Shimizu, Celine. Te Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. Pate, SooJin. From Orphan to Adoptee: U.S. Empire and Genealogies of Korean Adoption. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 20 4. Prasso, Sheridan. Te Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, and Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient. New York: PublicAfairs, 2005. Pyle, Karen D., and Denise L. Johnson. “Asian American Women and Racialized Femininities: “Doing” Gender across Cultural Worlds.” Gender and Society 7, no. (2003): 33–53. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243202238977 Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 978. Stoler, Ann Laura. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule. 2nd ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 20 0. Tajima, Renee E. “Lotus Blossoms Don’t Bleed: Images of Asian Women.” In Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings by and about Asian American Women, edited by Asian Women United of California, 308– 7. Boston: Beacon, 989. Tomas, Mary E. Multicultural Girlhood: Racism, Sexuality, and the Con icted Spaces of American Education. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 20 . Trenka, Jane Jeong. Te Language of Blood. Minneapolis: Graywolf, 2003. Twitchell, James B. Forbidden Partners: Te Incest Taboo in Modern Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 987. Ty, Eleanor. Te Politics of the Visible in Asian North American Narratives. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Villapando, Venny. “Te Business of Selling Mail-Order Brides.” In Making Waves: An Anthology of Writings by and about Asian American Women, edited by Asian Women United of California, 3 8–26. Boston: Beacon, 989. Weide, Robert B. “Te Woody Allen Allegations: Not So Fast.” Te Daily Beast, January 27, 20 4. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/27/the-woody-allen-alle gations-not-so-fast.html West, Candace, and Sarah Fenstermaker. “Doing Diference.” Gender and Society 9, no. ( 995): 8–37. https://doi.org/10.1177/089124395009001002

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Section 3

Exposing Discrepancies Racial Purity in the “Multicultural Adoptive Land”

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Black and White Strangers Adoption and Ethnic Hierarchies in Finland Riitta Högbacka and Heidi Ruohio

Te recent wave of refugee immigration to Western Europe, with people feeing from war, upheaval, and desperate poverty, has coincided with growing anti-immigration and nationalistic sentiments and protests. Te “immigrant,” conceptualized as a threat to the national identity, has become a fgure shaped by nationalistic discourses.1 Diferent types of immigrants are further placed in a hierarchy, from which neither adoptees nor others can escape. Te point of departure of this essay is the paradoxical ways in which both white (Russians) and Black (Africans) immigrants can be positioned at the bottom end of the ethnic hierarchy in present-day Finland. In this essay, we examine the logic behind such hierarchies, as well as their manifestations and consequences in the context of transnational adoption, by juxtaposing the experiences of adoptive parents and adult adoptees. Given that negative stereotypes and discrimination directed at (white) Russians do not ft easily into a typical racist logic, we explore racism in tandem with nativism and nationalistic anxieties in today’s Finland. We show how racism and nationalism are deeply entangled and inform the seemingly diferent experiences and negotiations of belonging in adoptions constructed as white and nonwhite. Likewise, nationalist/nativist sentiments can turn into essentialized, racist depictions of certain groups. In this essay, we draw on our respective empirical studies.2 Högbacka conducted thirty interviews with white Finnish adoptive parents (mostly mothers but also some fathers and couples) between 2006 and 20 . Te interviewed adoptive parents ranged in age from thirty-three to ffy-fve, were fairly highly educated, and could be characterized as belonging to 177 Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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the lower or upper echelons of the middle class. Most had adopted internationally within the fve years preceding the interviews. Half of them had adopted from South Africa, the other half from ten other countries of origin. Te majority were from the Helsinki metropolitan area or from towns in Western Finland, but some also lived in rural areas. Ruohio conducted interviews with twenty-four adult transnational adoptees between 2009 and 20 . Tey were born in nine diferent countries of origin, the most common of which were Russia, Ethiopia, Colombia, and India. Te adoptees came from diferent parts of Finland, ranging from the Helsinki metropolitan area to Lapland in the north of Finland, from big cities to rural areas. Te vast majority of them were adopted in the 980s or at the beginning of the 990s, and most of them had a middle-class background. We begin our contribution to this volume by describing the wider context of multiculturalism and adoption in Finland. We then give an overview of how current theories of racism and nationalism shed light on ethnic hierarchies, which we further investigate in the experiences of the interviewed adoptive parents and adult adoptees. In an attempt to unravel the linkages between racist and nativistic ideologies, we focus on adoptions and adoptees constructed as Black in the Finnish context and originating from Africa, Latin America, and India and on those perceived as white, which, in the Finnish case, generally refers to Russian-born adoptees. Finally, we explore how ethnic hierarchies, which here means an amalgamation of racist and nationalist ideologies, inform these adoption experiences and how they are negotiated in practice, as well as what they reveal about the state of Finnish multiculturalism. We conclude this essay with our argument that Finnish multiculturalism is informed by racialized and nativistic ethnic hierarchies, as not everybody is accepted equally. The Finnish Context of Multiculturalism, Migration, and Adoption

Finland has changed from a sending country to a receiving country with regard to migration movements in general and transnational adoption in particular. Te Finnish state evacuated about seventy-thousand children during World War II (most of them to Sweden and some to Denmark), and about seven thousand of those children came to stay permanently in Sweden as adoptees or foster children.3 Although it was not the primary reason for the wartime transfer of Finnish children, adoption from Finland to Sweden and to other Nordic countries continued in the postwar period and until the mid- 970s.4 Transnational adoption to Finland

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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started on a small scale only toward the end of the 970s and has continued over the years, and about three hundred children were adopted annually during the peak years of 2004 and 2005. It has been estimated that there are more than fve thousand transnational adoptees in today’s Finland, and the most prominent sending countries have been China, Russia, Tailand, Colombia, Ethiopia, South Africa, and India.5 Russia halted all adoptions to Finland in 20 5, due to the Finnish law on gender-neutral marriage.6 Te current global downturn in the number of transnational adoptions and the rise of Africa as a continent of origin have had repercussions in Finland as well.7 In recent years, South Africa has become the biggest supplier of adopted children to Finland.8 In 20 8, 7 percent of Finland’s total population of 5.5 million inhabitants were of a foreign background, meaning that they were either immigrants or immediate descendants of immigrants.9Immigration to Finland started to increase only in the 990s, culminating in the quadrupling of numbers during the past twenty years. Tere were about 63,000 foreignborn individuals living in the country in 990; by 20 0, the number had increased to 248,000.10 In 20 0, 65 percent of all immigrants were from European countries, 20 percent from Asia, 9 percent from Africa, and 7 percent from another region. Te ten most prominent countries of origin are the former Soviet Union, Sweden, Estonia (afer 992), Somalia, Russia (afer 992), Iraq, China, Tailand, former Yugoslavia, and Germany.11 Among these countries, Russia, Estonia, China, and Tailand are still sending children to Finland for adoption or have done so at some point. According to estimates from the Ministry of Employment , the vast majority (between 60 and 65 percent) of those migrating to Finland during the 990s and at the beginning of the twenty-frst century did so for family reasons. Moreover, 5 percent of all immigrants were refugees, 0 percent were return migrants, 5– 0 percent migrated because of work, and 5– 0 percent came for other reasons, including higher education. Te frst refugees arrived in Finland in the 970s from Chile and Vietnam, and the next bigger wave came from Somalia in the 990s.12 In 20 5, more than thirty thousand immigrants came to Finland as asylum seekers, most of them from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Syria.13 Although those countries do not send children for adoption to Finland, those immigrants form a part of the context in which Finnish transnational adoptees and adoptive families are situated. According to Finnish researcher Pasi Saukkonen multiculturalism can be understood in two distinct ways: as a demographic fact and as a political ideology that acknowledges and furthers ethnic and cultural diversity

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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in a given society. In Saukkonen’s view, Finland ranks high on multiculturalist ideology, given that the promotion of multiculturalism is frmly anchored in both national legislation and administrative policies. At the same time, Finland’s concrete multicultural actions are modest. Te Finnish integration policy is based on the idea that adjustment is a two-way process involving both immigrants and natives, but in reality, adjustment and integration seem to apply only to immigrants. Recent immigration to Finland has aroused strong nationalistic anxieties and fueled antiimmigration protests that call for the “total assimilation” of immigrants or even for a return to “monocultural” Finland.14 Tis new anti-immigration atmosphere has a strong efect on the everyday lives of all immigrants in Finland and on transnational adoptees and adoptive families. Racism, Nationalism, and Ethnic Hierarchies

While race generally refers to biological and hereditary characteristics that ofen translate into bodily appearances (e.g., skin color and other phenotypical markers), ethnicity is associated with the idea of a common ancestry and culture.15 In our following discussion, the term ethnicity refers to culture (and country) of origin, and “ethnic hierarchies” are referenced to indicate the position of certain groups in a society based on the idea of a common ethnicity.16 Although a common denominator of ethnic hierarchies globally seems to be the lower valuation of dark skin color, there are also local variations.17 In fact, ethnic hierarchies are ofen a curious mixture of racialization and nativism. In Finland, Magdalena Jaakkola has studied the ethnic hierarchy of twenty-four migrant groups. At the top of the hierarchy, as the most preferred immigrants, are white Northern and Western Europeans. Polish, Chinese, and Vietnamese immigrants occupy a middle position, followed by Black Africans, Turks, and Moroccans. Te least preferred immigrants are Russians, Kurds, Arabs, and Somalis.18 Paradoxically given the fact that white is consistently placed above Black in most national contexts, both white Russians and Black Africans are among the groups that the respondents of Jaakkola’s survey would like to see moving to Finland the least. Another recent study reported a similar ethnic hierarchy and revealed that countries from which large numbers of people have recently come to Finland for humanitarian reasons (e.g., Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Romania) are also at the bottom.19 Tis Finnish ethnic hierarchy refects elements from several discourses.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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In an attempt to delineate those discourses here, we turn to some recent discussions of and theorizations on racist and nationalist/nativist ideologies. It has been suggested that scholars need to untangle the concepts of racism and nativism and to explicate their intertwining, to achieve a better understanding of the current migration context in the West.20 Although Lippard and Schueths write about increasing Latino immigration to the United States, which is positioned outside of the traditional US Blackwhite binary, their conceptualization can be applied to understanding the negative attitudes toward and discrimination against (white) Russians in today’s Finland. As Lippard argues, racism and nativism are ofen confused and confated, even though their logics and aims are diferent.21 Racism exploits essentialist and socially constructed categories of race, particularly skin color, to maintain white dominance, through racialization and the assigning of a racial identity to all social groups. Racism generally denigrates all people of color irrespective of their citizenship status. In comparison, nativism and nationalism spring from nationalistic anxieties and purport to separate those who belong from nonnatives, immigrants, and “foreigners,” to maintain the superiority and dominance of the native population. Nativism usually raises its head in times of national crisis and fuels fears that “foreigners” and “immigrants” are on the verge of taking over the country culturally, linguistically, economically, and politically.22 Although racist and nativist logics may be analytically distinguishable, they are usually intimately intertwined. Te wider system of racism informs nativism/nationalism, and racist nativism targets certain ethnic groups who come to be seen as suspect. People who “look like immigrants” may, for example, become targets of racial profling regardless of citizenship status.23 Certain minority groups are thus seen as more of a threat and more “alien” than others, and racism ofers a convenient way of detecting and singling out such groups. Étienne Balibar points out that the category of the “immigrant” has become almost “a substitute for the notion of race.”24 Furthermore, Sara Ahmed argues that to be seen as a stranger presupposes recognition: the stranger is “not somebody we do not recognize, but somebody we recognize as a stranger.”25 Consequently, a stranger is considered not to belong in a given national space and context.26 Te Finnish ethnic hierarchy is informed by race in many ways. Scholars conducting research on migration have established that Finnishness is tied to such aspects as nationality, language, Finnish national and cultural identity, and being raised culturally as Finnish.27 Further, the category “Finnish” refers self-evidently only to native-born white Finnish persons,

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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meaning that those having the “wrong” skin color are easily excluded from Finnishness.28 Being Finnish is thus tied to whiteness, and individuals of color are immediately identifed as being non-Finnish and as indicating otherness, even if they are born in Finland, are Finnish citizens, and have lived here all their lives. As this example shows, the crucial question is whether one’s position in the ethnic hierarchy is visible or invisible to outsiders. Consequently, when Finns were asked spontaneously to name “resident foreign groups” in Finland, more than half of the respondents mentioned Somalis before mentioning any other group. In contrast to the respondents in many other European countries in which this study was also conducted, Finns named not the largest immigrant group but the group considered to be the most racially visible.29 Renato Rosaldo further connects the notion of visibility/invisibility to culture and power.30 For Rosaldo, culture is the broader ways in which norms, values, and beliefs shape the way people conduct and interpret their lives. His point is that whiteness is seen as being cultureless. Culture is perceived as something nonwhites have, whereas whites are not defned by their culture, traditional ways, or ties to the past. Usually, those who are considered to have a culture lack full citizenship rights and have less power within a certain nation-state. Conversely, those who are seen as cultureless or as being postcultural usually have full citizenship and occupy the power positions in a given society. Whiteness thus becomes the invisible norm from which the cultural others deviate, and whiteness also implies being civilized, developed, modern, and rational.31 Pamela Perry further argues that white culture implies not having ties to European ancestry and that only members of ethnic minorities have such ties to the past; whiteness thus means “never having to say you’re ethnic.”32 Whites can also extend cultural invisibility and a noncultural status to “people who (‘we’ think) resemble ‘us’” and, most obviously, to others who can pass as whites.33 For example, studies of adoptive families in the United States have found that adoptive parents of white Russian children are less preoccupied with the “birth culture” of the child, whereas parents in the case of nonwhite adoptions assign more importance to birth culture and are more engaged in various culturekeeping activities.34 Nationalist anxieties also inform racism and can result in essentialist and stereotypical depictions that resemble the process of racialization. Te ethnic hierarchy in Finnish society is not only racist but implicitly nativistic and nationalistic, with minority groups thought to be strangers and threats to the “native” way of life. Russians have been constructed as con-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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stituting the biggest national threat to Finland throughout its modern history. Expressions of Russophobia were prevalent in the private sphere when Finland lost the war against the Soviet Union in the afermath of World War II, but for political reasons, they were absent from the ofcial rhetoric during the Cold War.35 In other words, the Finnish national identity has been constructed in relation to Russia and to Russians in particular, and that relationship is manifested in, for example, how Finns speak and think about the Russian “enemy.”36 One result of Finland’s troubled history with Russia has been the labeling of Russian people as “Russkies.” Finns view Russians in essentialist terms and assign them characteristics thought to be stable. Ethnicized discourses and stereotyping imply that Russians are “barbarians,” “criminals,” “drunkards,” “noisy,” and “lazy,” for example.37 Russian men and women are both seen in a highly negative light, the women are suspected of prostitution, and the Russian “they” are seen as invading the Finnish “us” by buying “too many” summer cottages and houses as well as land in Finland.38 Russians are ofen depicted as if the threatening characteristics assigned to Russianness apply to all Russians. Tere are thus strong tendencies to assign an essentialist ethnic identity to Russians in a way that resembles the process of racialization. In fact, Finnish Russophobia is similar to what is sometimes called neo-racism, which, instead of evoking ideas of quasi-biological heredity, ranks individuals on the basis of how well their cultural traditions can be assimilated.39 Such racist and nativist hierarchies are manifest in Finnish adoptive parents’ depictions of forming their families and in Finnish adult adoptees’ experiences of discrimination and negotiations of belonging. Adoption and Cultural Visibility: Wearing One’s Birth Culture on One’s Face

Hollee McGinnis, herself an adoptee, points out that “adoptees of colour wear their birth culture on their face,” which ofen has negative consequences for them.40 Tis is a clear indication of racist nativism. Visibility, connected to subordinate and lower positions in the racialized ethnic hierarchy, brings with it derogatory comments from others, and blackness in particular is usually seen as unassimilable. Adopters who prefer young and healthy children “similar” to them (meaning white) are faced with a new situation as the supply of such children has decreased substantially during recent years.41 Having to readjust

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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their preferences involves accepting various disabilities.42 In the interviews of Finnish adopters, blackness was compensated by factors such as young age and health, whereas whiteness compensated for older age and minor health problems. Older children had a better chance of being adopted by white parents if they were white, and children constructed as black had to be very young and healthy to be accepted by Finnish adoptive parents.43 In other words, blackness is a “hindrance” that needs to be compensated for by other, more highly valued child attributes, whereas whiteness is an asset that could diminish the efects of more undesirable attributes. According to the interviews, several adopters contemplating adoption from racially visible countries had to face and deal with highly negative attitudes from family members in the preadoption period. Blackness, particularly Africanness, evoked prejudices among future grandparents. One of the adoptive mothers, Helena, recalled how her in-laws found it difcult to accept adopting from Africa; her father-in-law was of the opinion that the child could be “anything but black.” Several mothers of single female adopters tried to make their daughters change country. When told that Tiina would have to change the country of origin from Asia and possibly to Africa, Tiina’s mother was shocked and tried to push Tiina into fostering a Finnish child. Eeva recalled her mother’s strong reactions when Eeva mentioned plans to adopt a child from abroad. Her mother had known about and disapproved of Eeva’s previous relationship with a married Finnish man, but now the stigma of blackness seemingly outweighed the stigma of that relationship. My mother said, “Oh some black child. Wouldn’t it be better with some Finnish man?” Now even the married man would have been okay with her. . . . Now she would have accepted all Finnish versions. Te low status of visibility was obvious, according to many of the informants. Tere was also a stratifcation within the category of blackness: Black Africans were placed at the lowest level of the hierarchy, while Latin American Blacks were more accepted. African blackness was associated with “complete” blackness, whereas Latin American blackness could be constructed as “mixed-race” and thus not as “overwhelming.” Like many other adoptive parents, Hans justifed this hierarchy by referring to the well-being of the child. According to the reasoning he followed, a child originating from Africa, the least accepted continent of origin, would be subject to more harm.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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My father asked whether we had considered South America, when we told him about South Africa. But I’m sure the only thing behind that was the worry about how the child would be received here and adjust. An adult Colombian adoptee said that she is perceived as African because of her skin color but that the attitude toward her changes whenever she discloses her country of origin. Her Latin American origin automatically brings with it a higher level of acceptance in Finland. In other words, the existence of an ethnic and racialized hierarchy makes it benefcial for this Colombian-born adoptee to disclose her country of origin, to be more favorably regarded in Finland. I have never felt that people would think badly of me because I am from Colombia, rather because I have dark skin color than because I am from Colombia. And usually it changes when I say that I am a Latina. Ten they are like, “Okay, you are a Latina, oh imagine that.” As the experiences of Hans and many other adopters showed, blackness was constructed as detrimental to the child itself in the reactions of the adopters’ close family members, but the arrival of the child seemed to reverse the negative views of the adopter’s close kin, as the process of making the child one’s own led to the downplaying of ethnic and racial diferences within the adoptive family.44 As Luc Boltanski points out, when we take in another as our own, it is necessary to emphasize similarity to us and to our culture and to strip the Other of disturbing diferences such as ethnic markers.45 Te adopters became fully engaged in this process of “kinning” and in creating similarity to make the child one of their own. Some of the interviewed adoptive parents even exhibited a need to see physical similarity between themselves and the children across racial lines.46 Several of them observed that despite diferent “ethnicity,” the child was “very light-skinned.” Some even forgot to tell kindergarten staf that their child was adopted. It seems that nonwhite children are ofen symbolically “whitened” in Finland. Te logical end result of this making into one’s own is color blindness. Afer a while, Finnish adoptive parents do not “see” racial markers, and they tend to assume that others will not see them either. Adoptive parents were also adamant that their adopted children were “completely Finnish” and completely diferent from immigrants from the same or from other countries of origin. In other words, belonging to a

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Finnish family connotes belonging to the Finnish nation. Adopters seemed worried that other people might mistake their child for being an immigrant and a refugee.47 Tat concern implies a desire to extend the cultural invisibility of the white adoptive parents to the adopted child of color. Unlike immigrants, adoptees are thought of as being stripped of their culture by virtue of their incorporation into a white Finnish family. Once adoptees grow up, become adults, and step outside of their home, surveillance by others based on their racial visibility can be overwhelming, according to the interviews with the adoptees. Nonwhite adoptees are ofen perceived as “foreigners,” “immigrants,” and “refugees” in everyday encounters with white Finns unknown to them.48 Adoptees of color are indeed categorized outside the intimate sphere, as not “our own” and not belonging to the “circle of Finnishness.” Tey have no power over the racializing gazes and the unwanted racializing attention that they get in public spaces. Constant questions such as “Where are you (really) from?” and multiple experiences of everyday racism are examples of the exclusion of transnational adoptees in Finland.49 As Ann Anagnost puts it, immigrants are transnational adoptees’ “ghostly doubles.”50 Te term immigrant is used in Finland mainly with reference to people who have migrated to the country for humanitarian reasons, and those people are ofen considered to be “expensive” for Finnish society.51 Many adoptees of color seem to react to such misrecognitions by distancing themselves consciously from (other) immigrants. As transnational adoption is not considered to be “forced migration” but is perceived as a “voluntary” way of building a (Finnish) family, it is advantageous for adoptees who do not pass as white Finns to refer to their adoption status and to their belonging to a white (and usually middle-class) Finnish family and, as a consequence, to the Finnish nation.52 One Indian-born adoptee stated, I have also immigrated into this country, but I am not an immigrant or a refugee or anything like that. . . . I don’t know why it bothers me when people say that I am an immigrant or a refugee, which I am not. I have always emphasized being adopted, and I have never been ashamed of it. In addition to disclosing their adoption status in everyday encounters, some African-born adoptees seem to adopt the strategy of showing pride in being visibly diferent. Having established that they are not immigrants but one of “our own,” they can sometimes turn their diference into an

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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advantage. A brown and black skin color may be an asset in a globalized setting and in relation to ideas of cosmopolitanism, according to one African-born adopted woman. I feel Finnish in the way that all Finnish people do, I guess. Of course I am dark skinned. Of course it always comes up that I am not truly 100 percent Finnish. But I am proud of that too. In a society that categorizes people into strangers and “us” based on physical looks and racial visibility and that is characterized by the belief that to be fully Finnish one has to be white, it only makes sense to promptly disclose one’s status as an adoptee. To avoid racism, it becomes necessary for some adoptees to distance themselves from nonwhite immigrants. Given that Finns are more sympathetic to transnational adoption than to (m)any other forms of immigration, it becomes highly benefcial for transnational adoptees of color to disclose their adoption status.53 It is simply better to be seen as a “transnational adoptee” than as an “immigrant” or any other “foreigner.” Adoption and Cultural Invisibility: Whiteness as Power and as Being “Tainted”

According to our interviews, Finnish adopters position an adopted child from Russia high in the racial order in terms of “looking similar to us” and being “Western looking,” while simultaneously positioning the child low in the nativistic hierarchy. Many interviewees stated that grandparents and other kin said they would never accept a “Russkie child”. Jenni recalls that her husband Paul frst reacted to the idea of transnational adoption by recommending “anything but Russian”: his grandfather had been killed in the war against the Soviet Union, and Paul had been hearing about “Russkies” in a derogatory and stereotypical way all his life. Terefore he did not think that his relatives would ever accept the adoption of a Russian child. Many of the accounts contain ample references to the wars against the Soviet Union. Russianness is thus connected to nationalistic fears about “them” invading and occupying “us,” and this aura of negativity is extended to today’s Russians and to Russian children who have nothing to do with the historical wars. Julia, who adopted two children from Russia with her husband, made this evident in her account.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Ten there is this peculiar feature about Russia, that they have been called “Russkies” here in Finland. And this did make us think, because my husband’s father went to war at the age of 17. He was involved in the war for a few years, and patriotism is very strong in his household. We did think about how they would feel about our girls  .  .  . or about a future child if she came from Russia, and I thought, okay, if people are so petty that they think that this little child is responsible for the fact that these countries have been at war, then let them. If their origin becomes known, the low position of Russian-born adoptees according to the nativistic order, underpinned by “culturalist” racism, can be detrimental, as Julia recalled, for instance, in relation to the health check that all adoptees undergo soon afer arrival: a doctors’ medical attention was directed at ensuring that the (preschool) girl adopted from Russia did not bring “any sexually transmittable diseases with her,” whereas her ear infection went undetected and later caused problems. Tat experience shows the strong persistence of the stigmatized image of Russian women in Finland. If the stigmatizing Russian origin is not known, their higher position in the racial order can protect Russian-born adoptees. As Julia pointed out, others’ comments about her adopted girls tend to focus on similarity and whiteness. Many have asked us whether they are Ingrians [who are considered to be ethnically Finnish]. Tat would have been a mitigating factor. . . . Many have told us that it is such a good thing that they look Finnish. Eeva, who experienced both a nonwhite and a white transnational adoption, was of the opinion that bullying and racist remarks constituted a serious issue in the former case but not in the latter. Te power gained from cultural invisibility means that (white) Russian-born adoptees and their families are usually free from racializing surveillance in the public sphere and can just blend in; that invisibility also carries with it the possibility of being taken for a biogenetic family by others.54 According to Sara Ahmed, passing as something may function on two diferent levels.55 On one level, it may function as misrecognition on the part of others in situations in which it is not intentional and when the person who is passing might not even be aware of it. On another level, it may be intentional: some Russian-born adult adoptees tended to pass not

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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just as white Finns but as their adoptive parents’ biological, Finnish-born children. A Russian-born adopted man mentioned that if somebody asked him where he was from, he usually did not reveal his country of origin but instead constructed a new birth story that entailed being born in Finland. He did this because he had experienced being called derogatory names at school. Whether adopted or not, being called a “Russkie” seems to be unavoidable for Russian-born children in Finland.56 Te adoptive parents of Russian-born adoptees tend to reveal their adopted status early on to peers and teachers. Tis particular man criticized his mother for being a “blabbermouth” because she revealed her son’s adopted status “everywhere.” When adoptees grow older, they have more autonomy in terms of deciding what to reveal about their adoptive background and country of origin, as well as when and to whom. Unlike adoptees constructed as nonwhite and Black, white adoptees might keep their status hidden in many cases. One Russian-born adopted woman said that she is keeping her adoption status a secret at work and among her acquaintances. I am still a little bit ashamed of it. . . . Te reason why I’m not telling is because I’m afraid of the reaction. Some of the people here [at her workplace and place of residence] constantly talk about Russians doing this and that and Russkies doing this and that. Both this woman and the Russian-born adopted man referenced above try to pass as being Finnish-born to secure their position as being Finnish. Both fear that the stigmatization of Russians in Finland would endanger their identity as Finnish if they revealed their country of origin to others. In the case of Russian-born adoptees, physical whiteness is not enough: if their Russian origin becomes known, nativist racism may destroy the invisibility that whiteness would otherwise assure them. Conclusion

Tis interview-based study shows how ethnic hierarchies, which are informed by both racism and nativism, infuence transnational adoption, adoptive parents, and adoptees in Finland. As we have shown, racial invisibility (whiteness) brings with it certain assets that nonwhite adoptions lack. Whiteness is frmly attached to power, as the adopters indicated in their narratives about choosing the country of origin. As we also showed,

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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whiteness could potentially upgrade the adoption of less desirable children, and desirable attributes such as young age or good health could compensate blackness.57 Cultural invisibility protected adoptive families and adult adoptees from racialized surveillance, whereas cultural visibility gave rise to strong negative reactions from others, including the initial reactions of close kin and people outside the family. “Blacks” have been constructed as radically diferent and as unassimilable, and Black adoptees are, to a large extent, targets of racialized microaggression and everyday racism in Finland.58 As nativistic and nationalistic hierarchies cut through racialized ethnic hierarchies, the category of the culturally invisible white is further stratifed. On top in the hierarchies are those considered not to constitute a threat to Finnishness, such as Scandinavian and Western European whites; at the bottom are Russians, stigmatized within the Finnish context. Russianness takes on similar essentialist connotations that are typical in racialization processes. Te Russians are labeled “Russkies” and are heavily stigmatized in Finland due to historical reasons. Te category of nonwhites also appears to be stratifed: Asians and Latin Americans are placed above those constructed as Africans. Blackness is further stratifed, as black Africans are placed at the lowest level of the hierarchy, while black South Americans are thought of as being “better.” All these hierarchies are manifested in our accounts of and interviews with adoptive parents and adult adoptees. Te combined efects of racism and nativism explain why white Russian-born adoptees wish to hide that they are adopted whereas Black adoptees tend to do the opposite. Given their visibility, black adoptees are perceived as strangers, and a racialized ethnic hierarchy positions them at the bottom, as the least desired immigrants. Tey thus try to disclose their adoptee status as soon as possible in order to be seen as Finnish and as one of “our own” who speaks perfect Finnish, is socialized into “our” ways, and exhibits a middle-class habitus. Russian-born adoptees equally wish to highlight their Finnishness by passing as native white Finns. In addition, nativism is at work in their situations, which is why it is so important for them to pass as being Finnish-born. Te disclosing of their adoptee status would immediately lead to the question of their country of origin and would reveal their “Russianness,” which is at the bottom in the nativistic order and, above all, perceived as a threat to the Finnish nation. Other hierarchies also cut through the ethnic ones. Te term immigrant is negatively perceived in Finland and usually refers to someone who is visibly and racially diferent and, as a consequence, does not (really)

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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belong in Finland. Diferent migration backgrounds resonate with ethnic hierarchies and are valued diferently in Finnish society: forced refugee migration is at the bottom, and voluntary expatriate immigration is on top. Various types of “foreigners” are diferentially valued in the Finnish ethnic hierarchy. Tose who are viewed most favorably are adopted children, foreign specialists and experts, and expatriates and tourists, while immigrants and refugees are perceived more negatively.59 Class also infuences the perceived degree of being assimilable to Finnishness, and most foreign specialists, experts, and expatriates are middle-class and ofen regarded as being culturally invisible or even cultureless, as opposed to popular depictions of culturally visible “lower-class” immigrants seen as exploiting and draining the Finnish welfare system. Being or becoming (in)visible is thus context-specifc and intertwined with other social categories, such as class and nationality.60 In sum, the transnational adoption to Finland of white and nonwhite children reveals the fragile state of ofcial Finnish multiculturalism and of the country’s otherwise progressive inclusion and integration policies. In a country with relatively low numbers and proportions of both adoptees and immigrants compared to the other Nordic countries, what seems to be at stake among both those who are seen as visible and nonwhite and those who are invisible and white is a struggle to belong. Multiculturalism remains an empty promise if the power relations in Finnish society and the placing of diferent minorities, groups, nationalities, and cultures in a racialized and nativistic ethnic hierarchy are not addressed. According to our interviewees, neither white nor nonwhite adoptees are able to just belong in today’s Finland. Instead, they have to monitor their surroundings and the reactions of others. In other words, their belonging to both their family and their nation is constantly questioned. Te two groups of transnational adoptees have diferent strategies but the same aim: they both simply want to avoid being treated as foreigners and strangers in their own home country of Finland. NOTES 1. Étienne Balibar, “Racism and Nationalism,” in Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, ed. Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein (London: Verso, 1991), 52. 2. Riitta Högbacka, Global Families, Inequality and Transnational Adoption: Te DeKinning of First Mothers (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Heidi Ruohio, Suomalaiset kansainvälisesti adoptoidut: Perheeseen ja kansaan kuuluminen [Finnish transnational adoptees: Belonging to family and nation] (Helsinki: Nuorisotutkimusseura/ Nuorisotutkimusverkosto, 2016).

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

192 | Adoption and Multiculturalism 3. Pertti Kavén, Humanitaarisuuden varjossa: Poliittiset tekijät lastensiirroissa Ruotsiin sotiemme aikana ja niiden jälkeen [In the shadows of humanitarianism: Te politics of child transfers to Sweden during the Finnish Winter War and Continuation War against the Soviet Union] (Helsinki: Helsinki University, 2010), 241. 4. Heikki Parviainen, “Adoption muuttuva luonne Suomessa” [Te changing nature of adoption in Finland], in Kansainvälinen adoptio Suomessa: Tutkimusnäkökulmia adoptioon [Transnational adoption in Finland: Research perspectives on adoption], ed. Maarit Koskinen, Sari-Maaria Sarkkinen, and Marjaana Svala (Jyväskylä: PS-Kustannus, 2014), 22. 5. Valvira [National Supervisory Authority for Welfare and Health], Finnish Adoption Board Annual Report 2018, accessed 8 December 2019, www.valvira.f/web/en/ search-result?q=adoption 6. Anneli Ahonen, “Adoptio: Venäjän adoptiokielto Yhdysvaltoihin osui etenkin vammaisiin lapsiin” [Adoption: Russia’s ban on adoptions to the USA hits disabled children worst], Helsingin Sanomat, November 12, 2015, A25. 7. Peter Selman, personal correspondence, January 2016. 8. Valvira [National Supervisory Authority for Welfare and Health], Finnish Adoption Board Annual Report 2018, accessed 8 December 2019, www.valvira.f/web/en/ search-result?q=adoption 9. Tilastokeskus. Väestö [Population]. Helsinki: Statistics of Finland, 2019. 10. Tuomas Martikainen, Matti Saari, and Jouni Korkiasaari, “Kansainväliset muuttoliikkeet ja Suomi” [Transnational migration movements and Finland], in Muuttajat: Kansainvälinen muuttoliike ja suomalainen yhteiskunta [Migrants: Transnational migration and Finnish society], ed. Tuomas Martikainen, Pasi Saukkonen, and Minna Säävälä (Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2013). 11. Martikainen, Saari, and Korkiasaari. 12. Ministry of Employment. Työryhmän ehdotus hallituksen maahanmuuttopoliittiseksi ohjelmaksi [Workgroup’s proposal for the government’s immigration policy program]. Helsinki: Ministry of Employment, 2005. 13. Maahanmuuttovirasto [Finnish Immigration Service], “Vuonna 2015 myönnettiin hieman yli 20 000 oleskelulupaa, uusia Suomen kansalaisia reilut 8 000” [In 2015, some 20,000 were granted a residence permit, and about 8,000 obtained Finnish citizenship], press release, Helsinki, 2016. 14. Pasi Saukkonen, Erilaisuuksien Suomi: Vähemmistö- ja kotouttamispolitiikan vaihtoehdot [Finland and diference: Alternatives to minority and integration policies]. Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2013. 15. Fredrik Barth, Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: Te Social Organization of Culture Diference (Oslo: Universitetsforslaget, 1969); Tuomas Martikainen, Teppo Sintonen, and Pirkko Pitkänen, “Ylirajainen liikkuvuus ja etniset vähemmistöt” [Transnational mobility and ethnic minorities], in Ylirajainen kulttuuri: Etnisyys Suomessa 2000-luvulla [Transnational culture: Ethnicity in Finland in the 2000s], ed. Tuomas Martikainen (Helsinki: Suomalaisen kirjallisuuden seura, 2006), 9–41. 16. Fons van der Vijver, “Te Role of Ethnic Hierarchies in Acculturation and Intergroup Relations,” in Identities, Intergroup Relations and Acculturation: Te Cornerstones of Intercultural Encounters, ed. Inga Jajinskaja-Lahti and Tuuli Anna Mähönen (Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2009), 165. 17. Sara K. Dorow, “Racialized Choices: Chinese Adoption and the ‘White Noise’ of

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Black and White Strangers | 193 Blackness,” Critical Sociology 32, no. 2–3 (2006): 357–79; Barbara Yngvesson, “‘Un Niño de Cualquier Color’: Race and Nation in Inter-country Adoption,” in Globalizing Institutions: Case Studies in Regulation and Innovation, ed. Jane Jenson and Boaventura de Sousa Santos (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000). 18. Magdalena Jaakkola, Suomalaisten suhtautuminen maahanmuuttajiin 1987–2003 [Finnish people’s attitudes toward migrants], Työpoliittinen tutkimus 286 (Helsinki: Työministeriö, 2005), 72. 19. Heli Sjöblom-Immala, Tervetuloa Suomeen? Korkeakouluopiskelijoiden asenteita mittaava Etnobarometri 2013 [Welcome to Finland? Ethnobarometer 2013 measuring college students’ attitudes],” Migration Institute Studies 44 (Turku: Institute of Migration, 2013). 20. Cameron D. Lippard, “Racist Nativism in the 21st Century,” Sociology Compass 5, no. 7 (2011): 592–606; April M. Schueths, “‘It’s Almost Like White Supremacy’: Interracial Mixed-Status Couples Facing Racist Nativism,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37, no. 13 (2014): 2438–56. 21. Lippard, “Racist Nativism.” 22. Lippard. 23. Lippard; Schueths, “Almost Like White Supremacy.” 24. Étienne Balibar, “Is Tere a ‘Neo-Racism?,’” in Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, ed. Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein (London: Verso, 1991), 20. 25. Sara Ahmed, “Who Knows? Knowing Strangers and Strangerness,” Australian Feminist Studies 15, no. 31 (2000): 49. 26. See Sara Ahmed, Strange Encounters (London: Routledge, 2000). 27. Outi Lepola, Ulkomaalaisesta suomenmaalaiseksi [From Foreigner to Finnish] (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2000), 366–67; Anna Rastas, “Katseilla merkityt, silminnähden erilaiset: Lasten ja nuorten kokemuksia rodullistavista katseista” [Marked by looks, visibly diferent: Children’s and young people’s experiences of racializing gazes], Nuorisotutkimus 20, no. 33 (2002): 3. 28. Lepola, Ulkomaalaisesta suomenmaalaiseksi, 371; Maarit Koskinen, “Racialization, Othering, and Coping among Adult International Adoptees in Finland,” Adoption Quarterly 18, no. 3 (2015); Rastas “Katseilla merkityt,” 13. 29. Minna Säävälä, “How Do Locals in Finland Identify Resident Foreigners?,” Finnish Yearbook of Population Research 43 (2008): 115–30. 30. Renato Rosaldo, Culture and Truth: Te Remaking of Social Analysis (Boston: Beacon, 1998), 198–99. 31. Rosaldo, 198–204. 32. Pamela Perry, “White Means Never Having to Say You’re Ethnic: White Youth and the Construction of “Cultureless” Identities,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 30, no. 11 (2001): 56–58. 33. Rosaldo, Culture and Truth, 198. 34. Heather Jacobson, Culture Keeping: White Mothers and the Negotiation of Family Diference (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008); Linda Seligmann, Broken Links, Enduring Ties: American Adoption across Race, Class, and Nation (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2013). 35. Outi Karemaa, Vihollisia, vainoojia, syöpäläisiä: Venäläisviha Suomessa 1918– 1924 [Enemies, persecutors, parasites: Russophobia in Finland, 1918–1924] (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1998), 16.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

194 | Adoption and Multiculturalism 36. Vilho Harle and Sami Moisio, Missä on Suomi? Kansallisen identiteettipolitiikan historia ja geopolitiikka [Where is Finland? Te history and geopolitics of national identity politics] (Tampere: Vastapaino, 2000), 55–95; Pentti Raittila, Venäläiset ja virolaiset suomalaisten Toisina: Tapaustutkimuksia ja analyysimenetelmien kehittelyjä [Russians and Estonians as Finns’ Others. Case studies and developing methods for analysis] (Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2004), 35–37. 37. Vesa Puuronen, Rasistinen Suomi [Racist Finland] (Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2011), 74–78. 38. See Helena Jerman, “Venäläiset tulivat: Tutkija kohtaa median kuvan maahanmuuttajista” [Te Russians arrived: Researcher facing media representations of immigrants], in En ole rasisti, mutta . . . : Maahanmuutosta, monikulttuurisuudesta ja kritiikistä [I am not a racist, but . . . : Immigration, multiculturalism, and critique], ed. Suvi Keskinen, Anna Rastas, and Sari Tuori (Tampere: Vastapaino and Nuorisotutkimusverkosto, 2009), 97–105. 39. Balibar, “Is Tere a ‘Neo-Racism?’” 40. McGinnis cited in Riitta Högbacka, “Intercountry Adoption, Countries of Origin, and Biological Families” (ISS Working Paper Series / General Series 598, International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, December 31, 2014), 7, http://hdl.handle.net/1765/77406 41. Peter Selman, personal correspondence, January 2016. 42. Högbacka, Global Families; Elizabeth Raleigh and Barbara Katz Rothman, “Disability Is the New Black: Te Rise of the ‘Clef Lip and Palate Program’ in Transracial International Adoption,” in Race in Transnational and Transracial Adoption, ed. Vilna Bashi Treitler (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 43. See also Goldberg, “Adopting Older Russian Children: An Overview” (paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, Montréal, August 2006); Högbacka, Global Families. 44. See also Signe Howell and Diana Marre, “To Kin a Transnationally Adopted Child in Norway and Spain: Te Achievement of Resemblances and Belonging,” Ethnos 71, no. 3 (2006): 293–316. 45. Boltanski (1999) cited in Karina Horsti, “Kyllä Suomeen yksi nainen mahtuu! Turvapaikanhakijat uhreina ja uhkana suomalaisessa julkisuudessa” [Refugees as victims and as threats in Finnish public life], in Keskinen, Rastas, and Tuori, En ole rasisti, mutta, 80. 46. See also Howell and Marre, “To Kin a Transnationally Adopted Child.” 47. Högbacka, Global Families. 48. See also Julia Feast, Margaret Grant, Alan Rushton, and John Simmonds, with Carolyn Sampeys, Adversity, Adoption and Aferwards: A Mid-life Follow-up Study of Women Adopted from Hong Kong (London: Adoption and Fostering, 2013), 153–56; Hübinette and Tigervall, “To Be Non-white”; Koskinen, “Racialization, Othering, and Coping”; Rastas, “Katseilla merkityt.” 49. Ruohio, Suomalaiset kansainvälisesti adoptoidut. 50. Ann Anagnost, “Scenes of Misrecognition: Maternal Citizenship in the Age of Transnational Adoption,” Positions 8, no. 2 (2000): 402. 51. Laura Huttunen, “Mikä ihmeen maahanmuuttaja?” [What is an immigrant?], in En ole rasisti, mutta . . . : Maahanmuutosta, monikulttuurisuudesta ja kritiikistä, ed. Suvi Keskinen, Anna Rastas, and Salla Tuori (Tampere: Vastapaino and Nuorisotutkimusverkosto, 2009). Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Black and White Strangers | 195 52. Ruohio, Suomalaiset kansainvälisesti adoptoidut. 53. Jaakkola, Suomalaisten suhtautuminen maahanmuuttajiin, 17–18; SjöblomImmala, Tervetuloa Suomeen?, 70–71. 54. Jacobson, Culture Keeping; Ruohio, Suomalaiset kansainvälisesti adoptoidut; Seligmann, Broken Links. 55. Ahmed, Strange Encounters, 126. 56. Raaska et al., “Experiences of School Bullying”; Ruohio, Suomalaiset kansainvälisesti adoptoidut; Anne-Mari Souto, Arkipäivän rasismi koulussa: Etnografnen tutkimus suomalais- ja maahanmuuttajanuorten ryhmäsuhteista [Everyday racism in school: Ethnographic research on Finnish and immigrant youths’ group relations] (Helsinki: Nuorisotutkimusverkosto, 2011). 57. Högbacka, Global Families. 58. Koskinen, “Racialization, Othering, and Coping.” 59. Jaakkola, Suomalaisten suhtautuminen maahanmuuttajiin, 17–18; SjöblomImmala, Tervetuloa Suomeen?, 70–71. 60. Johanna Leinonen and Mari Toivanen, “Researching In/visibility in the Nordic Context: Teoretical and Empirical Views,” Nordic Journal of Migration Research 4, no. 44 (2014): 161–67. REFERENCES Ahmed, Sara. Strange Encounters. London: Routledge, 2000. Ahmed, Sara. “Who Knows? Knowing Strangers and Strangerness.” Australian Feminist Studies 5, no. 3 (2000): 49–68. Ahonen, Anneli. “Adoptio: Venäjän adoptiokielto Yhdysvaltoihin osui etenkin vammaisiin lapsiin” [Adoption: Russia’s ban on adoptions to the USA hits disabled children worst]. Helsingin Sanomat, November 2, 20 5, A25. Anagnost, Ann. “Scenes of Misrecognition: Maternal Citizenship in the Age of Transnational Adoption.” Positions 8, no. 2 (2000): 389–42 . Balibar, Étienne. “Is Tere a ‘Neo-Racism’?” In Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, edited by Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, 7–28. London: Verso, 99 . Balibar, Étienne. “Racism and Nationalism.” In Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, edited by Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, 37–69. London: Verso, 99 . Barth, Fredrik. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: Te Social Organization of Culture Diference. Olso: Universitetsforslaget, 969. Dorow, Sara. “China R Us? Care, Consumption, and Transnationally Adopted Children.” In Symbolic Childhood, edited by D. T. Cook, 49–68. New York: Peter Lang, 2002. Dorow, Sara. “Racialized Choices: Chinese Adoption and the ‘White Noise’ of Blackness.” Critical Sociology 32, no. 2–3 (2006): 357–79. Feast, Julia, Margaret Grant, Alan Ruston, and John Simmonds, with Carolyn Sampeys. Adversity, Adoption and Aferwards: A Mid-life Follow-up Study of Women Adopted from Hong Kong. London: Adoption and Fostering, 20 3. Gailey, Christine Ward. Blue-Ribbon Babies and Labours of Love: Race, Class, and Gender in U.S. Adoption Practice. Austin: University of Texas Press, 20 0. Goldberg, Roberta. “Adopting Older Russian Children: An Overview.” Paper presented Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

198 | Adoption and Multiculturalism Raittila, Pentti. Venäläiset ja virolaiset suomalaisten Toisina: Tapaustutkimuksia ja analyysimenetelmien kehittelyjä [Russians and Estonians as Finns’ Others: Case studies and developing methods for analysis]. Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2004. Raleigh, Elizabeth, and Barbara Katz Rothman. “Disability Is the New Black: Te Rise of the ‘Clef Lip and Palate Program’ in Transracial International Adoption.” In Race in Transnational and Transracial Adoption, edited by Vilna Bashi Treitler, 33–48. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 20 4. Rastas, Anna. “Katseilla merkityt, silminnähden erilaiset: Lasten ja nuorten kokemuksia rodullistavista katseista” [Marked by looks, visibly diferent: Children’s and young people’s experiences of racializing gazes]. Nuorisotutkimus 20, no. 3 (2002): 3– 7. Rastas, Anna. Rasismi lasten ja nuoren arjessa [Racism in the everyday life of children and young people]. Tampere: Tampere University Press and Nuorisotutkimusverkosto, 2007. Rosaldo, Renato. Culture and Truth: Te Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon, 998. Ruohio, Heidi. Suomalaiset kansainvälisesti adoptoidut: Perheeseen ja kansaan kuuluminen [Finnish transnational adoptees: Belonging to family and nation]. Helsinki: Nuorisotutkimusseura/Nuorisotutkimusverkosto, 20 6. Saukkonen, Pasi. Erilaisuuksien Suomi: Vähemmistö- ja kotouttamispolitiikan vaihtoehdot [Finland and diference: Alternatives to minority and integration policies]. Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 20 3. Schueths, April M. “‘It’s Almost Like White Supremacy’: Interracial Mixed-Status Couples Facing Racist Nativism.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 37, no. 3 (20 4): 2438–56. Seligmann, Linda. Broken Links, Enduring Ties: American Adoption across Race, Class, and Nation. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 20 3. Säävälä, Minna. “How Do Locals in Finland Identify Resident Foreigners?” Finnish Yearbook of Population Research 43 (2008): 5–30. Sjöblom-Immala, Heli. Tervetuloa Suomeen? Korkeakouluopiskelijoiden asenteita mittaava Etnobarometri 2013 [Welcome to Finland? Ethnobarometer 20 3 measuring college students’ attitudes]. Migration Institute Studies 44. Turku: Institute of Migration, 20 3. Souto, Anne-Mari. Arkipäivän rasismi koulussa: Etnografnen tutkimus suomalais- ja maahanmuuttajanuorten ryhmäsuhteista [Everyday racism in school: Ethnographic research on Finnish and immigrant youths’ group relations]. Helsinki: Nuorisotutkimusverkosto, 20 . Tilastokeskus. Väestö [Population]. Helsinki: Statistics of Finland, 20 9. Valvira [National Supervisory Authority for Welfare and Health], Finnish Adoption Board Annual Report 20 8, accessed 8 December 20 9, www.valvira.f/web/en/ search-result?q=adoption. https://www.valvira.f/sosiaalihuolto/adoptio/tilastot van der Vijver, Fons. “Te Role of Ethnic Hierarchies in Acculturation and Intergroup Relations.” In Identities, Intergroup Relations and Acculturation: Te Cornerstones of Intercultural Encounters, edited by Inga Jajinskaja-Lahti and Tuuli Anna Mähönen, 65–78. Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2009. Yngvesson, Barbara. “‘Un Nino de Cualquier Color’: Race and Nation in Inter-country Adoption.” In Globalizing Institutions: Case Studies in Regulation and Innovation, edited by Jane Jenson and Boaventura de Sousa Santos, 69–204. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Black Identity-Making in Flanders Discourses and Cultural Practices among Transracial Adoptive Families and Black Native Speakers of Flemish Katrien De Graeve and Sibo Kanobana

Flanders, the predominantly Flemish-speaking northern part of Belgium, has experienced an increasing popularity of Flemish autochthony or native discourses, evidenced by the electoral success of political parties that favor Flemish independence and draw on an imagery of an imagined authentic Flemish culture, in which whiteness and Flemish language are fundamental identity markers.1 However, neoliberal and multicultural narratives of color-blind meritocracy and equal opportunities also prevail, identifying cultural diference as the major obstacle to immigrant integration, while denying and invisibilizing white privileges. Tis “racism without races”2 draws on a discourse of cultural incompatibility between “real” Flemish culture and “Muslim culture” in particular and uses non-European immigration as a substitute for the notion of race within a discourse that justifes xenophobia as human beings’ “natural” fear of diferences.3 While racism is ofcially and socially condemned, it is simultaneously explained as an understandable reaction to immigration and perceived incommensurable cultural diferences. Racism based on bodily aspects is thought to have become almost extinct, living on only in the minds of a relatively small group of neofascist extreme-right sympathizers. Te experiences of predominantly white Flemish parents of Afrodescent adoptive children and the experiences of young people (including adoptees) who self-identify as Afro-descent native speakers of Flemish supply an interesting lens for examining this ethics of color blindness and the widespread ofcial denial of the social and political relevance of race 199 Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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in Belgium today. Te prevalent discourse would suggest that Afrodescendants’ fuency in Flemish language and culture exempts them from racialization and racial discrimination. Tis essay aims to explore how the testimonies of our study participants disrupt the prevalent narratives of self and otherness. Te racialization that these black Belgians experience cannot be explained by references to culture, language, religion, or ethnicity. However, those are ofen the sole aspects brought up to argue for the existence of racism in a multicultural and color-blind Flemish society that lacks words to speak about race. Our aim in juxtaposing the discourses and the parenting work of the predominantly white adoptive parents of black children with the discourses and cultural practices of black Flemish native speakers is to lay bare some of the ambiguities and complexities that challenge black identity-making and belonging. We begin this essay by presenting our methodology and clarifying our positioning. Next, we briefy describe color blindness, as the construct generally used to deal with race in the specifc local context of our studies. Tree sections then present our empirical fndings, with the frst considering participants’ experiences of race and racialization and their opinions on the use of racial terms, while the second and third focus on participants’ practices of identity-making. We close the essay with some concluding remarks. Methodology

Tis essay draws on two sources of data collected in Flanders, Belgium. Te frst set of data is drawn from a study carried out between 2008 and 20 2 by De Graeve, examining dominant discourses surrounding FlemishEthiopian transnational adoption. Tat study included about sixty indepth interviews with adoptive parents and professionals, complemented with participant observations during adoptive parents’ gatherings and with analyses of media texts and policy documents. Te adoptive parents who participated in the interviews were mostly middle-class, highly educated, and white. Te motives for adopting a child varied, from infertility or illness to “helping an orphaned child.” Teir number of children ranged from one to six, and several families had children by both birth and adoption. Although all families had adopted at least one child from Ethiopia, a few families had also adopted children from other countries, such as Viet-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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nam and China. Te children’s ages varied from a few months to twentyfve years, although the majority of the families had smaller children. Te second set of data consists of eleven interviews conducted between 20 and 20 5 with Flemish young adults between ages twenty and thirtyfve who self-identify as Afro-descendants. Tese interviews are part of an ongoing study on black identity-making in Flanders, carried out by Kanobana. Te interviewees were diverse in terms of gender (seven men and four women) and migratory background (two have migrated from Africa, the Caribbean, or Brazil, and nine were born to at least one parent who migrated from Africa, the Caribbean, or Brazil). Four of the eleven informants were adopted—two transnationally and two domestically. All participants belonged to middle or high socioeconomic status, were highly educated, and had successful careers (nine) or were students within the higher education sector (two). Despite the participants’ varying family and migration backgrounds, they all share the experience of mastering the Flemish dominant language and Flemish cultural practices while their phenotypical features ofen mark them as outsiders. By analyzing the experiences of black adoptees together with the experiences of black and biracial people with other migration backgrounds, we aim to contribute to a counternarrative that challenges the dominant discourse of adoption as a reproductive technology rather than as a practice of forced migration. Te similarities and diferences in experiences of both groups make it possible to challenge narratives that tend to explain adoptees’ identity struggles solely in terms of purported psychological defciencies and failure to attach to their adoptive families.4 Ethnographic feldwork with in-depth interviews allowed us to probe the participants’ experiences and perceptions and to gain insight into the ambiguous and complex ways in which they understand racialized identity-making and belonging. Both studies are underpinned by defnitions of identity as narratives of people about themselves and others, verbal or constructed through specifc practices, rather than as descriptive of the person or as a property in itself.5 Focusing on identity as narratives of location and positionality, we aim to respond to the call by Anthias to problematize “the epistemological and ontological status of identity and critique the forms of politics based upon these more efectively, while still treating identity as a socially meaningful concept” (italics in original).6 We are furthermore guided by intersectional theories of identity and discrimination, which look at subjectivity as constituted by mutually reinforcing vectors of race, gender, class, and sexuality.7 While we recognize the mul-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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tidimensionality of marginalized subjects’ lived experiences and the complexity of identity, we here aim to focus specifcally on the category of race and what that category means for our participants, in light of the virtual disappearance of race as a category in the European context and its replacement there by references to religion, ethnicity, language, or culture.8 While recognizing the instability of the insider-outsider duality and people’s many strands of identifcation,9 both our studies can be considered to be autoanthropological. De Graeve considers herself a white Flemish-speaking Belgian and is an adoptive mother of a child born in Ethiopia. Kanobana was born in the Congo as the son of a RwandeseCongolese father and a Belgian mother, migrated to Belgium as a toddler, and self-identifes as a black native speaker of Flemish. We have both investigated a social context of which we are part and about which we have extensive practical knowledge. As an important part of our embodied social positioning, our personal experiences not only afected our views and understandings but also played an important role in shaping our feldwork, by bringing about a dynamic of experience exchange during interviews. As Mascarenhas-Keyes argues, anthropology at home also requires a “professional induced schizophrenia between the ‘native self ’ and ‘professional self,”10 with processes of unlearning and producing what Worsham describes as “a sense of defamiliarization vis-à-vis unquestioned forms of knowledge.”11 Color Blindness in Flanders

Ellen: I don’t think that family is on vacation here. I think they live here. Sven: What family? Ellen: You know, that (hesitates) . . . brown family [die bruine familie]. Sven: Come on! What are you saying now? Tat brown family?” (everyone laughs) Ellen: But, how do I have to say it then? I think black [zwart] sounds so harsh. Sven: You could say “African family.” Ellen: But what’s wrong with brown? I use that word with Sisay [her adopted son] as well. Sisay uses it as well. Sven: Or you could have said “the family with the bucket.”

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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De Graeve overheard the preceding conversation while on vacation with a befriended couple who are adoptive parents of an Ethiopian-born son. It took place afer a black man had passed by together with a boy who carried a bucket. Ellen’s hesitation revealed her difculties in talking about racial diference, because of the negative connotations that surround race due to a long history of oppression of black people. Te conversation not only illustrates a general discomfort with “colouring talk”12 but shows an unease with blackness as such, as well as the impossibility of fnding any term that would be considered merely descriptive, without having any negative undertones, when talking about a phenotype that reveals one’s sub-Saharan African ancestry. Te suggestion to abandon any racial reference and refer to “the family with the bucket” leads us to a color-blind approach, as if we do not see race. In this section, we discuss some of the social, political, and historical factors that have paved the way for the color blind multiculturalism and hegemonic whiteness structuring contemporary Flemish society. We briefy sketch how Belgian colonial and migration policies shaped dominant conceptualizations of Flemishness as a set of explicitly articulated characteristics (e.g., being fuent in Flemish language) and assumptions that remain unspoken (e.g., whiteness). Our studies are situated in Flanders, both the Flemish region and the Flemish community, governed by a relatively autonomous regional and community government within the Belgian federal state. Te ofcial language for education, administration, and the legal system is Dutch (also called Flemish when referring to the various spoken variants of Dutch in Flanders). Apart from the Flemish language, “real” Flemishness remains heavily associated with physical whiteness and a Christian-secular culture, despite a signifcant cultural, linguistic, ethnic, and religious diversifcation of the Flemish population since the 960s. Over the last three decades in particular, Belgium has become a country of settlement for many diferent types of migrants.13 Te ofcial zero-immigration doctrine espoused since 974 never produced a complete closure of the borders but generated a shif from labor migration to family, asylum, and humanitarian migration.14 Te immigration of children through transnational adoption is the most privileged form of (family) migration, even proactively supported by the government as a middle-class reproduction option. Since the 960s, children have been adopted from a variety of diferent countries, yet the most important “suppliers” of adopted children to Flanders from 992 to 20 5 were Ethiopia (9 6), India (639), and China (473).15

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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White people in Flanders generally do not fully acknowledge their own historically shaped and structural advantage over people of color and often think of themselves as having no particular race, ethnicity, or culture at all (the Dutch word blank, commonly used to refer to white people’s skin color, has different meanings, including “colorless,” “transparent,” and “pure”). Moreover, from their privileged positions, they are often unaware of how the colonial past is still present and of how “racist notions and actions infiltrate everyday life.”16 Stereotypical and often degrading representations of black people, for example, still circulate in the Flemish public sphere, as well as imageries of white people’s responsibility to help and uplift black people, which stem from a long history of (neo)colonial and paternalist relations between Belgium and its former colonies in Central Africa.17 Belgium’s policy toward its former colonial subjects was somehow different than that of other European imperial powers. First, Belgian colonial subjects had no access to Belgian citizenship at all. Second, few Central Africans were even allowed to visit Belgium.18 The presence of black people in Flanders was therefore a rare occurrence before the independence of the Belgian Congo in 960. Moreover, migration from sub-Saharan Africa only became significant in the 990s19 and is currently part of a “superdiverse” entry of refugees, asylum seekers, and other migrants from mainly the non-Western world.20 Even with a much larger number of black people in Flemish society today—the Congolese diaspora currently constitutes the third largest group of Belgians of non-European descent21—black Belgians still have a limited voice in the public arena. Tis situation may explain why a critical debate on colonial history and on the postcolonial legacy still seems to be lacking in Flanders and in Belgium in general.22 Furthermore, colonial stereotypes are still reproduced, and several studies demonstrate a racial exclusion pattern—for instance, within the sphere of housing,23 in working life24 and in the education sector.25 Nevertheless, as in many other European countries since World War II, race is no longer considered a relevant category of social stratification in Flanders, and “real racism” is considered to exist only in the mind-set of a few, extreme right-wing people. A dominant ideology of color blind multiculturalism26 claims that everyone has equal opportunities irrespective of skin color or ethnic background. Yet this logic usually explains/justifies discrimination against immigrants, through references to minorities’ cultural differences but not to any differences in physiognomy.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Experiences of Racialization

In this section, we present and discuss how participants in our studies talked about racialization in the cultural context of color blindness described in the previous section. Almost all participants testifed to having witnessed or been the subject of racialization. But they tended to employ diferent strategies of framing these experiences and of relating to the prevailing interpretative schemes. Many participants in De Graeve’s study recounted stories of experiences of racialization. Several adoptive parents with babies or toddlers talked about recurring situations in which their children were admired by groups of people exclaiming that black babies are cute. Daan, the father of Axel, a boy from Ethiopia, recalled a colleague’s remark referring to the image of black men being prone to encounters with police. I had told a colleague that I wanted to take Axel to an athletic club. . . . I believe he will be good at it. . . . And that colleague said, “Tat’s a good idea, so he can practice running away from the police.” Several parents reported that their child had expressed a repeated wish to be white, thereby suggesting that processes of exoticization and objectifcation deny a black person agency and self-determination.27 Together with the overpowering normativity of whiteness in society,28 this objectifcation even drives some adoptive children to dislike their own nonwhite bodies.29 All participants in Kanobana’s study recounted instances of being racialized, intentionally or unintentionally, not only by strangers but also by white friends, partners, or family members. While most participants had at least one black parent, they all grew up in a predominantly white environment and had many white friends and/or a white partner. Many of the experiences they described concerned instances of being racialized by close friends or family members whose interactions with black people start from the dominant white racial frame and are therefore ofen unconsciously racializing. For instance, Noah described a situation in which a friend was seemingly unaware of the painful efects of her comments and the implicit meaning of what she said (i.e., that dark skin color is something that needs to be coped with and overcome). A good friend of mine said one day—and she thought she said something nice to me—she said, “Noah, actually, I see you as a white person.” And I said, “How do you mean? Do you think it’s wrong to see me as a black person? Why do you say this so explicitly?”

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Other people’s usages of racial terms were ofen mentioned by the participants in Kanobana’s study as examples of situations in which they felt racialized. Although participants seemed to agree that none of the Flemish racial terms were void of racist connotations, they had diferent opinions on which terms they found acceptable and which they found ofensive. Many indicated that they did not feel comfortable with the term zwart, and they expressed a tension they did not observe in the English equivalent black or the French term noir. In many Flemish dialects, zwart not only refers to the color black but is also a synonym for dirty. Tina said, for instance, I didn’t like it when people called me zwart as a child.  .  .  . I am brown. Just look. My skin is rather brown (laughs). Brown was ofen considered to be a more neutral term than black, as brown seems more accurate for describing the skin color of black people and avoids the myriad of negative connotations attached to the word zwart. At the same time, because of existing chromatist discourses that diferentiate black people according to skin tone and press people with dark skin to the lowest level of the racial hierarchy,30 using the term brown tends to sofen the diference in skin color between white and black people (as well as between white adoptive parents and their black adopted child). Although reported as common, occurrences of racialization were not always considered of great importance by the participants. Many of the adoptive parents, in particular, tended to adopt a relativizing stance and/ or tried to ft incidents of racialization within their own frames of experience. For instance, Maaike, the adoptive mother of two young boys, believed that the use of racial slurs on the school playground was not fundamentally diferent from “normal” teasing caused by other reasons. Kids can be tough with each other. Tey search for each others’ weaknesses. And then they say “four eyes” [brillenman], “redhead” [rossekop], “freckle-faced” [sproetenkop], or “chocolate mousse” [chocomousse]. Tey always fnd something.” While bullying can have detrimental efects anyway, by ignoring the racializing dimensions of slurs, adoptive parents may fail to provide their children with the necessary tools to defend themselves when faced with racializing experiences, particularly as adults.31 Studies on white parents in mixed-race families and on transracial adoptive families have also

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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shown that white parents are faced with a greater challenge in teaching their nonwhite children how to resist and cope with racial stereotypes.32 As whiteness is the societal norm, the unmarked racial identity of the white parents is constantly reinforced, and they therefore tend to embody “the very racial privileges that they are unable to transfer to their African descent children.”33 Furthermore, white parents ofen do not fully acknowledge potentially devastating racial stereotypes and are ofen likely to downplay the severity of racializing incidents that occur. Some of the people in Kanobana’s study also tended to downplay racialization or to adopt a rather pragmatic stance. While they indicated that they do not like being racialized, their knowledge of and being embedded in white culture prompts them to judge situations by the underlying intentions of their interlocutors. For most participants, feeling hurt by racialization seemed to be largely dependent on the context and the underlying intention of the speaker. Despite her dislike of the term zwart, for instance, Tina had no objections to her grandmother using it. My grandmother used to call me “my blacky” [mijn zwartje], but she meant it as a nice thing. I was the apple of her eye. Even the term neger, which, despite growing criticism, is still used quite ofen in Flanders to refer to people who have phenotypical features revealing a sub-Saharan African ancestry, was experienced by some of the participants as being acceptable when they believed that the user was not aware of its ofensive nature. Moreover, despite their extensive network of white friends and family members, the participants in Kanobana’s study indicated that racialization was an experience they found difcult to talk about with white people. Many of the participants believed that white people are unable to understand what it means to be black, as the experience of being racialized is beyond their own experience. Bart stated that even when white people may be treated diferently when they travel to Africa, for example, this diferent treatment—even when rude, hostile, or unfriendly—is never dictated by the idea of racial inferiority that undergirds racism against black people. A white person, seriously, will never experience this. Tis is something I’m really convinced of. A white person will hardly experience such a thing. Yes, in Africa. . . . But still, they [people in Africa] elevate white people, so they will never make a white person feel inferior.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Participants said that they usually choose not to react to racist comments and even keep their thoughts to themselves. Tey indicated that white folks not only have difculties understanding what it means to be racialized but also even tend to take on a defensive stance when being alerted to the efects of what they said or did. Te participants recounted experiences of being criticized as oversensitive, lacking a sense of humor, or suffering from an inferiority complex when they made white people attentive to the racializing implications of their words. By reacting in that way, white people unintentionally turn a societal problem into a psychological and individual problem or a character problem of the black person, a problem that is the latter’s responsibility to solve. Some of the participants indicated that because of the prevalence of these mechanisms, they ofen prefer to ignore racializing comments. Many of the participants had ambivalent feelings toward racialization. For instance, Bart, who is adopted from Haiti, frst clearly explained that racism is not a big issue for him and that he actually enjoys looking diferent. Ten, further on in his interview, he suddenly stated, Tese jokes about slaves, about blacks—I can’t stand that. Even people I know very well, people I like, of whom I know they just say it to fool around—even then, there is something about me. I can’t help it. It’s stupid, but I can’t stand it. Experiences of racialization were generally described as having negative consequences for the participants’ sense of belonging in Flanders. Participants reported a variety of emotions that accompany their experiences of racial discrimination. While some said that these experiences made them feel stronger, others testifed that the cumulative nature of everyday racism sometimes causes anger.34 As Bart phrased it, Tese are just minor things, but when these experiences pile up, it can induce a certain aggressiveness. Olga explained how, for her, racism is not just what white people do to black people, as it is a deeply ingrained system of oppression, upheld by white and black people simultaneously. Te greatest success of colonization and slavery is the colonization of the African mind. . . . Te fact that people interiorized it [the inferiority] and pass it on to their children.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Although Olga defnitely did not consider herself someone whose mind has been colonized, she believed that many black people have interiorized racial stereotypes, which might make them act racist toward other blacks. Tina, an adoptee, reported having been treated in a racist way by other black people, a kind of racism that she felt was even more hurtful than the racism she experienced from white Belgians. She recounted that other nonadopted blacks ofen call her “not black enough” (because she grew up in a white family) and therefore question her authenticity. Tat she experienced this rejection as more painful implies that while she rejects race as a valid category and stresses that she is just as Flemish as any other person, belonging to a black racial group identity still matters more to her than she would like to admit. Flemish Identity-Making

In this section, we examine and discuss Afro-descendants’ strategies of self-making, particularly as related to Flemish identity. We investigate whether the participants in Kanobana’s study (want to) identify with Flemish identity and how such identifcation is constrained and/or enabled. We argue that the dominant imagery of what it means to be Flemish and the context in which Flemish nationalism has been appropriated by right-wing populist parties hamper participants’ ability to identify as Flemish and/or lead them to plead for more inclusive conceptualizations of Flemishness. When participants in Kanobana’s study were asked whether they consider themselves Flemings, many rejected that identity marker. Bart, who is adopted, was quick to say, “Flemish? Me? No! Flemish people are white people.” He thus reproduced/criticized the discourse of an authentic Flemish culture in which whiteness is a fundamental identity marker. Participants’ assessment of Flemish culture resulted from their lived experiences of being marked as outsiders. For instance, many participants referred to recurring experiences of being addressed in French or English. Te participants showed a great deal of understanding concerning this misconception, as many black people in Flanders are Francophone or English speakers. As the Belgian colonial venture in Central Africa (including today’s Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi) was principally a Francophone afair, Belgian colonialism has not produced a signifcant number of Flemish-speaking black people, and that situation contributes to the automatic assumption that most blacks are Francophone.35 Study partici-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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pants were unlikely to blame people for misaddressing them and even ofen tended to see it as an act of friendliness and politeness. However, participants’ understanding of the situation does not mean that the recurrence of such “innocent” experiences—which include ofen having to explain why they are in Flanders, where they come from, and when they will “go back”—may not afect their feelings of belonging in Flanders, as they can have an eroding efect on their sense of identity.36 Especially when participants suspected bad intentions (e.g., when the same person repeatedly chose not to address them in Flemish), they felt that they were turned into objects, denied individuality, and reduced to an identity of nonwhite foreigner. While participants showed understanding for being seen as foreigners because of their black appearance, that experience contradicts the dominant discourse of color blindness. Several of the participants described that kind of experience as reinforcing their sense of not belonging. Such experiences might explain why they intuitively do not consider “Flemish” as a label that they can carry. Although they are native speakers of Flemish, holders of Belgian citizenship, and have lived most of or all their lives in Flanders, they tend to be “constantly racialized in everyday life as their nonwhite bodies are localised to a certain geographical origin, connected to a certain ethnicity, nationality, language, religion and race, and sometimes also linked to certain cultural and mental characteristics.”37 Noah explained, Black means that I am diferent. Tat reveals a lot: that I might have another origin, that I might have other habits, that I might not speak Dutch, that I might not live here. . . . People in Belgium focus on this. Tat’s a fact. I was once an intern in a hospital. Te frst day I got there, I knew they looked at me and thought, “So, is that the intern?” . . . Few people expect a black person, and then I always wonder how people will react. Another reason for not claiming a Flemish identity is that the substate nationalism in Flanders has been strongly afliated with the political right, a reason why many (lef-wing) white Flemings hesitate to identify as Flemish and choose to identify as Belgian instead. Most participants in Kanobana’s study had no objections to identifying as Belgian, thereby referring to their legal status. Two participants explicitly insisted on their identity as being Flemish. Tey claimed full Flemish identity, on the basis of their residency in the

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Flemish region, their Belgian citizenship, and their fuent knowledge of the Dutch/Flemish language and culture. Wim, an adoptee from Rwanda who is politically active and works for a minority rights organization, claimed, People who say a person can’t be black and Flemish at the same time do not understand what being Flemish means. Wim’s statement implies that he refuses to accept the ethnoracial discourse surrounding Flemish identity and coming from the right-wing and neofascist political movements in Flanders. Moreover, he lays hold of the authority to afrm for himself what being0 Flemish means: for him, it is based not on ethnicity or race but on citizenship. Basically, he says that racist discourse is un-Flemish and that the connection it makes between being white and being Flemish is based on a misunderstanding of “real” Flemishness. Drawing on some sort of civic nationalism, Wim rejects ethnic nationalism but is aware of its important infuence on nationalist identity politics in Flanders.38 He also asserted that he is concerned about a future in which his children risk being treated as foreigners in their own country because of their appearance and that this concern drives him to be politically engaged. Black Identity-Making

In this section, we discuss study participants’ strategies of self-making related to black identity. We analyze how, despite the general ideological framework of color blindness, both the white adoptive parents in De Graeve’s study and the Afro-descent participants in Kanobana’s study seemed to connect being black with a sense of community and identity. Some of the participants seemed to deal with the ambiguities in fostering Flemish identity by taking on a black identity (through choices of style and interests) while avoiding to explicitly name it. Participants in both studies found comfort from interacting with people who share the experience of being “othered” and from sharing their interest in African American and/or African culture and history with others. In De Graeve’s study, many adoptive parents stated that they like to be together with other adoptive families with a similar racial makeup, as they consider these interactions essential for their children’s well-being and want their children to know that they are not the only adoptees in the

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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world. Daan, an adoptive father with two adopted children from Ethiopia, described his feelings of enjoyment when watching his oldest son and another Ethiopian-born adopted child take part in a trip to a fair together with other adoptive families. Tese two little boys then sit together riding a little car on that carousel, and they are chatting with each other, and I fnd that it is just very nice that this, that this friendship . . . if you can call it friendship . . . between boys of that age, that this [friendship] exists, because this, you know—I think that they can get a lot out of it, at an older age, when their adoption story will start to count. And that’s why I fnd it nice, that they have a lot of these contacts. I fnd it important, this networking. I get a lot out of it myself, but I fnd this very important for them as well. Gatherings with other adopters are ofen described by adoptive parents as sanctuaries, places where nothing needs to be explained, where people have similar experiences, where everyone just understands and no unpleasant questions are asked. Tese get-togethers can be framed as what Ken Plummer calls “intimacy groups,” developing their “own visible and positive cultures,” locations in which deviant bodies and nonnormative families are normalized and have the capacity to shif normative beliefs.39 Black skin color was not the only basis for participants’ feelings of commonality, as several also made diverse connections between race and culture. Many adoptive parents claimed that they try to incorporate their child’s “birth culture” into their lives.40 Tis “culture work” is part of the new paradigm for transnational adoption counseling and has been suggested as a “remedy” to mistakes made in the early decades of transnational adoption, when a total “clean break” with the child’s past was propagated and practiced. Many parents indicated, for instance, that they like to explore music and food from their children’s birth country, buy cofee-table books about the country, and participate in various charitable and cultural events where cultural expressions from the birth country are performed in various ways. Yet previous research fnding that mainly parents of transracially adoptive children tend to engage in this kind of practice indicates that culture is mobilized to cope with and perhaps even compensate for the silence on race.41 Adoptive parents also reported practices that directly relate to the child’s racial diference and to the fundamentally diferent treatment and products it is supposed to require. For instance, they indicated that they had participated in work-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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shops on braiding hair or had started to frequent African shops to buy beauty products targeted at black consumers. On one hand, parents seemed to consider the exploration of the child’s cultural descent and “doing black things” as a way to respect and connect with adoptees’ “essential identity,” from which they are assumed to be cut of by removal from birth family and nation. On the other hand, the practices attest to parents’ implicit awareness of the racial discrimination their children might face and can thus be seen as a somehow inept attempt to compensate their children for being excluded. Tis culture work of adoptive parents has been exposed as deeply problematic, as it tends to confate culture and race and is likely to reify diference through a consumerist and ofen folkloristic idea of a child’s birth culture. Although these practices are engaged in with the sincere intention of strengthening the child’s sense of identity, they tend to be unable to go beyond superfcial engagements with diference that link certain appearances to certain places and cultures by way of racial markers. Moreover, this culture work is also likely to reduce diversity to a mere consumption of ethnic entertainment from which white people, who tend to see themselves as racially neutral, are free to pick and choose while constructing their children as being essentially connected to their “birth culture.”42 Te participants of Kanobana’s study, all raised in predominantly white environments within which they usually met few other black people, seemed to identify something hard to pinpoint that some referred to as a “black experience.” Tey indicated that they enjoy meeting other black people and that they feel a commonality with them, even across national borders. For instance, Olga said that although she tends to think upon meeting a black person, “It’s not because we are both black that we should be friends,” she very ofen eventually had become friends with the few black people she met while growing up. She concluded, Te more black people you get to know, the more you realize that you actually share a lot of things. However, discussions on what “black experience” means were full of ambiguity. Although many of the participants recounted how important having black friends is for them, many simultaneously wanted to downplay the role of race. Caroline, for instance, called the high number of black friends that she has had a coincidence, while simultaneously referring to the comfort of being with people like her.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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I have many black and half-black friends. I don’t think it is important, because I think people are people, and it is the character I feel attracted to. But I feel that friends who also have a foreign origin understand me on many levels and understand many things that my (quotation marks gestured) “white” friends don’t. . . . Well, they just can’t identify with it, and I notice that . . . most of my friends also have another origin. Tat is not—that is just a coincidence. . . . It is just a consolation to know that there are other people like me. Te participants in Kanobana’s study also referred to cultural practices to talk about what a black identity could mean. In their stories, references were ofen made to symbols of the African and African American struggles, such as to Mandela in South Africa and to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King in the United States. All participants shared knowledge of pan-Africanist leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, Aimé Césaire, or Marcus Garvey, knowledge not part of the history curriculum in Flemish school. Noah, for instance, talked about his interest as a teenager in Martin Luther King and the African American civil rights movement and how it forged his identity in Flanders. Te African American culture had certainly a strong infuence on my worldview during puberty, in the sense that when I was sixteen, I made a dissertation on Martin Luther King. I was very much interested in this, with what has been going on there [in America] and how we see that again in Belgium. It defnitely played a part in how I feel as a black person. African American popular culture and black/urban youth culture was another element interviewees ofen referenced as a shared source of inspiration for young black people’s identity-making. All participants mentioned how they felt a connection with the frst black people they saw on TV, and most of them said that they were able to identify with things they found in African American shows. Caroline explained, I think the African American culture played a certain role in my education and development, because of what you see on TV. . . . For me, it ofen was a support and a comfort to see these people. . . .] I ofen caught myself thinking, when there were things with African Americans on TV, “Wow, we are so much alike!” And just the little things I recognized, like clapping in your hand when you laugh—it is so alike. I can identify with it somehow. Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Some participants recounted being fascinated by rap music as young teenagers and fnding inspiration in hip-hop to forge an identity. To them, hip-hop seems to function as a safe haven where they can express and share similar feelings of alienation.43 However, participants also indicated that their choice of style was guided not just by American hip-hop but by black culture from the whole African diaspora. Tey seem to connect to an imagery of a black Atlantic culture that transcends ethnicity and nationality and is explored not only through music but also through fashion, hairstyles, politics, religion, sports, and so on.44 Similar to what has been observed among black people elsewhere, most participants felt attracted to black fashion, style, and music, yet they were careful to interpret this taste merely as a refection of a black “cultural identity” and ofen emphasized the hybrid nature of these cultural expressions.45 Participants’ views on black identity come close to what has been called a “black identity without ethnicity.”46 Tina rejected the assumption that her preference for going out to clubs playing “black music” and frequented by a racially mixed crowd could be a refection of her “black culture.” Most participants tended to think of being black as being part of a “community of experience,” in which African-diasporic cultures serve to deliver symbols for a hybrid identity going beyond a fxed identity.47 Concluding Remarks

In this essay, we juxtaposed the narratives of white parents of black children and Flemish native speakers who self-identify as Afro-descendants, to analyze and shed light on the complexities of black identity-making and belonging in contemporary multicultural and color-blind Flanders. Among both groups, we found that the problem of racialization and racial discrimination was a source of concern. Yet it was simultaneously downplayed. Te white adoptive parents worried about racism and how it could afect their children, but they argued that it was not a big issue in their closest environment. Nevertheless, they considered “culture work” and meeting with other adoptive families important in strengthening their children and in supporting their children’s identity formation. Te black Flemish interviewees all told about experiences of both unconscious racialization and intentional racism, with the former being the most diffcult to pinpoint yet also the hardest to digest, as this kind of racialization ofen derives from those who are close to themselves, such as friends, partners, and family members. Te participants showed a great deal of readiness to excuse racializing comments, yet they indicated that they felt Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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hurt by them and that they experienced them as “eroding” their sense of belonging to Flanders. Despite their fuency in Flemish language and culture, few of the black participants considered being Flemish as an identity that they could fully claim. Teir embrace of “black identity” also seemed to be quite ambiguous, as they seemed to want to downplay the role of race in their lives and simultaneously look on blackness more as a marker of transnational and transcultural solidarity. By considering interviews from our two participant groups together, this essay evidences that despite the dominant color-blind discourse in contemporary Flanders, race is still signifcant there. Te general unease of talking about race and even the lack of a vocabulary to describe racial diferences hamper the ability of both white and nonwhite Flemish people to discuss racism, racialization, and racial discrimination. What Moore once argued about gender stereotypes seems to hold true for racial stereotypes and colonial discourses as well: “So few people are prepared to acknowledge that they support or believe in them.”48 It is therefore more urgent than ever to take race seriously and to unpack, name, and start to discuss the complex ways in which race continues to permeate social processes and shape experiences of oppression and privilege in Flanders and in Belgium. Only by acknowledging that race is still deeply ingrained and persistent in the social fabric of our contemporary society and by trying to understand the ways in which it (re)produces inequalities can we start to profoundly rethink the borders of identity and belonging in contemporary Flanders. NOTES We thank the participants in our two studies for their willingness to share their stories, and we thank the Ghent University Special Research Fund (BOF) and the Research Foundation–Flanders (FWO) for fnancial support. 1. Although we use racial markers throughout this essay, we fully acknowledge that they do not refer to some essential nature or fxed diference between people. We deliberately choose not to capitalize them when referring to a perceived skin color, culture, or ethnicity as such, thereby avoiding to presuppose the existence of a black people or culture in Flanders similar to, e.g., black/African-American culture in the United States. See, e.g., J. Lorand Matory, Stigma and Culture: Last-Place Anxiety in Black America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). Note also that “black” as a translation of the Dutch word zwart spans a diferent semantic feld than the word black in the English language. 2. Etienne Balibar, “Is Tere a ‘Neo-racism’?” in Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, ed. Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein (London: Verso, 1992) 17–28; Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, “Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persis-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Black Identity-Making in Flanders | 217 tence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Lanham: Rowman and Littelfeld, 2006; Bambi Ceuppens, “From ‘the Europe of the Regions’ to’ the European Champion League’: the Electoral Appeal of Populist Autochthony Discourses in Flanders” Social Anthropology 19, no. 2 (2011): 159–74. 3. Bambi Ceuppens and Sarah De Mul, “De vergeten Congolees: Kolonialisme, Postkolonialisme and Multiculturalisme in Vlaanderen,” in Een Leeuw in een Kooi: De Grenzen van het Multiculturele Vlaanderen, ed. Karel Arnaut, Sarah Bracke, Bambi Ceuppens, Sarah De Mul, Nadia Fadil and Meryem Kanmaz. (Antwerp: Meulenhof/ Manteau, 2009), 48–67; Verena Stolcke, “Talking Culture: New Boundaries, New Rhetorics of Exclusion in Europe,” Current Anthropology 36 (1995): 1–24. 4. Katrien De Graeve, “‘Tey Have Our Culture’: Negotiating Migration in BelgianEthiopian Transnational Adoption,” Ethnos 80, no. 1 (2015): 71–90. 5. Floya Anthias, “Where Do I Belong? Narrating Collective Identity and Translocational Positionality,” Ethnicities 2, no. 4 (2002): 491-514. 6. Anthias, “Where Do I Belong?”; 494. See also Nira Yuval-Davis, “Teorizing Identity: Beyond the ‘Us’ and ‘Tem’ Dichotomy,” Patterns of Prejudice 44, no. 3 (2010): 261–80. 7. Kimberlé Crenshaw, “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color,” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 (1991): 1241–99; Alice Ludvig, “Diferences between Women? Intersecting Voices in a Female Narrative,” European Journal of Women’s Studies 13, no. 3 (2006): 245–58; Baukje Prins, “Narrative Accounts of Origins: A Blind Spot in the Intersectional Approach?” European Journal of Women’s Studies 13, no. 3 (2006): 277–90. 8. Sirma Bilge, “Intersectionality Undone: Saving Intersectionality from Feminist Intersectionality Studies,” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 10, no. 2 (2013): 405–24. 9. Khalil Nakhleh, “On Being a Native Anthropologist,” in Te Politics of Anthropology: From Colonialism And Sexism toward a View from Below, ed. Gerrit Huizer and Bruce Mannheim (Te Hague: Mouton, 1979), 343–52; Kirin Narayan, “How Native Is a ‘Native’ Anthropologist?” American Anthropologist 95, no. 3 (1993): 671–86; Washington Onyango-Ouma, “Practising Anthropology at Home,” in African Anthropologies: History, Critique and Practice, ed. Mwenda Ntarangwi et al. (London: Zed Books, 2006), 250–66. 10. Stella Mascarenhas-Keyes, “Te Native Anthropologist: Constraints and Strategies in Research,” in Anthropology at Home, ed. Anthony Jackson (London: Tavistock, 1987), 180–95. 11. Lynn Worsham, “Writing against Writing: Te Predicament of Écriture Féminine in Composition Studies,” in Contending with Words: Composition and Rhetoric in a Postmodern Age, ed. Patricia Harkin and John Schilb (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1991), 101. 12. Anna Rastas, “Racializing Categorization among Young People in Finland,” Young 13, no. 2 (2005): 147–66. 13. Figures for Belgium from 2016 indicate that of the 19 percent of the population who were foreign-born, 37 percent were born outside of the European Union. See http:// www.myria.be/fles/Migratie-verslag-2015-samenvattingen.pdf (accessed March 10, 2016). Te percentage of Belgian inhabitants with a non-European background is much higher but cannot be measured. No ethnic data are collected, and immigrants tend to

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

218 | Adoption and Multiculturalism “disappear” from ofcial statistics at the second generation and beyond. See Marco Martiniello, “Belgium,” in Immigrant Integration in Federal Countries, ed. Christian Joppke and F. Leslie Seidle (Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012), 57–77. 14. Marco Martiniello, “Belgium.” 7. 15. See http://www.vlaanderen.be/nl/publicaties/detail/activiteitenverslag-vlaamsecentrale-autoriteit-inzake-adoptie-vca and http://www.kindengezin.be/adoptie/overvca/cijfers/#Cijfers-buitenlandse-adop (accessed March 10, 2016). 16. Philomena Essed, “Understanding Everyday Racism: An Interdisciplinary Teory.” Newbury Park, CA: SAGE, 1991: 50.. 17. Ceuppens and De Mul, “De vergeten Congolees.” 18. Ceuppens and De Mul, “De vergeten Congolees”. 19. Quentin Schoonvaere, Studie over de Congolese Migratie en de Impact ervan op de Congolese Aanwezigheid in België: Analyse van de Voornaamste Demografsche Gegevens (Brussels: Studiegroep Toegepaste Demografe [UCL] and Centrum voor Gelijkheid van Kansen en Racismebestrijding, 2010). 20. Karen Phalet and Marc Swyngedouw, “Measuring Immigrant Integration: Te Case of Belgium,” Studi Emigrazione / Migration Studies 40, no. 152 (2003): 773–803. 21. Ceuppens and de Mul, “De vergeten Congolees.” 22. Katrien De Graeve, ‘Tey Have Our Culture’: Negotiating Migration in Belgian– Ethiopian Transnational Adoption. Ethnos, 80, no. 1 (2015): 71-90.. 23. Koen Van der Bracht, Pieter-Paul Verhaeghem and Bart Van de Putte, Gelijke Toegang tot Huisvesting voor elke Gentenaar: Onderzoeksrapport (Gent: Ghent University, 2016). 24. Stijn Baert, Bart Cockx, Niels Gheyle, and Cora Vandamme, “Is Tere Less Discrimination in Occupations Where Recruitment Is Difcult?,” ILR Review 68, no. 3 (2015): 467–500. 25. Orhan Agirdag and Burcu Korkmazer, “Etnische ongelijkheid in het onderwijs,” in Armoede en Sociale Uitsluiting: Jaarboek 2015, ed. D. Dierckx, J. Coene, P. Raemaeckers, and M. van der Burg (Leuven: Acco, 2015), 231–49. 26. See, e.g., Melissa F. Weiner, “Te Ideologically Colonized Metropole: Dutch Racism and Racist Denial,” Sociology Compass 8, no. 6 (2014): 731–44. 27. Maria P. P. Root, “Te Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as a Signifcant Frontier in Race Relations,” in Te Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier, ed. Maria P. P. Root (Tousand Oaks: SAGE, 1996), xiii–xxviii. 28. Ruth Frankenberg, “Growing Up White: Feminism, Racism and the Social Geography of Childhood,” Feminist Review 45 (1993): 51–85; Patricia J. Williams, “Seeing a Color-Blind Future: Te Paradox of Race” (New York: Noonday, 1998). 29. Gloria Wekker, Cecilia Åsberg, et al., “Je hebt een Kleur, maar je bent Nederlands”: Identiteitsformaties van geadopteerden van Kleur (Utrecht: Leerstoelgroep Gender Studies, 2007); Williams, “Seeing a Color-Blind Future”. 30. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, ed., Shades of Diference: Why Skin Color Matters (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2009). 31. Tobias Hübinette and Carina Tigervall, “Contested Adoption Narratives in a Swedish Setting” (paper presented at the Second International Conference on Adoption Research, Norwich, 2006); Wekker, Åsberg, et al., ”Je hebt een Kleur.” 32. Claudia Castañeda, “Adopting Technologies: Producing Race in Trans-racial

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Black Identity-Making in Flanders | 219 Adoption,” Scholar and Feminist Online 9, no. 1–2 (2011): 1–9; Christine Ward Gailey, Blue-Ribbon Babies and Labors of Love: Race, Class, and Gender in U.S. Adoption Practice (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010); Carina Tigervall and Tobias Hübinette, “Adoption with Complications: Conversations with Adoptees and Adoptive Parents on Everyday Racism and Ethnic Identity,” International Social Work 53, no. 4 (2010): 489–509; Sandra L. Patton, “Birth Marks: Transracial Adoption in Contemporary America”. New York: New York University Press, 2000; France Winddance Twine, “Transracial Mothering and Antiracism: Te Case of White Birth Mothers of ‘Black’ Children in Britain,” Feminist Studies 25, no. 3 (1999): 729–46; Wekker, Åsberg, et al., “Je hebt een Kleur.” 33. Twine, “Transracial mothering and antiracism,” 741. 34. Philomena Essed, “Racial intimidation: Sociopolitical implications of the usage of racist slurs.” In Te Language and Politics of Exclusion: Others in Discourse, edited by Stephan Riggins, 131–52. Tousand Oaks: SAGE, 1997. 35. Evert Kets, Kuife and Tintin kibbelen in Afrika: De Belgische Taalstrijd in Congo, Rwanda en Burundi (Leuven: Acco, 2009). 36. Wekker, Åsberg, et al., “Je Hebt een Kleur.” 37. Tigervall and Hübinette, “Adoption with Complications,” 504. 38. Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship : A Liberal Teory of Minority Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Yael Tamir, Liberal Nationalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). 39. Ken Plummer, “Te Square of Intimate Citizenship: Some Preliminary Proposals,” Citizenship Studies 5, no. 3 (2001): 242, 245. 40. Katrien De Graeve, “Festive Gatherings and Culture Work in Flemish-Ethiopian Adoptive Families.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 16, no. 5 (2013): 548–64 41. Jacobson, Heather. Culture Keeping: White Mothers, International Adoption, and the Negotiation of Family Diference (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008); Diana Marre, “‘I Want Her to Learn Her Language and Maintain Her Culture: Transnational Adoptive Families’ Views of ‘Cultural Origins,’” in Race, Ethnicity and Nation: Perspectives from Kinship and Genetics, ed. Peter Wade (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), 73–93. 42. Karel Arnaut, Sarah Bracke, Bambi Ceuppens, Sarah De Mul, Nadia Fadil and Meryem Kanmaz., “Het Gekooide Vlaanderen: Twintig jaar Gemist Multicultureel Debat,” in Arnaut, Bracke, et al., Een Leeuw in een Kooi, 7–25. 43. See also: Andreana Clay, “Keepin’ It Real: Black Youth, Hip-Hop Culture, and Black Identity,” American Behavioural Scientist, 46, no. 10 (2003): 1346–58. 44. Paul Gilroy, Te Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (London: Verso, 1993). 45. Pap Ndiaye, La Condition noire: Essai sur une Minorité Française (Paris: CalmannLévy, 2009); Livio Sansone, Blackness without Ethnicity: Constructing Race in Brazil (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). 46. Sansone, Blackness without Ethnicity. 47. Sansone, Blackness without Ethnicity. 48. Henrietta L. Moore, A Passion for Diference: Essays in Anthropology and Gender. Reprint, Cambridge: Polity, 1995, 51.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

220 | Adoption and Multiculturalism REFERENCES Agirdag, Orhan, and Burcu Korkmazer. “Etnische Ongelijkheid in het Onderwijs.” In Armoede en Sociale Uitsluiting: Jaarboek 2015, edited by Danielle Dierckx, Jill Coene, Peter Raemaeckers, and Marjoke van der Burg, 23 –49. Leuven: Acco, 20 5. Anthias, Floya. “Where Do I Belong? Narrating Collective Identity and Translocational Positionality.” Ethnicities 2, no. 4 (2002): 49 –5 4. Arnaut, Karel, Sarah Bracke, Bambi Ceuppens, Sarah De Mul, Nadia Fadil and Meryem Kanmaz. “Het Gekooide Vlaanderen: Twintig Jaar Gemist Multicultureel Debat.” In Een Leeuw in een Kooi: De Grenzen van het Multiculturele Vlaanderen, edited by Karel Arnaut, Sarah Bracke, et al., 7–25. Antwerp: Meulenhof/Manteau, 2009. Baert, Stijn, Bart Cockx, Niels Gheyle, and Cora Vandamme. “Is Tere Less Discrimination in Occupations Where Recruitment Is Difcult?” ILR Review 68, no. 3 (20 5): 467–500. Balibar, Etienne. “Is Tere a ‘Neo-racism’?” In Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, edited by Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, 7–28. London: Verso, 992. Bilge, Sirma. “Intersectionality Undone: Saving Intersectionality from Feminist Intersectionality Studies.” Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race 0, no. 2 (20 3): 405–24. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefeld, 2006. Castañeda, Claudia. “Adopting Technologies: Producing Race in Trans-racial Adoption.” Scholar and Feminist Online 9, no. –2 (20 ): –9. Ceuppens, Bambi. “From ‘the Europe of the Regions’ to ‘the European Champion League’: Te Electoral Appeal of Populist Autochthony Discourses in Flanders.” Social Anthropology 9, no. 2 (20 ): 59–74. Ceuppens, Bambi, and Sarah De Mul. “De Vergeten Congolees: Kolonialisme, Postkolonialisme and Multiculturalisme in Vlaanderen.” In Een Leeuw in een Kooi: De Grenzen van het Multiculturele Vlaanderen, edited by Karel Arnaut, Sarah Bracke, Bambi Ceuppens, Sarah De Mul, Nadia Fadil and Meryem Kanmaz, 48–67. Antwerp: Meulenhof/Manteau, 2009. Clay, Andreana. “Keepin’ It Real: Black Youth, Hip-Hop Culture, and Black Identity.” American Behavioral Scientist 46, no. 0 (2003): 346–58. Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color.” Stanford Law Review 43, no. 6 ( 99 ): 24 –99. De Graeve, Katrien. “Festive Gatherings and Culture Work in Flemish-Ethiopian Adoptive Families.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 6, no. 5 (20 3): 548–64. De Graeve, Katrien. “Geographies of Migration and Relatedness: Transmigrancy in Open Transnational Adoptive Parenting.” Social and Cultural Geography 6, no. 5 (20 5): 522–35. De Graeve, Katrien. “‘Tey Have Our Culture’: Negotiating Migration in BelgianEthiopian Transnational Adoption.” Ethnos 80, no. (20 5): 7 –90. Essed, Philomena. “Racial Intimidation: Sociopolitical Implications of the Usage of Racist Slurs.” In Te Language and Politics of Exclusion: Others in Discourse, edited by Stephan Riggins, 3 –52. Tousand Oaks: SAGE, 997. Essed, Philomena. Understanding Everyday Racism: An Interdisciplinary Teory. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE, 99 .

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Black Identity-Making in Flanders | 221 Frankenberg, Ruth. “Growing Up White: Feminism, Racism and the Social Geography of Childhood.” Feminist Review 45 ( 993): 5 –85. Gailey, Christine Ward. Blue-Ribbon Babies and Labors of Love: Race, Class, and Gender in U.S. Adoption Practice. Austin: University of Texas Press, 20 0. Gilroy, Paul. Te Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso, 993. Glenn, Evelyn Nakano, ed. Shades of Diference: Why Skin Color Matters. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2009. Hübinette, Tobias, and Carina Tigervall. “Contested Adoption Narratives in a Swedish Setting.” Paper presented at the Second International Conference on Adoption Research, Norwich, 2006. Jacobson, Heather. Culture Keeping: White Mothers, International Adoption, and the Negotiation of Family Diference. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2008. Kets, Evert. Kuife and Tintin Kibbelen in Afrika: De Belgische Taalstrijd in Congo, Rwanda en Burundi, Leuven: Acco, 2009. Kymlicka, Will. Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Teory of Minority Rights. New York: Oxford University Press, 995. Ludvig, Alice. “Diferences between Women? Intersecting Voices in a Female Narrative.” European Journal of Women’s Studies 3, no. 3 (2006): 245–58. Marre, Diana. “‘I Want Her to Learn Her Language and Maintain Her Culture’: Transnational Adoptive Families’ Views of ‘Cultural Origins.’” In Race, Ethnicity and Nation: Perspectives from Kinship and Genetics, edited by Peter Wade, 73–93. New York: Berghahn Books, 2007. Martiniello, Marco. “Belgium.” In Immigrant Integration in Federal Countries, edited by Christian Joppke and F. Leslie Seidle, 57–77. Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 20 2. Mascarenhas-Keyes, Stella. “Te Native Anthropologist: Constraints and Strategies in Research.” In Anthropology at Home, edited by Anthony Jackson, 80–95. London: Tavistock, 987. Matory, J. Lorand. Stigma and Culture: Last-Place Anxiety in Black America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 20 5. Moore, Henrietta L. A Passion for Diference: Essays in Anthropology and Gender. Reprint, Cambridge: Polity, 995. Nakhleh, Khalil. “On Being a Native Anthropologist.” In Te Politics of Anthropology: From Colonialism and Sexism toward a View from Below, edited by Gerrit Huizer and Bruce Mannheim, 343–52. Te Hague: Mouton, 979. Narayan, Kirin. “How Native Is a ‘Native’ Anthropologist?” American Anthropologist 95, no. 3 ( 993): 67 –86. Ndiaye, Pap. La Condition Noire: Essai sur une minorité française. Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 2008. Onyango-Ouma, W. “Practising Anthropology at Home.” In African Anthropologies: History, Critique and Practice, edited by Mwenda Ntarangwi et al., 250–66. London: Zed Books, 2006. Patton, Sandra L. BirthMarks: Transracial Adoption in Contemporary America. New York: New York University Press, 2000. Phalet, Karen, and Mark Swyngedouw. “Measuring Immigrant Integration: Te Case of Belgium.” Studi Emigrazione / Migration Studies 40, no. 52 (2003): 773–803.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

222 | Adoption and Multiculturalism Plummer, Ken. “Te Square of Intimate Citizenship: Some Preliminary Proposals.” Citizenship Studies 5, no. 3 (200 ): 237–53. Prins, Baukje. “Narrative Accounts of Origins: A Blind Spot in the Intersectional Approach?” European Journal of Women’s Studies 3, no. 3 (2006): 277–90. Rastas, Anna. “Racializing Categorization among Young People in Finland.” Young 3, no. 2 (2005): 47–66. Root, Maria P. P. “Te Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as a Signifcant Frontier in Race Relations.” In Te Multiracial Experience: Racial Borders as the New Frontier, edited by Maria P. P. Root, xiii–xxviii. Tousand Oaks: SAGE, 996. Sansone, Livio. Blackness without Ethnicity: Constructing Race in Brazil. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Schoonvaere, Quentin. Studie over de Congolese Migratie en de Impact ervan op de Congolese Aanwezigheid in België: Analyse van de Voornaamste Demografsche Gegevens. Brussels: Studiegroep Toegepaste Demografe (UCL) and Centrum voor Gelijkheid van Kansen en Racismebestrijding, 20 0. Stolcke, Verena. “Talking Culture: New Boundaries, New Rhetorics of Exclusion in Europe.” Current Anthropology 36, no. ( 995): –24. Tamir, Yael. Liberal Nationalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 995. Tigervall, Carina, and Tobias Hübinette. “Adoption with Complications: Conversations with Adoptees and Adoptive Parents on Everyday Racism and Ethnic Identity.” International Social Work 53, no. 4 (20 0): 489–509. Twine, France Winddance. “Transracial Mothering and Antiracism: Te Case of White Birth Mothers of ‘Black’ Children in Britain.” Feminist Studies 25, no. 3 ( 999): 729– 46. Van der Bracht, Koen, Pieter-Paul Verhaeghe, and Bart Van de Putte. Gelijke Toegang tot Huisvesting voor elke Gentenaar: Onderzoeksrapport. Ghent: Ghent University, 20 6. Weiner, Melissa F. “Te Ideologically Colonized Metropole: Dutch Racism and Racist Denial.” Sociology Compass 8, no. 6 (20 4): 73 –44. Wekker, Gloria, Cecilia Åsberg, Iris van der Tuin and Nathalie Frederiks. “Je hebt een Kleur, maar je bent Nederlands”: Identiteitsformaties van Geadopteerden van Kleur. Utrecht: Leerstoelgroep Gender Studies, 2007. Williams, Patricia J. Seeing a Color-Blind Future: Te Paradox of Race. New York: Noonday, 998. Worsham, Lynn. “Writing against Writing: Te Predicament of Écriture Féminine in Composition Studies.” In Contending with Words: Composition and Rhetoric in a Postmodern Age, edited by Patricia Harkin and John Schilb, 82– 04. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 99 . Yuval-Davis, Nira. “Teorizing Identity: Beyond the ‘Us’ and ‘Tem’ Dichotomy.” Patterns of Prejudice 44, no. 3 (20 0): 26 –80.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Transnational Adoption and the Emergence of Sweden’s Progressive Reproduction Policy A Contribution to the Biopolitical History of Sweden Tobias Hübinette

Swedish Reproduction Policy in the Twentieth Century: From a Discriminating Reproduction Policy to a Nondiscriminatory Pronatalist Policy

During the frst half of the twentieth century, Sweden stood out as one of the countries in the democratic world where racial thinking and race science played a crucial role in the modern nation-building project as well as in relation to the introduction and development of the Swedish welfare state.1 A full account of Swedish racial thinking and Swedish race science from around the 750s to the 950s has not been written, but in recent years, journalists and scholars alike have started to study various aspects of this hitherto relatively unknown part of the modern history of Sweden.2 Te same is true of the biopolitical aspects of this somewhat peculiar Swedish relationship to race, which was governed by the scientifc “truth” and consensual common-sense conviction that the white Swedish majority population was the purest and the most noble white nation on earth as the prime representative of the so-called Nordic race. Above all, Swedes were convinced that their perceived unique racial character, a matter of both genetics and aesthetics, had to be preserved for the future by all possible means.3 Starting in the 960s and 970s, however, a reproduction policy based on racial thinking gradually gave way to a progressive nondiscriminatory reproduction policy marked by the ideals of equality and rights for all. Arguably, the reproduction technology that primarily came to symbolize this sudden shif from negative to positive eugenics was 223 Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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transnational adoption, which was institutionalized in Sweden from the second half of the 960s in conjunction with the emergence of modern Swedish antiracism and multiculturalism and had its demographic heydays in the 970s, 980s, and 990s. Tis essay refects on Swedish reproduction policy as it developed during the twentieth century, focusing particularly on the shif from a reproduction policy governed by racial thinking to a nondiscriminatory reproduction policy, as marked by the sudden and dramatic rise of transnational adoption and by how it became closely linked to the development of Swedish antiracism and multiculturalism. Te introduction and institutionalization of transnational adoption might not be the only example to illustrate this shif, but it is possibly the most illuminating one within the Swedish context. How could a reproduction policy based on racial thinking be replaced so suddenly by a nondiscriminatory reproduction policy during these decades, to the extent that Sweden went from being the country in the democratic world possibly practicing negative eugenics at the most massive extent in relation to its population size to becoming the leading country practicing a nondiscriminatory reproduction policy at the largest extent proportionally to its population number? How could Swedish reproduction policy become so radically racialized during the frst half of the century, and how could the shif to a nondiscriminatory reproduction policy take place so suddenly from the 960s and 970s? Te analysis in this essay starts with an overview of previous research on Swedish reproduction policies and practices and continues by providing the historical background of the foundation and development of Swedish racialized biopolitics before the 960s. Tereafer, it looks into and refects on how the introduction and institutionalization of transnational adoption in Sweden is intimately related to the formulation of a particular form of Swedish color-blind antiracism and multiculturalism, which more or less became like a state ideology from the 970s onward. Tis essay does not consist of a study of governmental and ofcial policy texts that were written and promulgated between the 9 0s and the 970s, as it is more of a theoretical refection text than an archive study or a legal study. Previous Research on Swedish Reproduction Policies and Practices and Sweden’s Racialized Population Policy

Previous research on the biopolitical aspects of the Swedish welfare state has looked at the sterilization program through which nearly sixty-fve

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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thousand sterilizations were performed between 935 and 975, the adoption system that carried out ffy thousand domestic adoptions between 9 8 and 970, the child institutionalization and fostering system that led to approximately two hundred thousand children being placed at institutions or in foster families between 920 and 980, and the tens of thousands of forced abortions that took place on so-called social indications between, especially, the 930s and the 950s.4 Te majority of these studies have mainly focused on the gendered and classed aspects of Swedish reproduction policy. Few have highlighted how the various laws that were promulgated, introduced, and revised during the frst half of the twentieth century sometimes explicitly referred to race and were underpinned by the overarching motive to preserve the perceived pureness and uniqueness of the “Nordic race” element of the Swedish population. One exception to that race-blind research approach is Ann-Katrin Hatje’s study of Sweden’s so-called population issue (driven by an obsession with race) and of the various legislations that were carried out to solve that issue in the midwar period.5 Apart from focusing on proactive measures and policies to counter the mass emigration of Swedes to the United States and to other overseas settler states and European colonies, then seen as a deadly demographic threat to the future of the “Nordic race” in Sweden, Hatje looks at, for example, the immigration law of 9 4, introduced to safeguard the racial purity of the Swedish nation and to combat race mixing by stopping the immigration of Roma people, and the adoption law of 9 7, which, until 959, meant a so-called weak adoption, emphasizing the bond between the birth parents and the adoptee and, until as late as 970, allowing adopters to dissolve an adoption if the adopted child showed signs of “genetic defects.” Hatje also considers the marriage law of 920, which, until 968, stated that its purpose was to combat and hinder “negative race hygienic marriages,” and the abortion law of 938, which was governed by negative eugenic formulations and resulted in many forced abortions carried out due to “social indications.”6 Whether or not the inability to see the racial aspects of Swedish population policy is caused by the general color-blind attitude toward race in contemporary Sweden and the strongly uncomfortable feelings surrounding the concept of race, it is beyond doubt that Sweden practiced both “positive race hygiene” (positive eugenics) and “negative race hygiene” (negative eugenics) measures on a mass scale. In Te History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault introduced the concept of biopower as a form of power that “endeavours to administer, optimize and multiply” life itself.7 Te theme of the present essay, reproduction policy, is at the very center of

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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biopower as Foucault described it. Here, I am specifcally using the concept of biopolitics in relation to various negative and positive race hygienic and eugenic techniques (e.g., sterilization and abortion) employed as a way of regulating and governing reproduction and the population (seen as a racialized body politic), to be able to understand the introduction and rise of transnational adoption in Sweden in the 960s and 970s. By the terms positive race hygiene and positive eugenics, I here refer to the means by which the part of the population considered “more valuable” (mervärdiga)—according to the language of the time—was actively encouraged to marry and reproduce by various economic incentives and social welfare services. Negative race hygiene and negative eugenics refer to the means by which those segments of the body politic considered “less valuable” (mindervärdiga) were prevented from reproducing, through abortions and sterilizations, as well as to the means by which children born anyway to the “less valuable” could be legally removed and adopted out or placed at institutions or in foster care. Racial thinking had a crucial impact on family and reproduction policies in high-modernity Sweden, and not until the 960s and 970s were the negative biopolitical and eugenic practices and techniques based on racial thinking gradually abolished and replaced by a nondiscriminatory reproduction policy, at a time when a new antiracist and multiculturalist discourse started to take over.8 Trough this highly racialized reproduction policy, which preceded German National Socialist reproduction policy and was not seen as being “Nazi” in a Swedish high-modernity context, Sweden became one of the countries in the Western world of the last century wherein a substantial part of the total population was most heavily and massively afected by negative eugenic practices, where one individual and “less valuable” woman could well have experienced both the abolishment of her parental rights and the adopting out of her child, as well as a subsequent forced abortion and a forced sterilization.9 Ofen, though, it is difcult (if not impossible) to divide between racialized, classed, gendered, and heteronormative motives when it comes to individual cases, as they all played a part in this top-down, state-driven obsession to refne and homogenize the Swedish population. Furthermore, some cases were more about the racialized execution of certain laws by various professionals than about the exact wording of the legislation itself. It is also important to point out that the racialized, classed, gendered, and heteronormative motives could go hand in hand in practice. Te modern Swedish racialized biopolitical population policy regime institutionalized in the 9 0s and 920s and deinstitutionalized in the

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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960s and the 970s was governed by the overarching idea and conviction that the Swedes were the purest and the most noble part of the white race—namely, the prime example of the aesthetically and genetically superior Nordic race. In a comparative international perspective, that population policy regime is unique in many ways, as Sweden did not have any overseas colonies during its time period. Te regime principally afected the white Swedish majority population itself, while the policy toward the national minorities was characterized by forced assimilation (the Travelers and the Finnish speakers, including the Tornedalians), spatial segregation (the Roma), or a mixture of those methods (the Saamis).10 While most other Western nations, particularly the imperial powers of the time, focused on ruling over Others, Sweden’s racialized reproduction policy was mainly directed toward disciplining, cleansing, and purifying its own white population, instead of concentrating solely or fully on its minorities. Tis fact makes the Swedish case a bit difcult to conceptualize according to, for example, Étienne Balibar’s division between external and internal racism, as well as in relation to Michel Foucault’s classical elaboration of the concept of biopolitics in his lecture series “Society Must Be Defended.”11 When it came to the practical exercise of the various negative eugenic methods, minorities were however also strongly and negatively afected by them. Te Travelers and the Roma people were overrepresented with regard to the forced removal of children and various child welfare interventions (including institutionalization, adoption, and fostering), and the other national minorities were also negatively afected by the Swedish racialized population policy. However, except for the Finnishspeaking minority, the absolute number of all national minorities taken together was comparatively small during this policy’s time period, meaning that they could quite easily be contained and controlled, excluded and marginalized. Te Saamis and the Tornedalians were concentrated to the northern part of the country, and the Travelers and the Roma were forced to live in segregated camps and settlements or to be vagrant well into the 960s, and they were also refused citizens’ rights such as access to education, to voting rights, and to social welfare services.12 Making a comparison between high-modernity Sweden of the 9 0s and the 960s and Nazi Germany of the 930s and 940s is not just farfetched but, for obvious reasons, unethical. Yet similarities do exist when it comes to negative race hygienic practices (e.g., mass sterilizations, mass adoptions, and the stigmatization of mixed marriages and mixed children) and positive race hygienic measures (including generous economic incentives and advanced social welfare services aiming at increasing and

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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maximizing the birth rate of the “more valuable” segments of the population). Tere are also practical similarities between Sweden and Norway, in terms of the harsh policy toward the Travelers, and between Sweden and Finland, when it comes to the high number of sterilizations per capita in general.13 Some have argued that the Swedish obsession with and cult of the Nordic race in relation to its high-modernity nation-building project, which coincides with the time when the Social Democratic welfare state was constructed, can be interpreted as a response to the loss of the former Baltic Empire, as Sweden had included Finland until 809 and had been in a personal union with Norway until 905.14 Sociologist Greggor Mattson adds that afer the loss of its empire, Sweden could make use of its internationally acclaimed scholarship in race science to connect to the more powerful Western nations. Te invention of Sweden’s racial purity was a function upon which Swedish scientists gained entrée in international markets of their stock—geopolitically and genetically. As Sweden became the representative of the Aryan-cum-Nordic race, that small nation’s entrepreneurs in ethnoracial classifcation could maintain international esteem, and European countries could reimagine their own ethnic purity on the basis of the Swedish ideal.15 Accordingly, the perceived unique, pure, and superior whiteness of the majority Swedes functioned as a compensation and a comfort for the loss of Sweden’s empire and great power status, while also serving as a “biological” link to the other, more powerful white nations of the Western world—not least to the other “Nordic race” nations in Northwestern Europe (e.g., Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom), as well as the United States, which also saw Sweden as a racial ideal. Te “Nordic race” concept thus served as a powerful tool and a unifying ideology enabling the Swedish state to create a homogenous nation and to maintain national unity beyond class antagonism, while, as a sort of bonus, the nation’s scholars in race studies made the country famous and respected academically in the world.16 Starting in the 960s and 970s, however, a reproduction policy marked by lef-liberal and multiculturalist ideals of equality was gradually introduced and fnally replaced negative eugenics and the previous reproduction policy based on racial thinking. Te emergence of the new

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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biopolitical reproduction policy regime is exemplifed by the introduction of strong fnancial support and social welfare services for unwed and single mothers, which led to the sudden demise of adoptable children born in Sweden, the legalization of free abortion, the introduction of the contraceptive pill, and the termination of the country’s sterilization program, to name only a few of the radical changes within the feld of Swedish reproduction policy that took place during those decades. Above all, the reproduction technology that came to represent and symbolize the birth and emergence of this new, progressive, and multicultural biopolitical regime was transnational adoption, which was institutionalized during the second half of the 960s and had its heydays in the 970s, 980s, and 990s.17 Te emergence of this new regime can also be regarded as a shif from a discriminating pronatalist reproduction policy based on racial thinking to a nondiscriminatory pronatalist reproduction policy, as a pronatalist ideology was the ruling principle during both periods. However, what makes that shif so special is not just the fact that it took place so rapidly and suddenly but also its sheer radicalness in terms of the massive number of people involved, both during the negative eugenic period and during the new period of a nondiscriminatory reproduction policy. Together with transnational adoption, the introduction, legalization, and institutionalization, during the 980s and 990s, of other subsequent reproduction techniques—such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) and sperm and egg donations—have enabled segments of the Swedish population previously prevented from reproducing (e.g., LGBTQ people, middleaged people, singles, and people with disabilities) to become parents and to form families. As a result of the introduction, legalization, and institutionalization of these techniques, Sweden is now the country in the world espousing the highest number of transnational adoptions per capita, nearly ffeen thousand IVF treatments take place there every year, and although domestic surrogacy has not yet been legalized, an estimated number of at least two hundred surrogate children already enter the country annually.18 How could this change take place so suddenly, and which role did the emergence of transnational adoption play in Sweden’s transformation from being the country in the democratic world practicing negative eugenics at the most extent in relation to its population size to becoming the leading country practicing a nondiscriminatory reproduction policy at the largest extent proportionally to its population number?19

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Transnational Adoption and the Emergence of Swedish Antiracism and Multiculturalism and of a Progressive Nondiscriminatory Reproduction Policy

Already during the midwar period and during the war years, Sweden had taken in tens of thousands of temporary foster children from Germanspeaking continental Europe and from neighboring Finland, some of whom came to stay in the country permanently in the postwar period, as they were sometimes legally adopted by their Swedish foster parents.20 One specifc group of children who stood out and were not as welcome as those categorized as white, “Aryan,” and Christian were unaccompanied “non-Aryan” Jewish refugee children from Nazi-occupied Central Europe, part of the Kindertransport, which involved more than ten thousand children in total, the vast majority of whom ended up in the United Kingdom. While Sweden willingly and actively welcomed seventy thousand Finnish war children between 939 and 945, only a meager quota of fve hundred Jewish children were allowed between 938 and 940, and it was difcult to place even such a small number in foster homes, as some Swedish families declined to take them in when they understood that the refugee children were “non-Aryan” and Jewish.21 It is therefore surprising that Sweden’s frst foreign-born nonwhite adopted children from the third world were brought to the country already from the end of the 950s and during the 960s, barely two decades afer the tiny Swedish engagement in the Jewish Kindertransport.22 It is perhaps even more notable that this process, including both the introduction and the abolishment of negative eugenics, took place during the long reign of the Swedish Social Democrats who governed Sweden uninterruptedly between 932 and 976. To be able to understand this almost surreal and thoroughly dramatic shif, it is necessary to go back to the intense public debate that raged concerning the introduction of transnational adoption in the 960s. Between 96 and 967, a more or less continuous debate took place, mainly in the newspapers and among politicians and authorities, regarding whether or not Sweden would institutionalize the practice of transnational adoption.23 Te old Swedish elite and the establishment of government authorities, medical doctors, and researchers in race science stood in opposition to radical lef-liberal journalists, celebrities, and activists who, in hindsight, can be said to have belonged to the coming so-called 968 movement. Te old elite continued to argue according to classical Swedisj racial thinking, using a racialized rhetoric that had been commonplace since the 9 0s and arguing that the white Swedes belonging to the so-called Nordic

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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race would not beneft from the adoption of children of color from the third world. Tey warned that the adopted children would most probably reproduce as adults with white Swedes, and racial miscegenation was always said to be negative for the white counterpart and especially for the “Nordic race.” Adequate scientific studies do not exist to permit adoption to a greater extent, and especially not in the case of children belonging to widely different racial groups compared to the adoptive parents.24 Te second camp in the debate used a radical avant-garde color-blind language, which portrayed the children of the third world as children in need of protection, rescue, and salvation (as historian Hanna Markusson Winkvist has pointed out) and which also argued that the mere presence of nonwhite children within the still racially homogenous Swedish national territory would contribute to turning the Swedes into antiracists.25 We, through an increased number of adoptions, have now the opportunity to gradually and naturally get used to being with people who have a diferent appearance.26 Tis heated debate and the government investigation that was initiated in 964 as a result of it can be seen as the frst Swedish expression of the color-blind antiracism that was to become hegemonic during the following decades. As the progressive lef-liberals won the debate, transnational adoption was frmly institutionalized in Sweden from the end of the 960s onward, both in legislation and on an institutional level, by way of bilateral agreements with supplying countries such as South Korea, the country of origin that came to dominate the practice well into the 980s, both in Sweden and on an international level. Trough this sudden shif from overt racial thinking to doing away with explicit racial thinking, symbolized by the waning of the losing side in the debate on transnational adoption, a new biopolitical regime symbolized by the introduction of the reproduction technique of transnational adoption—and made possible for almost everyone in Sweden during the frst decades, as the cost, especially to adopt from Korea, was so low at that time—emerged hand in hand with multiculturalism and antiracism in its radical Swedish color-blind version. Trough this almost

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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overnight transformation in the mid- 960s, the foundation was frmly laid for Sweden’s rapid development into the country in the world where positive eugenics—in the form of a whole variety of reproduction techniques, including transnational adoption—came to afect the most people demographically, as well as the frst Western nation-state where multiculturalism and color-blind antiracism eventually became something like a state ideology.27 As Sweden was still a predominantly white country in the 960s, foreign-born adopted children were also the frst substantial demographic group of nonwhite Swedes well into the mid- 970s, when the number of refugees from Latin America and parts of Africa and the Middle East started to increase. Tis new and second nation-building process that took place in Sweden in the 960s and 970s, symbolized by the institutionalization of transnational adoption, the leaving behind of race science and racial thinking, and the installation of multiculturalism and color-blind antiracism as a new guiding principle, also afected the Tornedalians, the Saamis, the Travelers, and the Roma people in a positive way, compared to how they were treated previously. Yet the process cannot be understood without taking into account the biopolitical discourse and white fear of uncontrollable overpopulation in the third world that was so prevalent in the West during those decades. Tat discourse led Sweden to export its negative eugenic methods (in the name of family planning, and including mass sterilizations) to many countries in the third world, including, ironically, the same countries, such as India and Korea, from which Sweden and other Western countries also adopted children.28 Te institutionalization of transnational adoption eventually made Sweden the nation in the world that has adopted the most children proportionally from the postcolonial Global South. Seldom heard of within Swedish research on transnational adoption is however a critical understanding of the self-proclaimed white Swedish “manifest destiny” of “rescuing” and “saving” and laying claim on the children of the third world in the name of color-blind antiracism, as well as the subsequent “right” to biopolitically intervene in the children’s countries to adopt them and “unparent” them. Critical postcolonial and feminist scholars within the English-speaking academia—among others Laura Briggs, Barbara Yngvesson, and Hosu Kim—have looked at and highlighted this still-neglected aspect of transnational adoption in Sweden, by for example making use of concepts such as stratifed reproduction, by conceptualizing the adoption industry as a biopolitical apparatus, and by characterizing maternity homes and orphanages as biopolitical welfare institutions.29

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Sweden’s Progressive Reproduction Policy | 233

While white Swedes were no longer exposed to negative eugenics from the 970s onward and could instead beneft from a nondiscriminatory pronatalist reproduction policy, with more and more segments of the Swedish population being able to reproduce at a time when the country’s fertility rate was also decreasing, negative eugenics in the form of sterilizations and adoptions were at the same time exported to and practiced on a mass scale in the non-Western world. Te negative eugenicist thinking had in other words been globalized and transposed from the Swedish “body politic” to “the masses” of the third world, in the name of developmentalism and combating overpopulation in the Global South. Tus the sudden change in Swedish reproduction policy from a pronatalist reproduction policy based on racial thinking to a progressive and nondiscriminatory pronatalist reproduction policy must be understood not just as part of the master narrative of the development of progressive Sweden from the 960s and onward. Te leaving behind of old, race-obsessed Sweden was fnally also made possible by making use of and exploiting the nonwhite bodies of the transnational adoptees themselves, who thereby played a crucial role in the new nation-building of antiracist Sweden. NOTES 1. Ann-Katrin Hatje, Befolkningsfrågan och välfärden: Debatten om familjepolitik och nativitetsökning under 1930- och 1940-talen [Te population issue and welfare: Te debate on family policy and the increase of the birth rate in the 1930s and 1940s] (Stockholm: Allmänna förlaget, 1974); Maciej Zaremba, De rena och de andra: Om tvångssteriliseringar, rashygien och arvsynd [Te pure and the others: On forced sterilizations, race hygiene, and inherited sin] (Stockholm: Bokförlaget DN, 1999). 2. See, e.g., Gunnar Broberg, Statlig rasforskning: En historik över Rasbiologiska institutet [State-run race science: A history of the race-biological institute] (Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 1999); Christian Catomeris, Det ohyggliga arvet: Sverige och främlingen genom tiderna [Te horrible legacy: Sweden and the stranger throughout history] (Stockholm: Ordfront, 2004); Björn Furuhagen, Den svenska rasbiologins idéhistoriska rötter: En inventering av forskningen [Swedish race biology and its roots in the history of ideas: A research inventory] (Stockholm: Forum för levande historia, 2007); Maja Hagerman, Det rena landet: Om konsten att uppfnna sina förfäder [Te pure country: On the art of inventing ancestors] (Stockholm: Prisma, 2006); Katarina Schough, Hyberboré: Föreställningen om Sveriges plats i världen [Hyperborean: Te image of Sweden’s place in the world] (Stockholm: Carlsson, 2008). 3. Maja Hagerman, Det rena landet: Om konsten att uppfnna sina förfäder [Te pure country: On the art of inventing ancestors] (Stockholm: Prisma, 2006). 4. Gunnar Broberg and Mattias Tydén, Oönskade i folkhemmet: Rashygien och sterilisering i Sverige [Unwanted in the people’s home: Race hygiene and sterilization in Sweden] (Stockholm: Gidlunds, 1991); Yvonne Hirdman, Att lägga livet till rätta [To

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

234 | Adoption and Multiculturalism make life right] (Stockholm: Carlsson, 1989); Cecilia Lindgren, En riktig familj: Adoption, föräldraskap och barnets bästa 1917–1975 [A real family: Adoption, parenthood, and the best interest of the child, 1917–1975] (Stockholm: Carlsson, 2006); Eva Palmblad, Den disciplinerade reproduktionen: Abort- och steriliseringspolitikens dolda dagordning [Te disciplining reproduction: Te hidden agenda behind the abortion and sterilization policies] (Stockholm: Carlsson, 2000); Maija Runcis, Steriliseringar i folkhemmet [Sterilizations in the people’s home] (Stockholm: Ordfront, 1998); Johanna Sköld, Fosterbarnsindustri eller människokärlek: Barn, familjer och utackorderingsbyrån i Stockholm 1890–1925 [Foster care industry or human love: Children, families, and the foster care placement bureau in Stockholm, 1890–1925] (Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2006); Mattias Tydén, Från politik till praktik: De svenska steriliseringslagarna 1935–1975 [From policy to practice: Te Swedish sterilization laws, 1935–1975] (Stockholm: Fritzes, 2000); Zaremba, De rena och de andra. 5. Hatje, Befolkningsfrågan och välfärden. 6. Hatje. 7. Michel Foucault, Te History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 137. 8. Te last legacy of Sweden’s negative eugenics was perhaps the 2013 removal of the demand for the sterilization of transgender people who wanted to go through genderreassignment surgery. 9. Tydén, Från politik till praktik. 10. Martin Ericsson, Exkludering, assimilering eller utrotning? ”Tattarfrågan” i svensk politik 1880–1955 [Exclusion, assimilation, or extermination? Te “Tatar issue” in Swedish politics, 1880–1955] (Lund: Lund University, 2015); Sigrid Lipott, “Te Tornedalian Minority in Sweden: From Assimilation to Recognition: A ‘Forgotten’ Ethnic and Linguistic Minority, 1870–2000,” Immigrants and Minorities 33, no. 1 (2015): 1–22; Greggor Mattson, “Nation-State Science: Lappology and Sweden’s Ethnoracial Purity,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 56, no. 2 (2014): 320–50; Jan Selling, Svensk antiziganism: Fördomens kontinuitet och förändringens förutsättningar [Swedish anti-Ziganism: Te continuity of prejudice and the conditions for change] (Limhamn: Sekel, 2013). 11. Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (London: Verso, 1991); Michel Foucault, “Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–76 (New York: Picador, 2003). 12. Ericsson, Exkludering, assimilering eller utrotning?; Lipott, “Tornedalian Minority”; Lennart Lundmark, Så länge vi har marker: Samerna och staten under sexhundra år [As long as we have land: Te Saamis and the state during six hundred years] (Stockholm: Rabén Prisma, 1998); Mattson, “Nation-State Science”; Selling, Svensk antiziganism. 13. See Gunnar Broberg and Nils Roll-Hansen, eds., Eugenics and the Welfare State: Sterilization Policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2005). 14. Tobias Hübinette and Catrin Lundström, “Tree Phases of Hegemonic Whiteness: Understanding Racial Temporalities in Sweden,” Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture 20, no. 6 (2014): 423–37. 15. Mattson, “Nation-State Science,” 344. 16. Broberg, Statlig rasforskning. 17. Cecilia Lindgren, Internationell adoption i Sverige: Politik och praktik från sextiotal

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Sweden’s Progressive Reproduction Policy | 235 till nittiotal [International adoption in Sweden: Policy and practice from the 60s to the 90s] (Stockholm: Myndigheten för internationella adoptionsfrågor, 2010). 18. Tobias Hübinette, “Sverige unikt som adoptionsland” [Sweden, a unique adoption country], Välfärd: SCBs tidskrif om arbetsliv, demograf och välfärd 7, no. 2 (2007): 3–5. 19. Malin Attefall, “Övertro på provrörsbefruktning hotar barnafödandet” [Strong reliance on IVF threatens the birth rate], SVT Nyheter, July 4, 2011, https://www.svt.se/ nyheter/inrikes/overtro-pa-provrorsbefruktning-hotar-barnafodandet It is estimated that 3 percent of all children of every age cohort in today’s Sweden have been conceived outside of the body and through a reproduction technique while sixty thousand foreignborn children have been adopted to Sweden. 20. Monika Janfelt, Stormakter i människokärlek: Svensk och dansk krigsbarns-hjälp 1917–1924 [Great powers in human love: Swedish and Danish support to children of war, 1917–1924] (Åbo: Åbo Akademi University Press, 1998); Pertti Kavén, 70 000 små öden [70,000 small destinies] (Otalampi: Sahlgren, 1994); Jörg Lindner, Den svenska Tysklands-hjälpen 1945–1954 [Te Swedish aid to Germany, 1945–1954] (Umeå: Umeå University, 1988). 21. Ingrid Lomfors, Förlorad barndom, återvunnet liv: De judiska yktingbarnen från Nazityskland [Lost childhood, regained life: Te Jewish refugee children from Nazi Germany] (Gothenburg: Gothenburg University, 1996); Ann Nehlin, “Building Bridges of Trust: Child Transports from Finland to Sweden during the Second World War,” War and Society 36, no. 2 (2017): 133–53. 22. Tobias Hübinette, “Te Adopted Koreans of Sweden and the Korean Adoption Issue,” Review of Korean Studies 6, no. 1 (2003): 251–66. 23. Lindgren, Internationell adoption i Sverige; Hanna Markusson Winkvist, “Fostran till färgblindhet: Om “exotiska” adoptivbarn och svenskhetens yta på 1960-talet” [Fostering to color blindness on “exotic” adopted children and the surface of Swedishness in the 1960s], Humanistdagboken 18 (2005): 193–200. 24. Swedish Medical Agency, cited in Afonbladet, January 14, 1963. Te agency was the Swedish government body responsible for migration policy and for minority issues in the 1960s. 25. Markusson Winkvist, “Fostran till färgblindhet”; Statens ofentliga utredningar, Adoption av utländska barn [Adoption of foreign children]. SOU 57. (Stockholm: Victor Petterssons bokindustri AB, 1967), 193–200. 26. Clas Engström, ”Om adoption av färgade barn” [On the adoption of coloured children], Stockholms-tidningen, December 27, 1964. 27. Hübinette and Lundström, “Tree Phases of Hegemonic Whiteness.” 28. Frank Furedi, Population and Development: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge: Polity, 1997). Sweden played an important part in the various family planning programs led by the United Nations and including mass sterilizations. 29. Laura Briggs, Somebody’s Children: Te Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012); Hosu Kim, “Te Biopolitics of Transnational Adoption in South Korea: Preemption and the Governance of Single Birthmothers,” Body and Society 21, no. 1 (2015): 58–89; Barbara Yngvesson, Belonging in an Adopted World: Race, Identity, and Transnational Adoption (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

236 | Adoption and Multiculturalism REFERENCES Attefall, Malin. “Övertro på provrörsbefruktning hotar barnafödandet” [Strong reliance on IVF threatens the birth rate]. SVT Nyheter, July 4, 20 . https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/overtro-pa-provrorsbefruktning-hotar-barnafodandet Balibar, Étienne, and Immanuel Wallerstein. Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. London: Verso, 99 . Briggs, Laura. Somebody’s Children: Te Politics of Transracial and Transnational Adoption. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 20 2. Broberg, Gunnar. Statlig rasforskning: En historik över Rasbiologiska institutet [State-run race science: A history of the race-biological institute]. Stockholm: Natur och kultur, 995. Broberg, Gunnar, and Nils Roll-Hansen, eds. Eugenics and the Welfare State: Sterilization Policy in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2005. Broberg, Gunnar, and Mattias Tydén. Oönskade i folkhemmet: Rashygien och sterilisering i Sverige [Unwanted in the people’s home: Race hygiene and sterilization in Sweden]. Stockholm: Gidlunds, 99 . Catomeris, Christian. Det ohyggliga arvet: Sverige och främlingen genom tiderna [Te horrible legacy: Sweden and the stranger throughout history]. Stockholm: Ordfront, 2004. Ericsson, Martin. Exkludering, assimilering eller utrotning? ”Tattarfrågan” i svensk politik 1880–1955 [Exclusion, assimilation, or extermination? Te “Tatar issue” in Swedish politics, 880– 955]. Lund: Lund University. 20 5. Foucault, Michel.“Society Must Be Defended”: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975–76. New York: Picador, 2003. Furedi, Frank. Population and Development: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Polity, 997. Furuhagen, Björn. Den svenska rasbiologins idéhistoriska rötter: En inventering av forskningen [Swedish race biology and its roots in the history of ideas: A research inventory]. Stockholm: Forum för levande historia, 2007. Hagerman, Maja. Det rena landet: Om konsten att uppfnna sina förfäder [Te pure country: On the art of inventing ancestors]. Stockholm: Prisma, 2006. Hatje, Ann-Katrin. Befolkningsfrågan och välfärden: Debatten om familjepolitik och nativitetsökning under 1930- och 1940-talen [Te population issue and the welfare: Te debate on family policy and the increase of the birth rate in the 930s and 940s]. Stockholm: Allmänna förlaget, 974. Hirdman, Yvonne. Att lägga livet till rätta [To make life right]. Stockholm: Carlsson, 989. Hübinette, Tobias. “Te Adopted Koreans of Sweden and the Korean Adoption Issue.” Review of Korean Studies 6, no. (2003): 25 –66. Hübinette, Tobias. “Sverige unikt som adoptionsland” [Sweden, a unique adoption country]. Välfärd: SCBs tidskrif om arbetsliv, demograf och välfärd 7, no. 2 (2007): 3–5. Hübinette, Tobias, and Catrin Lundström. “Tree Phases of Hegemonic Whiteness: Understanding Racial Temporalities in Sweden.” Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation and Culture 20, no. 6 (20 4): 423–37.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Sweden’s Progressive Reproduction Policy | 237 Janfelt, Monika. Stormakter i människokärlek: Svensk och dansk krigsbarns-hjälp 1917– 1924 [Great powers in human love: Swedish and Danish support to children of war, 9 7– 924]. Åbo: Åbo Akademi University Press, 998. Kavén, Pertti. 70 000 små öden [70,000 small destinies]. Otalampi: Sahlgren, 994. Kim, Hosu. “Te Biopolitics of Transnational Adoption in South Korea: Preemption and the Governance of Single Birthmothers.” Body and Society 2 , no. (20 5): 58–89. Lindgren, Cecilia. En riktig familj: Adoption, föräldraskap och barnets bästa 1917–1975 [A real family: Adoption, parenthood, and the best interest of the child, 9 7– 975]. Stockholm: Carlsson, 2006. Lindgren, Cecilia. Internationell adoption i Sverige: Politik och praktik från sextiotal till nittiotal [International adoption in Sweden: Policy and practice from the 60s to the 90s]. Stockholm: Myndigheten för internationella adoptionsfrågor, 20 0. Lindner, Jörg. Den svenska Tysklands-hjälpen 1945–1954 [Te Swedish aid to Germany, 945– 954]. Umeå: Umeå University, 988. Lipott, Sigrid. “Te Tornedalian Minority in Sweden: From Assimilation to Recognition: A ‘Forgotten’ Ethnic and Linguistic Minority, 870–2000.” Immigrants and Minorities 33, no. (20 5): –22. Lomfors, Ingrid. Förlorad barndom, återvunnet liv: De judiska yktingbarnen från Nazityskland [Lost childhood, regained life: Te Jewish refugee children from Nazi Germany]. Gothenburg: Gothenburg University, 996. Lundmark, Lennart. Så länge vi har marker: Samerna och staten under sexhundra år [As long as we have land: Te Saamis and the state during six hundred years]. Stockholm: Rabén Prisma, 998. Markusson Winkvist, Hanna. “Fostran till färgblindhet: Om ‘exotiska’ adoptivbarn och svenskhetens yta på 960-talet” [Fostering to color blindness on “exotic” adopted children and the surface of Swedishness in the 960s]. Humanistdagboken 8 (2005): 93–200. Mattson, Greggor. “Nation-State Science: Lappology and Sweden’s Ethnoracial Purity.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 56, no. 2 (20 4): 320–50. Nehlin, Ann. “Building Bridges of Trust: Child Transports from Finland to Sweden during the Second World War.” War and Society 36, no. 2 (20 7): 33–53. Palmblad, Eva. Den disciplinerade reproduktionen: Abort- och steriliseringspolitikens dolda dagordning [Te disciplining reproduction: Te hidden agenda behind the abortion and sterilization policies]. Stockholm: Carlsson, 2000. Runcis, Maija. Steriliseringar i folkhemmet [Sterilizations in the people’s home]. Stockholm: Ordfront, 998. Schough, Katarina. Hyberboré: Föreställningen om Sveriges plats i världen [Hyperbole: Te image of Sweden’s place in the world]. Stockholm: Carlsson, 2008. Selling, Jan. Svensk antiziganism: Fördomens kontinuitet och förändringens förutsättningar [Swedish anti-Ziganism: Te continuity of prejudice and the conditions for change]. Limhamn: Sekel, 20 3. Sköld, Johanna. Fosterbarnsindustri eller människokärlek: Barn, familjer och utackorderingsbyrån i Stockholm 1890–1925 [Foster care industry or human love: Children, families, and the foster care placement bureau in Stockholm, 890– 925]. Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2006. Statens ofentliga utredningar. Adoption av utländska barn [Adoption of foreign children]. SOU 57. Stockholm: Victor Petterssons bokindustri AB, 967.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

238 | Adoption and Multiculturalism Tydén, Mattias. Från politik till praktik: De svenska steriliseringslagarna 1935–1975 [From policy to practice: Te Swedish sterilization laws, 935– 975]. Stockholm: Fritzes, 2000. Yngvesson, Barbara. Belonging in an Adopted World: Race, Identity, and Transnational Adoption. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 20 0. Zaremba, Maciej. De rena och de andra: Om tvångssteriliseringar, rashygien och arvsynd [Te pure and the others: On forced Sterilizations, race hygiene, and inherited sin]. Stockholm: Bokförlaget DN, 999.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

How to “Kin” the Transnational Adoptee in the Québécois Nationalist Family Romance? Jenny Heijun Wills and Bruno Cornellier

In the early pages of his lengthy semiautobiographical novel La Trilogie Coréenne, prolifc Korean Québécois writer Ook Chung comments on his use of the French language, “French is my adopted language, but isn’t it fairer to say that it is it that adopted me, like parents adopt an orphan without his consent, with results that are more or less happy?”1 Chung’s setup is provocative. What does he mean by evoking images of orphanhood, adoption, and consent in his discussion of language, especially from within the space of ethnonationalist Québec, whose French language and culture perseveration are simultaneously comprehensible and yet exclusionary? How are nonfrancophone immigrants to be “kinned” in a province in which enduring appeals to tropes of sovereignty, independence, or autonomy from the Canadian federation are articulated, frst and foremost, as responses to perceived threats against the primacy of the French language as the national anchor? How does adoption ft into the mind-set of a Korean subject who is working through the meaning of diaspora, dislocation, and colonialism because he is himself the son of two zainichi— ethnic Koreans living in Japan during and afer the reign of Japanese imperialism? Most provocatively, what does it mean for Chung’s narrator to think of himself as an adoptee and of the French language—as well as of Québec, by extension—as his adoptive parent, given the particular uses of kinship and descendancy tropes in Québec nationalist and sovereigntist narratives, which inexorably rest on popular and widely circulated notions of de souche (rooted stump; strain) and pure laine ( 00 percent wool) as markers for genuine québécité? Given the way that language seems to be the most direct route to belonging in this province, why does Chung’s narrator try to “claim Québec” through an adoption analogy, and how does 239 Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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that analogy square with the descendancy-focused nationalist family romance that saturates literary and popular cultural narratives in Québec? Given the omnipresence, in modern Québécois literature and popular culture, of such allegorical recourse to sexuality, kinship, and the family as narrative expressions of a nation’s quest for identity, maturity, and independence, the present volume’s thematic focus on adoption almost beseeches a reappraisal of the nationalist family romance, as we try to critically examine what tropes of adoption—and what adoptee subjects themselves—are expected to perform on the national stage. In this essay, we think about transnational adoption beyond the (ofcial) multicultural context of Canada and in the intercultural setting of Québec. We imagine ways that adoptee subjects can simultaneously embody the interculturalist ideal of integration and disrupt the Québécois ethnonationalist-sovereigntist project, which alleges that the fragility and historical vulnerability of the pure laine family must be secured as both the object and the end point of integration/assimilation, as a “kinning” project within a nation, bestowed both as a gif and a duty for immigrants, people of color, queer subjects, and people located at the multiple intersections between these subject positions. First, we outline the doubly complex coloniality of the Québécois national project, including the settler historical trajectory that animates and saturates identity politics and state policies from the Quiet Revolution onward.2 We examine the privileging of descendancy and ancestry and the rhetorical deferral of racial purity. In doing so, we highlight that transnational adoption in Québec arose during the foundational years of the separatist movement yet somehow enjoys extreme popularity. Next, we provide a brief summary of transnational adoption in Québec, illustrating the contrast between fgures of transnational adoption there and in the rest of (anglophone) Canada. Finally, we consider the precariousness of being a transnational and/ or transracial adoptee in Québec, upholding a possibility of Québécois interculturalism espousing integration in reciprocity yet keeping people of color at the edges of the nationalist ethos. We conclude by arguing that transnational adoption in Québec is an exceptional form of immigration that both are welcomed (conditionally) and “perfectly” embodies the interculturalist ideal of that province. As a result, the trope of transnational adoption registers as a mode through which non-de souche individuals may attempt to claim Québécois belonging, as a kind of “queer kin” of the (ethno)nationalist family romance. Put another way, we conclude by looking at adoption outside the literal confne of the family. Adoption and other metaphors articulated to kinship become a broader

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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narrative trope or fgure that renders immigration itself ideologically legible or palatable in “la famille de souche” of an intercultural Québec, so that the something too much or slightly of that is embodied by the immigrant subject may be harmoniously grafed to the souche, made to be “kinned” (or rendered whole) without sharing “our” blood. Indeed, Québec nationalism is so predicated on a particular and seemingly impenetrable romanticized construction of family—centered around blood, descendancy, and heritage—that Québécois of color ofen turn to transnational adoption as a trope and mode for thinking through their attempts to “claim Québec.” We argue that the concepts “to adopt” and “to be adopted by” are more than mere analogies or stand-ins for integration. Tey also become a sort of sine qua non within interculturalist modalities of integration as assimilation, if, of course, one truly wishes to “kin” and “be kinned by” the nation and to (un)successfully claim belonging to “la grande famille québécoise.” Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Sovereignty in Québec

Since the unsuccessful 980 referendum on sovereignty-association and, to an increasing degree, the almost-too-close-to-call defeat of the 995 referendum on independence, Québécois nationalists have been lef scrambling, trying to convince “their” immigrant populations and the world that the nationalist-sovereigntist project is not ethnically exclusive. One could argue that Premier Jacques Parizeau’s infamous 995 postreferendum concession speech, in which he claimed that money and “ethnic votes” were to blame for the defeat of the “projet de pays,” acts as the return of the repressed, revealing, for all to hear, that the ethnonationalist impetus remains dormant yet always active behind various attempts to defend Québécois nationalism as frst a civic nationalism.3 Despite attempts by some of Parizeau’s defenders to brush aside his controversial comments and requalify them as the mere drunken ramblings of an emotionally defated, defeated, and exhausted old-stock nationalist, the remarks continue to haunt the nation and its adversaries. Parizeau’s comments might be seen as representative of the nationalist “structure of feeling” (to borrow terminology from literary and cultural theorist Raymond Williams) that animates broader public sentiments. Yet, by their very nature, such structures are neither punctual nor individual. Te phrase “structures of feeling” allows Williams to describe hegemony as lived experience, as “a particular quality of social experience

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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and relationship,”4 as a set of everyday practices and perceptions of personhood, dwelling, and belonging that cannot be reduced to the tidy binarisms—of Lef (civic) versus Right (ethnic-conservative)—that animate nationalist electoral politics in Québec. In his useful reworking of Williams’s phrase to account for the “settler structure of feeling” that animates the American literary canon, Mark Rifin insists that if state actions and policies do not determine such structures, they nonetheless provide a set of orientations.5 In Québec, that set of orientations corresponds to a historical sense of vulnerability and fragility as a conquered and continental French minority. Such fear of cultural demise has been upheld and reinvigorated as the state’s mantra in the implementation of a series of laws and decisions, including Bill 0 (Charte de la langue française) and the state-sanctioned ofcial national motto, “Je me souviens” (I remember), which implicitly recognizes the British Conquest and the resilience of the historical French Canadian souche as the ofcial collective memory that sustains and anchors Québécois citizenry and identity. More recently, public angst and anxieties over accommodation practices to religious and “ethnocultural” minorities have led to unprecedented (and ofen failed) state interventions also couched in a language of national vulnerability and fragility: from the 2007 Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reliées aux diférences culturelles (better known to the public as the Bouchard-Taylor Commission), to the Liberal government’s 20 0 (and since shelved) Bill 94 (banning niqabs and burkas from public life), to the Parti Québécois’s Charter of Québec Values (Bill 60), an Islamophobic (and also shelved) piece of legislature meant to amend the 975 Charte québécoise des droits et libertés de la personne, in order to implement, in the name of gender equality, an aggressive (and paranoid) secularist (laïc) policy model banning religious expressions from the public life of the nation and de facto excluding veiled Muslim women from active participation in the public sphere (including employment in the public sector).6 We contend that the ethnic nationalism shored up by Parizeau’s statement and the various attempts to defend an allegedly de-ethnicized (or intercultural) civic nationalism are not antithetical in spirit. Tese seemingly contrasting views are, rather, expressions of a broader nationalist structure of feeling, best encapsulated, above and beyond the progressive/ conservative divide, by the ubiquity of the nationalist family romance. Te popularity of that family construct stems from the decolonial impetus of Québécois nationalism leading up to and since the Quiet Revolution.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Kinship, Sexuality, and the Nationalist Family

With the setting from the previous section in mind, we gesture to Rifin and ponder, from a Québécois perspective, under which conditions the family (rather than simply the individual self, following Rifin) becomes “nation-like” (and vice versa), “embodying a selfood that has properties of sovereignty.”7 Te decolonial impetus and the historical consciousness that inform the birth of a neo-nationalism attached to territorial sovereignty around and since the 960 Quiet Revolution in Québec lend themselves particularly well to national and sexual allegories attached to a language of kinship. We fnd a set of heteronormative tropes in which the (hetero)sexual maturation of the child (in a coming-of-age story) and “his” attachment to the “proper” object of desire becomes an allegory for the nation’s growth into its own maturity and independence, from a colonized status to one of self-sovereignty and liberation. Unsurprisingly, the property of the “proper” object of desire is not only heteronormative in its ideological underpinnings but also attached to a queering of race, as well as a peculiar articulation of blood, (national) kinship, and language in the adjudication of self, other, and “our.” Indeed, the queering of race becomes the site of heteronormative and homonationalist alliances. Adapting Jasbir Puar’s infuential concept of homonationalism, queer theorist Chantal Nadeau writes, Issues of LGBT emancipatory rights should not be understood outside a robust critique of the imperialist agenda of domestic and sexual politics. Neither should these rights be considered separately from claims that a society like Québec needs to solidify its turn to secularism as a national value. While a growing number of Western democracies have begun to include non-heterosexual domestic and family arrangements as a gesture toward the progressiveness and openness of the nation, the same countries have ironically reenforced their racial and ethnic screening dispositifs toward whom is seen as the other within.8 In such a context, the queering of race authorizes the opening of the national paterfamilias to such “progressive” family arrangements. In the context of this essay, it allows us to imagine the transnational and transracial adoptee as “queer kin” within the sexual politics of the nationalist family romance.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Sexual allegories and the nationalist family romance inform much Québec literature, theater, national cinema, and popular culture since World War II, from Marcel Dubé to Pierre Vallières and the Parti pris writers, from Mon Oncle Antoine (dir. C. Jutra, 97 ), Les Ploufe (dir. G. Carle, 98 ), and Les flles de Caleb (dir. Jean Beaudin, 990) to Léolo (dir. J.-C. Lauzon), Le Confessional (dir. R. Lepage, 995), and C.R.A.Z.Y. (dir. J.-M. Vallée, 2005). Interestingly, such references to kinship have also allowed Québécois nationalists to experience their ambivalent colonizedcolonizer status without culpability, via the historical myth of a Québec métissé, a half-European, half-“Indian” heritage born out of intermarriages between beastly and rugged “coureurs des bois” and Indigenous women. By that myth, indigeneous peoples are made kin rather than foe, brothers and sisters in decolonization rather than potentially recolonized subjects under the Québécois settler sovereignty project.9 Much has been written about the literature of decolonization produced in the radical 960s by francophone writers, artists, and intellectuals in Québec. Tat political context has been well documented by historian Sean Mills in his recent book on postcolonial thought and political activism in 960s Montréal.10 He explains that the struggles of others (the Cuban Revolution, “third world” decolonization, or the US Black Power movement) provided useful analogies that allowed creatives to make sense of and take action against their own colonization. Te theoretical and critical works of Frantz Fanon, Jacques Berque, and Albert Memmi were particularly inspirational for that young generation of writers, poets, and activists, most infuential among whom were those associated with the socialist journal Parti pris ( 963–68). Te heteronormative allegorical coupling most representative of this critical moment in Québec’s intellectual and cultural history is perhaps most explicitly and famously captured by celebrated author-flmmaker Gilles Groulx in his now canonical—almost mythifed—flm Le chat dans le sac ( 962). Te flm’s protagonist, Claude, who describes himself as a French Canadian in search of himself (“Je suis Canadien français, donc je me cherche”), brandishes in front of the camera the texts that guide him through his discovery of self-as-collective: Louis Lomax’s La révolte noire, Fanon’s Les damnés de la terre, Claude Julien’s La révolution cubaine, and, of course, Parti pris. Claude’s journey is gendered in the service of a masculine and heteronormative trajectory of self-discovery in the attainment of heterosexual maturity and companionship with what he calls his “idéal féminin,” an anonymously described Asian model whose photograph is pinned to his wall, next to press clippings about revolutionary struggles

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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worldwide. As Denys Arcand infamously argued and bemoaned in the pages of Parti pris, “l’étrangère” (the exotic woman) represented, within such national-sexual allegory, an “unconscious refusal to coincide with one’s collective self, as well as an unquenchable thirst to perfect oneself in a mythical exteriority.”11 Within such national-allegorical discourse— theorized by Parti pris writer Pierre Maheu ( 964) as “l’Oedipe colonial”12—the “othered” woman has very little narrative value other than oversignifying the colonial alienation of a heteropatriarchal national collective whose sexual maturity is either stalled or distracted by its fxation on the “wrong” object of desire. Hence, afer the revolt against “the Father”—for instance, Conservative premier Maurice Duplessis and the Catholic clergy described by Parti pris writers as falsely masculine “pères en jupe” (fathers in skirts)13—the Québécois male, explains Maheu, must successfully overcome his teenage angst (“crise d’adolescence”) if he wants to attain national-sexual maturity:14 he must return to “la TerreMère” (the Mother), the source and origin of the nation, yet not anymore as a castrated man but as a virile son and free man who will thereafer engage with women—more specifcally, according to Arcand, with “la voisine” (the neighbor) or “la québécoise quotidienne” (everyday québécoise women), as opposed to “l’étrangère” (the stranger or foreign woman).15 Freed from the image of the “maternally castrating and monstrous” female authoritarian substitutes, Québécoises women shall thereafer, within this revolutionary trajectory, be joyfully conquered and apprehended as “lovers and wives.”16 Tat heteronormative understanding informs Claude’s epiphany at the end of Le chat dans la sac, once his romance with his Jewish Anglophone girlfriend fades away: “Te afection I had for Barbara was only symbolic of a transition. I think that this afection was at the service of my [identity] quest.”17 Inaugurated with this realization is Claude’s eventual (or potential) liberation, even though he still stands alone in the snow as the flm’s end credits start rolling. With the decolonized and de souche heterosexual couple now freed from the “efete” colonized father and from the authority of a castrating mother (or a feminized Roman Catholic Church), the nationalist family romance will seek to mirror its own trajectory and maturation toward its children. At this juncture, if Claude’s exoticized Asian feminine ideal is presented as a temporary slippage into alienation (or an alien nation), what are we to make of the place of children of color in such family allegory, especially once these children are to be made kin in the de souche national family—a family with “a skin of a blindingly immaculate white”?18

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Chantal Nadeau’s reassessment of this macho and nostalgic “dramatique familo-nationaliste” in postaccommodation Québec afer the Bouchard-Taylor Commission is particularly illuminating and provocative for the purposes of the present analysis. In an article on the homonationalist infections of this family romance in and around the 2005 popular flm C.R.A.Z.Y. (a national cultural happening that later propelled its Québécois director, Jean-Marc Vallée, into Hollywood stardom), Nadeau returns to Giorgio Agamben’s biopolitical theories about sovereignty, bare life, and the state of exception, in order to imagine what she calls a “nous nu” (bare we) within “une culture du nous de droit” (a culture of “us” by law, of “us” by right). Tis “nous de droit” is allegorized in tropes of belonging to familial ties and blood, to “national blood”—a “nous nu,” Nadeau explains, that is normal, normative, naturalizing, and “desperately human.”19 According to Nadeau, “le droit” (the law) orients this naturalized experience of national kinship via an impressive legal apparatus meant to insure and secure “one’s own identity, or perhaps even one’s blood sovereignty”20 In her analysis of C.R.A.Z.Y., Nadeau argues that the love-hate relationship between the unconditionally loving but old-fashioned macho father (played by popular actor Michel Côté) and his gay teenage son (played by nouveau venu Marc-André Grondin) parallels modern Québec’s legislative eforts to be at the forefront of gay rights and marriage equality, with members of the heterosexist father’s generation fnding, in their hearts, a way not to betray the original promise (“l’amour zéro”) secured in the unbreakable, organic link between the queer son and the father-nation.21 Te queer son is both sacrifced and salvaged as a condition for his reinclusion in the family romance, in a way that preserves “the order of things” and the comfort of the “nous référent” (the referential “we”), “[a ‘referential us’] that dominates the lawful one, the Québécois ‘we,’ the ‘we’ articulating ethnicity as a blind stain (upon ourselves) and the other as an empty echo, a voice without a body, a whisper that sounds good but remains far way.”22 As such, indefectible love for the biological queer son of the nation (“le ff fls de la nation”) becomes the ideological ground on which this “bare we” of the nation is cleansed, purifed (“lavé de tout soupçon”),23 “progressive,” and united under the sovereign authority of the paterfamilias.24 At this particular juncture, the entry of the transracial and transnational adoptee in the paterfamilias—or, by way of metaphor, the narrative articulation of the immigrant as “adopted” by the nation or its langue—can hardly escape such powerful ideological orientations.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Adoption Histories in Québec and Canada

Transnational adoption in Québec has diminished in the last decade, but at its peak, over nine hundred adoptees were immigrating to the francophone province per year. Behind only Ontario, Québec is one of the leading Canadian provinces in number of transnational adoptions enacted per year, with the majority of adoptees migrating from China, Haiti, Vietnam, and South Korea. Although Ontario and Québec share similar fgures in number of adoptees arriving, the experiences of these young people difer signifcantly, not least because adoption policies and services vary widely from one province to the next. Culture and identity are diferently considered in Québec, where, for instance, waning birth rates in the second half of the twentieth century made immigration a “necessary evil”; the ongoing anxiety that the French language and culture might be marginalized was heightened, as more migrants were welcomed to support the economy and ofset waning populations. As a result, Québec developed an independent immigration system that privileges applicants coming from other francophone nations, including (former) French colonies. On a practical level, the use of civil law in Québec, in contrast to the rest of the nation, gestures to one way that transnational adoption is inevitably experienced in a diferent way in that province. Not surprisingly, in terms of adoptions to metropolitan centers, Montréal ofen leads the country in numbers of transnational adoptions. According to the authors of Te Complete Adoption Handbook, Québec stands out as a “very adoption-minded province”; its “almost one thousand international adoptions per year among a population of just 7.5 million” mean that “proportionately, many more Québécois adopt than do U.S. citizens.”25 Anxieties over cultural dilution are assuaged by the idea that foreign children will be raised as Québécois, resulting in the beneft of increased populations with the mitigating safety of cultural assimilation. But according to the same authors, there are other, more bureaucratic reasons why transnational adoption is more popular in Québec than even domestic adoption: Because “Québécois are not allowed to publish advertisements seeking a birth mother in their province,” they explain, “they must advertise outside of Québec, and adoptions from another province are technically considered ‘international.’”26 Québec’s self-framing as an independent, yet-to-be (or quasi- or wannabe) sovereign state27 forces us to reconsider our assumptions about the national aspects of transnational adoption; we tend to assume that transnational adoptions occur across universally acknowledged national boundaries, but the complex circum-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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stances of Québec and Canada reveal that this framework does not always apply. Te history of transnational adoption in Canada has English origins. Te earliest wave of transnational adoptees to Canada arrived from the British metropole; Kerry O’Halloran explains, “It has been estimated that approximately one-hundred thousand such children aged fve years and older were received in Canada between 826 and 939.”28 An “ideological sanctuary,”29 Canada became home for “Irish Famine children, the British Home Children, and World War II evacuees,” though few of these adoptions were documented or legalized.30 But Canada’s circumstance as part of the British Commonwealth made transnational adoptions from nonCommonwealth nations less attainable. Coupled with such strict exclusion policies that “up until 965, immigration regulations made it nearly impossible for unaccompanied minors to immigrate for the purposes of adoption to a Canadian who was not a relative,”31 transnational adoption never became as popular in Canada as it did in the United States. Tough at a much smaller scale, adoption of children to Canada from foreign countries has continued since the earliest wave, and peak moments in the 990s and early 2000s parallel trends in the United States and other Western nations. At the same time, quite remarkably, Canada was a transnational adoption “sending nation,” with thousands of children being adopted abroad by parents in Europe as well as across the border by American families. Of particular interest for the present discussion is a black-market connection between Québec and New York that enabled the adoption of “children of white, unwed, French Canadian mothers to Jewish adoptive families from the New York City area”—a practice that capitalized on the Catholic presence (continuing today) in the Québec province and on anti-Semitism in the United States.32 Tere was also a notable trend of transnational adoption of Indigenous children by European families, and through pro-“matching” eforts that sought to pair adoptable children with parents of the same ethnicity and religion, many Black Canadian children were adopted by African Americans in New England. In fact, for a decade in the early 970s, Canada was second only to Korea as the primary sending nation of all transnational adoptees to the United States.33 Canadians also adopt transnationally from the United States, but in signifcantly fewer numbers. Tough little work has been done on the history of transnational adoption in Québec specifcally, one study in particular stands out. In her fascinating work on transnational family adoptions in Québec—that is, the practice whereby recent immigrants adopt children, ofen related, from

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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their countries of origin, by working within and beyond provincial and federal immigration policies—Chantal Collard observes that “the countries most likely to be involved in family adoptions . . . are not necessarily the principal sending countries of immigrants to Québec.”34 Haiti, India, and the Philippines, the places from which the majority of transnational family adoptees hail, are far from being the “principal sending countries of immigrants to Québec,”35 the most notable being France. One could speculate on the colonial histories and presents that impact these fascinating trends—Québec is both a colonizing extension of French imperialism and a historically colonized corner of the British Empire—but our interest here is with Collard’s explanation when she contends that “the greater number of transnational family adoptions from Haiti, India, and the Philippines is infuenced by the kinship cultures of these countries of origin.”36 In her insightful essay, she explains various approaches to kinship formation in those nations, concluding, for instance, that Haitians’ emphasis on “blood ties” and “family obligation to ‘share’ children with infertile family members” and Indians’ emphasis on “perpetuat[ing] family name and lineage”—if not by biological reproduction, then at least by kinship adoption37—explain why immigrants from Haiti and India might favor this form of transnational adoption over more “conventional ‘stranger’ adoptions.”38 Key here is Collard’s evocation of a particular kinship narrative as explanation for these kinds of transnational adoptions—tropes that are familiar to a Québécois audience whose own nationalistic identity is predicated (as noted earlier in the present essay) on a particular understanding of genealogy, descendancy, and blood. Again, Québec sovereigntist claims ofen rest on ethnocentricism, in the form of pure laine or de souche, and themes of kinship, family, or brotherhood are frequently conjured. Intraracial transnational family adoptions speak to a similar emphasis on descendancy and community. Adoption illustrates an alternative to conventional forms of kinship that are imagined as something forged out of genetic relationship and inscribed with the weight of ancestry, blood, and descendancy. “In new kinship studies,” Sara Dorow and Amy Swifen explain, “adoption is ofen interpreted as a ‘no’ to normalized kinship in that it creates family outside and ofen independent of blood lineage,” and “some scholars have argued that adoptive kinship potentially calls attention to and challenges several discourses of family.”39 If, as Nadeau insists, identity quests in Québec are invariably articulated to the quest of the sovereign family,40 how are we to make sense of the ways in which transnational and transracial adoptees are made to “claim” or “be claimed by” the paterfamilias? How does the

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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“kinning” of “l’étrangère” via transracial and transnational adoption make sense in relation to such an enduring nationalist family romance? How do immigrants end up using themselves as metaphors of adoption in order to make sense of (or to “kin”) their ambiguous relationship with the paterfamilias, whose sense of cultural insecurity and historical fragility demands that it be loved by the immigrant unconditionally, imperatively, and above all else? In his book Claiming Others: Transracial Adoption and National Belonging, Mark Jerng suggests that a notable pattern of literary and social narratives of transracial and transnational adoption in the American context “highlights specifc articulations of the familial nation-form throughout U.S. history as it is transformed through a set of historical crises around race relations.” He continues, Transracial adoption appears most prominently in literature, public discourse, and social practices during precisely some of these largescale national traumas focused on the formation of its citizenry and the question of national and racial belonging: Native American removal; slavery and emancipation; the height of Jim Crow/segregation; and the Korean and Vietnam wars.41 Jerng’s thesis certainly has parallels in the Québec context; peak moments of transnational adoption in the province match moments of the neonationalist movement in the second half of the twentieth century and, again, in the years following the second failed referendum, the post- 995 moment on which we would like to focus. On the one hand, transnational adoption gained popularity throughout many Western nations, not just in the rest of Canada and the United States, but also in Australia and several European countries. On the other hand, in a moment in Québec when the nationalist voice decried “ethnics” as the culprit thwarting the sovereigntist movement, transnational adoptions also served as a reconciliatory gesture, a push to imagine a Québec nationalism that embraces foreigners and welcomes them not just to the fght but also to the family. In the “process of kinning,” says Signe Howell, “adoptive parents enrol their adopted children into a kinned trajectory that overlaps their own.”42 Howell goes on to explain that while transnational adoptees “certainly undergo very radical changes to their former selves,” adoptive parents are also “transubstantiated.”43 Taken with Jerng’s analysis, we might consider the transubstantiation beyond the familial and imagine the political, national transubstantiation that might be at hand here as well. For instance,

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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transnational adoption alters the Québécois nationalist family romance and ofers it the “ethnique” from within the safe confnes of domestic kinship. Te ethnocultural nationalist subject is transformed by claiming the Other through what Judith Butler calls “intelligible kinship”44— recognizable, familiar, articulable. Te alternative—giving up de souche, divesting the nationalist project of its family romance—is unintelligible and not an option. Transnational and transracial adoption permits the perpetuation of the nationalist family romance and simultaneously delivers unto the Québécois an alibi for the ethnonationalism on which that romance relies; it delivers to them a manageable ethnic Other, both foreign and contained, and allows the souche to enjoy the fruits and benefts of white privilege while it defers or defects conversations about whiteness, blood, and race altogether. Another interpretation of the family romance narrative draws together nationalist contexts in Québec and considerations of transnational adoption there and beyond. Midway in his career, Sigmund Freud authored what has come to be known as his “family romance” theory, in which he addressed themes of child sexual development, parental estrangement, and neurosis. He argued, Tere are only too many occasions on which a child is slighted, or at least feels he has been slighted. . . . His sense that his own afection is not being fully reciprocated then fnds a vent in the idea, ofen consciously recollected later from early childhood, of being a step-child or an adopted child.45 Freud suggested that feeling adopted, imagining oneself as adopted, is a coping strategy for a subject’s anxiety over belonging, acceptance, or respect. Earlier, we ofered a few examples of the many times that Québec nationalist discourses co-opted—or adopted—the righteous rebellions of other oppressed groups, using empathy as well as analogy to stir similar movements.46 Indeed, comparison with others’ struggles seems a popular modus operandi well beyond Québec, and to draw on themes of adoption (or even orphanhood) when characterizing displaced and marginalized subjects is not a unique act. But there is something altogether diferent going on when immigrants in Québec deploy metaphors of adoption to process their belonging to the Québec national family, as Chung’s narrator does in the opening pages of his novel cited at the start of the present essay. Ethnically excluded from the paterfamilias, subjects like Chung’s protagonist imagine themselves “kinned” by alternative means—intelligibly,

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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if not unconditionally. Te Freudian family romance of imagining oneself as an adoptee, as accepted but not equal, seems to coincide with the ways that immigrants may be Québécois but not de souche. Accommodation, Adoption, and the “Famille Interculturelle”

In the previous section, we suggested that transnational adoptees aford Québécois nationalism an alibi for the ethnonationalist ideologies of de souche and pure laine on which it depends. As both foreign and contained, transnational adoptees do even more: they embody an interculturalist ideal that has also come to saturate Québécois identity politics in the twenty-frst century. Contributing an essay about Québec to a volume focusing on multiculturism and transnational adoption might seem strange, given that province’s hostility toward multiculturalism and propensity toward an interculturalist alternative based on reciprocity and integration to a normative core. Tat interculturalism is envisioned in contrast to the rest of Canada’s ofcial multiculturalism and is a refection of the cultural precariousness of Québec in the second half of the twentieth century. On the one hand, government ofcials rejected Canadian multiculturalism because they felt it was “designed to undermine Québec and its nationalist aspirations”; on the other hand, interculturalism became a mode through which necessary immigration could occur while still attending to “the need for Francophone cultural preservation.”47 Te 2006–7 “reasonable accommodation” crisis that prompted the launch of the Bouchard-Taylor Commission is here quite indicative. On February 8, 2007, Jean Charest’s liberal government appointed the public commission—chaired by Charles Taylor, an Anglo-Montrealer and worldrenowned philosopher, and Gérard Bouchard, a celebrated de souche nationalist historian, sociologist, novelist, public intellectual, and brother of former separatist premier Lucien Bouchard—as a calming gesture and an attempt to fnd a publicly negotiated resolution to an intense national drama, during which populist media outlets and right-wing politicians invested the Québécois “public” with the task of protecting the postCatholic and secular de souche nation against what were deemed (and/or fabricated as) unacceptable demands for “reasonable accommodation” made by ethnic and religious minorities in Québec. Te legal principle of “reasonable accommodation” constitutes an antidiscriminatory legal instrument guaranteed by section 5 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom and is thus a federally enshrined instrument that could eas-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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ily and quickly rekindle and exacerbate Québécois suspicions against Canadian-style multiculturalism. Te touring and mass-mediated public commission ofered members of “la grande famille” from every region of Québec, to have their grievances and concerns heard and validated, if not by the co-commissioners (who sometimes expressed wariness toward overtly racist interventions), at least by the group (“la famille”) in whose name “ordinary citizens” expressed their concerns, fears, or anger. During and since the commission, those who do not belong to the souche—especially Muslims, Orthodox Jews, and Sikhs—became the source of popular scorn as ungrateful, unloving, unsupportive new Québécois (or new kin, adopted kin), turning their back to the collective (or the collective’s) memory and to the deeply felt and lived sense of the historical and cultural vulnerability of the paterfamilias. On one side, the “tolerant” Bouchard-Taylor report responded by chastising the impolite or too aggressively xenophobic sons and daughters of the nation, while simultaneously reassuring them of the validity and legitimacy of their sense of historical fragility and their cultural-political sense of precedence; on the other side, the “intolerant” and self-promulgated voices of reason, chief among them Mario Dumont, the leader of the (since-defunct) rightwing Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ), reinvigorated, with a twist, the decolonial rhetoric of the 960s Far Lef, in order to explicitly invite members of the souche to stand up, shed their colonized sense of inferiority, and claim loudly and proudly what they have historically founded, built, and always claimed for themselves: their nationhood and their inalienable right as the ethnocultural (and naturalized) center of political existence on settled land.48 Bouchard and Taylor’s attempt to moderate these heated conversations by reactivating interculturalism as a distinctly Québécois solution to the faws and limits of Canadian multiculturalism propped up feelings and experiences stemming from the same historical souche, the same nationalist structure of feeling, according to which non–de souche diference is to be welcomed and included within an allegedly mutual and reciprocal relationship, albeit a relationship that remains quite paradoxically rooted in the nonnegotiable social, cultural, and political precedence of an insecure majority culture. Te committee’s report states, In its old and recent versions, Québec interculturalism bears a tension between two poles: on the one hand, ethnocultural diversity and, on the other, the continuity of the French-speaking core and the preservation of the social bond. It is also characterized by the

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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variable emphasis placed on the second pole. However, this emphasis, which refects French-speakers’ cultural insecurity and their sensitivity as minorities, mainly expresses itself in heightened vigilance concerning all facets of integration and emphasis on rapprochement (exchanges, communication, interaction, cooperation, the establishment of a common culture, intercommunity action, and mutual enrichment).49 At this stage, it becomes perhaps easier to better envision the very concrete life of the analogies of kinship, adoption, and unconditional love that we have called on in the present analysis: the adopted sons and daughters of the new nation—adopted on account that they do not and cannot share its blood and its historical souche—are to be loved and welcomed among “us” as long as their love for the father nation remains unequivocal, as long as the integrity of the father’s house is not compromised. “La famille québécoise,” under the authority and guardianship of the father as quasisovereign head of the family, thus constitutes (or “reconstitutes”—pun intended) a family in which the sovereignty of the people is deferred to the authority vulnerability of an abstract paterfamilias, a “nous nu” that not only necessitates and demands love from its children (either de souche or immigrants, biological or adopted), always and forever, but also demands that it remain their frst love. “La famille” demands of its children that the nation remains the frst and privileged core of their identity, above and beyond race, ethnic origin, religious life, or “communauté.” “Québec love” demands gratefulness. It is the “degree zero” love of a “Québec crazy about its children.”50 NOTES 1. Ook Chung, La Trilogie Coréenne: Un roman (Montréal: Boreal, 2012), 13: “Le français est ma langue d’adoption, mais n’est-il pas plus juste de dire que c’est elle qui m’a adopté, comme des parents adoptent un orphelin sans son consentement, avec des résultats plus ou moins heureux?” All translations from French to English in this essay are our own. 2. Te phrase “Quiet Revolution” (or “Révolution tranquille”) is used in historical narratives as well as popular and political discourse to describe the modernization and secularization of the Québec state in the decade following the election of Jean Lesage’s Liberal government in 1960. Te phrase is also used to signify a historical threshold between “la grande noirceure” (under Maurice Duplessis’s conservative regime and the authority of the Roman Catholic Church) and the birth of a neo-nationalist welfare state project. Such Manichean vision of national historical progress (from darkness to light) warrants some nuances.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

How to “Kin” the Transnational Adoptee | 255 3. On diferent political and policy attempts to de-ethnicize the nationalist project as a civic project, see Danielle Juteau, “Te Citizen Makes an Entrée: Redefning the National Community in Quebec,” Citizenship Studies 6, no. 4 (2002): 441–58. 4. Raymond Williams, Marxism and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 131. 5. Mark Rifin, Settler Common Sense: Queerness and Everyday Colonialism in the American Renaissance (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014). 6. Te Parti libéral du Québec (PLQ) regained power in 2014. In 2017, under the leadership of Premier Philippe Couillard, they introduced (and, this time, passed) Bill 62, an act to foster adherence to state religious neutrality. Te bill is widely understood as a veiled (no pun intended) but obvious preemptive attempt to fank the main opposition parties (the Parti Québécois and the Coalition Avenir Québec), both of which are betting on identity politics, laïcité and a growing and paranoid nationalist obsession with Islam as part of their electoral strategies. 7. Mark Rifin, “Settler Common Sense,” Settler Colonial Studies 3, no. 3–4 (2013): 334. 8. Chantal Nadeau, “Queer Noir: Homocolonialism in Vallières’s Nègres blancs d’Amérique,” in Queer Courage: Te Birth of a New Nation (New York: Fordham University Press, forthcoming). 9. Te enduring historical mythology of French Canadians as a “peuple metissé,” a people with “Indian blood,” has taken a second life (powerfully so) in recent Québécois popular discourse, with the theatrical release of the documentary L’empreinte (dir. Y. Bolduc and C. Poliquin, 2015), which repackaged this proposition for wider audiences. Te flm was narrated by popular Québécois actor Roy Dupuis, who built a career embodying—on big and small screens—the virile and wild ruggedness of “coureurs des bois” masculinity. 10. Sean Mills, Te Empire Within: Postcolonial Tought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal (Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010). 11. Denys Arcand, “Cinéma et sexualité,” Parti pris 1, no. 9–11 (1964), 96. 12. Pierre Maheu, “L’Oedipe colonial,” Parti pris 1, no. 9–11 (1964): 19–29. 13. On this topic, see Robert Schwartzwald, “Fear of Federasty: Québec’s Inverted Fictions,” in Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex, and Nationality in the Modern Text, ed. Hortense J. Spillers (New York: Routledge, 1991), 185. 14. Maheu, “L’Oedipe colonial,” 28–29. 15. Arcand, “Cinéma et sexualité,” 96–97. 16. Maheu, “L’Oedipe colonial,” 29. 17. “[L]’attachement que j’avais pour Barbara n’était que le symbole d’une transition. Je crois que cet attachement était au service de ma propre recherche.” Le chat dans le sac, directed by Gilles Groulx, produced by. Jacques Bobet, National Film Board of Canada, 1964. 18. Chantal Nadeau, “C.R.A.Z.Y. Nous/Nu,” Nouvelles Vues 9 (Fall 2008): 3: “[dont] la peau . . . éblouit par sa blancheur.” 19. Nadeau, 3. 20. “sa propre identité, sinon sa souveraineté de sang.” Nadeau, 4. 21. C.R.A.Z.Y., directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, produced by Pierre Even and Jean-Marc Vallée, TVA Films, 2005. 22. Nadeau, 4: “celui qui domine, celui qui fait loi: le nous québécois, celui qui pose

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

256 | Adoption and Multiculturalism l’ethnicité comme une tache aveugle (celle sur soi) et l’autre comme un echo vide, une voix sans corps, un murmure qui sonne bien, mais qui demeure lointain.” 23. Nadeau, 3: “cleansed and free of suspicion.” 24. Nadeau, 7. 25. Laura Beauvais-Godwin and Raymond Godwin, Te Complete Adoption Book: Everything You Need to Know to Adopt a Child, 3rd ed. (Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2005), 231. 26. Godwin and Godwin, 231. 27. Even though popular support for formal sovereignty has been dwindling in the last decade, we contend, in this essay, that the general nationalist structure of feeling that animates the sovereignty project remains strong and unabashed, as evidenced by recent debates about immigration, identity, laïcité, accommodation, and the perceived exceptionality/fragility of francophone Québec in Anglophone North America. In other words, Québécois nationalism—as an aspirational collective project attached to language as identity, language as culture, narratives of descendancy, and cultural specifcity as vulnerability—is not and has never been a strictly sovereigntist project. 28. Kerry O’Halloran, Te Politics of Adoption: International Perspectives on Law, Policy, and Practice, 3rd ed. (New York: Springer, 2015), 375. 29. Tarah Brookefeld, Cold War Comforts: Canadian Women, Child Safety, Global Insecurity, 1945–1975 (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2012), 191. 30. Brookefeld, 191. 31. Brookefeld, 194. 32. Karen A. Balcolm, Te Trafc in Babies: Cross-Border Adoption and Baby-Selling Between the United States and Canada, 1930–1972 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011). 33. Howard Alstein and Rita Simon, eds., Intercountry Adoption : A Multinational Perspective (New York: Greenwood, 1991), 14. 34. Chantal Collard, “Te Transnational Adoption of a Related Child in Québec, Canada,” in International Adoption: Global Inequalities and the Circulation of Children, ed. Diana Marre and Laura Briggs (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 122. 35. Collard, 122. 36. Collard, 124. 37. Collard, 124. 38. Collard, 120. 39. Sara Dorow and Amy Swifen, “Blood and Desire: Te Secret of Heteronormativity in Adoption Narratives of Culture,” American Ethnologist 35, no. 3 (2009): 565. 40. Nadeau, “C.R.A.Z.Y. Nous/Nu,” 9. 41. Mark Jerng, Claiming Others: Transracial Adoption and National Belonging (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), xii. 42. Signe Howell, Te Kinning of Foreigners: Transnational Adoption in a Global Perspective (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006), 64. 43. Howell, 64–65. 44. Judith Butler, “Is Kinship Always Already Heterosexual?,” Diferences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 13, no. 1 (2002): 14–44. 45. Sigmund Freud, Te Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay (New York: Norton, 1989), 298. 46. On this topic, see also Bruno Cornellier, “Te Struggle of Others: Pierre Vallières,

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

How to “Kin” the Transnational Adoptee | 257 Québécois Settler Nationalism, and the N-Word Today,” Discourse: Journal for Teoretical Studies in Media and Culture 39, no. 1 (2017): 31–66. 47. Miriam Chiasson, “A Clarifcation of Terms: Canadian Multiculturalism and Québec Interculturalism,” Te Management of Diversity, 5. 48. Mario Dumont, “Une constitution québécoise pour encadrer les ‘accommodements raisonnables’—Pour en fnir avec le vieux réfexe minoritaire,” bulletin, January 16, 2007, http://bulletin.adq.qc.ca/bulletins/2007-01-17_25.html. Dumont insisted that Québécois people must assert those values “de souche européenne de par l’origine de ceux et celles qui ont fondé le Québec.” 49. Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor, Building the Future: A Time for Reconciliation; Report (Québec: Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reliées aux diférences culturelles, 2008): 119. 50. Nadeau, “C.R.A.Z.Y. Nous/Nu,” 3–4: “Québec fou de ses enfants.”

REFERENCES Alstein, Howard, and Rita Simon, eds. Intercountry Adoption: A Multinational Perspective. New York: Greenwood, 99 . Arcand, Denys. “Cinéma et sexualité.” Parti pris , no. 9– ( 964): 90–97. Balcolm, Karen A. Te Trafc in Babies: Cross-Border Adoption and Baby-Selling Between the United States and Canada, 1930–1972. Toronto: Univeristy of Toronto Press, 20 . Beauvais-Godwin, Laura, and Raymond Godwin. Te Complete Adoption Book: Everything You Need to Know to Adopt a Child. 3rd ed. Avon, MA: Adams Media, 2005. Bouchard, Gérard, and Charles Taylor. Building the Future: A Time for Reconciliation; Report. Québec: Commission de consultation sur les pratiques d’accommodement reliées aux diférences culturelles, 2008. Brookefeld, Tarah. Cold War Comforts: Canadian Women, Child Safety, Global Insecurity, 1945–1975. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 20 2. Butler, Judith. “Is Kinship Always Already Heterosexual?” Diferences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 3, no. (2002): 4–44. Chiasson, Miriam. “A Clarifcation of Terms: Canadian Multiculturalism and Québec Interculturalism.” Te Management of Diversity. 20 4. Chung, Ook. La Trilogie Coréenne: Un roman. Montréal: Boreal, 20 2. Collard, Chantal. “Te Transnational Adoption of a Related Child in Québec, Canada.” In International Adoption: Global Inequalities and the Circulation of Children, edited by Diana Marre and Laura Briggs, 9–36. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Cornellier, Bruno. “Te Struggle of Others: Pierre Vallières, Québécois Settler Nationalism, and the N-Word Today.” Discourse: Journal for Teoretical Studies in Media and Culture 39, no. (20 7): 3 –66. Dorow, Sara, and Amy Swifen. “Blood and Desire: Te Secret of Heteronormativity in Adoption Narratives of Culture.” American Ethnologist 35, no. 3 (2009): 563–73. Freud, Sigmund. Te Freud Reader. Edited by Peter Gay. New York: Norton, 989.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

258 | Adoption and Multiculturalism Howell, Signe. Te Kinning of Foreigners: Transnational Adoption in a Global Perspective. New York: Berghahn Books, 2006. Jerng, Mark. Claiming Others: Transracial Adoption and National Belonging. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 20 0. Juteau, Danielle. “Te Citizen Makes an Entrée: Redefning the National Community in Quebec.” Citizenship Studies 6, no. 4 (2002): 44 –58. Maheu, Pierre. “L’Oedipe colonial.” Parti pris , no. 9– ( 964): 9–29. Mills, Sean. Te Empire Within: Postcolonial Tought and Political Activism in Sixties Montreal Montréal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 20 0. Nadeau, Chantal. “C.R.A.Z.Y. Nous/Nu.” Nouvelles Vues 9 (Fall 2008) : - 5. Nadeau, Chantal. “Queer Noir: Homocolonialism in Vallières’s Nègres blancs d’Amérique.” In Queer Courage: Te Birth of a New Nation. New York: Fordham University Press, forthcoming. O’Halloran, Kerry. Te Politics of Adoption: International Perspectives on Law, Policy, and Practice. 3rd ed. New York: Springer, 20 5. Puar, Jasbir K. Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. Rifin, Mark. “Settler Common Sense.” Settler Colonial Studies 3, no. 3–4 (20 3): 322–40. Rifin, Mark. Settler Common Sense: Queerness and Everyday Colonialism in the American Renaissance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 20 4. Schwartzwald, Robert. “Fear of Federasty: Québec’s Inverted Fictions.” In Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex, and Nationality in the Modern Text, edited by Hortense J. Spillers, 75–95. New York: Routledge, 99 . Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 977.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Coda

We compiled this collection of texts over fve years, with the goal of coming together across the vast diferences in our adoptive lands, regions, and continents—North America, Europe, and the Pacifc. Our aim was to diversify how scholars imagine transnational and transracial adoption in various receiving countries through the lens of multiculturalism. As we outlined in the introduction, the several commonalities we saw across different multiculturalist models were accompanied by stark diferences. When we set out, this collection centered on place, but as the project progressed (and as is expected with collaborative work), it became afected by not just space and place but also time. In some ways, fve years seem like an incredibly short period. In others, especially when we refect on how the world rapidly changed within that time, fve years feel like an eternity. Tis collection has developed to reveal how much can change in just a handful of years and how rapidly discussions and expressions of multiculturalism can transform, especially when multiculturalism is linked to national narratives in a globalized world. For instance, when we frst invited scholars from around the world to respond to our call to discuss adoption and multiculturalism from their diferent disciplinary perspectives, Americans and Canadians alike were intrigued by the dynamic combination of Barack Obama, as a US president gaining confdence at the peak of his second term in ofce, and Justin Trudeau, as a newly minted Canadian prime minister. Mainstream news outlets romanticized that charismatic team of progressive leaders who, while not overtly radical in race politics, were at least sympathetic to it— or wanted people to believe so. Te stark contrast between then and the time of this collection’s publication is palpable. With increasingly emboldened support from white supremacist groups and/or the Far Right, ignited, in both Canada and the United States, by the election of Donald Trump in 20 7, multiculturalism has taken on a very diferent hue. Moreover, radical 259 Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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antiracist Canadians were already dubious of Trudeau’s liberal politics, which have revealed themselves to lean even more right-wing and antiIndigenous as time has passed. While Canada was heralded as a refuge for many dislocated and endangered people in the past few years, it has seen a rise in anti-immigrant, especially anti-Muslim, ideologies and practices. In the most practical terms, the context in which immigration, including refugee immigration, happens (or does not) is very diferent at this volume’s publication than fve years before. To take one example, deportation has reached crisis levels, especially in the United States, where thousands of children are currently in custody because they or their parents have been targeted as being “illegal.” It is not surprising that these inhumane deportation practices can be linked to adoption: as parents are separated from children and as children are traumatized in detention centers resembling concentration camps, child welfare agencies intervene with the solution of fostering and adopting children. In relation to transnational adoption, recent anti-immigrant practices highlight the threat faced by thousands of stateless foreign-born adoptees whose adoptive parents failed to secure citizenship for them and who are excluded from protective policies like the US Child Citizenship Act of 2000, which retroactively guarantees citizenship to only adoptees born afer 983. For instance, Adam Crapser, adopted from South Korea and raised in the United States, was deported to his country of origin and fled a 20 9 complaint, alleging that the South Korean state and his adoption agency were culpable to negligent behavior for not ensuring that his American citizenship had been secured afer he was adopted. Adoption scholars have given attention to the experiences of Crapser and many other transnational adoptees, born in various countries of origin, who are in similar situations, as well as to the networks and organizations fghting for their interests, such as the Adoptee Rights Campaign. In Europe, the 20 5 “refugee crisis year,” following the sad failures of the Arab Spring, the intensifcation of the murderous Syrian civil war, and the sudden emergence of the terrorist “ISIS state” in West Asia, led to hundreds of thousands of refugees, primarily from the Middle East and parts of Africa, seeking asylum in mainly Germany and Sweden. Since then, millions of Europeans have increasingly become attracted to the Far Right. In the European election of 20 9, almost ffy million citizens of the European Union voted for Far Right parties, representing almost one-quarter of the total votes cast, and country afer country on the European continent has seen Far Right parties as part of their government or backing

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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certain, usually right-wing governments. Even if the previous European discourse on multiculturalism might have been a bit shallow, at least the ofcial celebration of multicultural Europe was very diferent from the current situation, which is marked by right-wing populism and extreme nationalism condemning multiculturalism, particularly in regard to Muslims, as a threat to “European identity.” Given the heterogeneity among the various nation-states of Europe and the diferences between the still-afuent Northern and Western Europe and the much poorer Southern and Eastern Europe, it is difcult to tell how the explosive surge in Far Right support among the white majority population has afected adoption politics and discourses and the situation of adoptees themselves. Te number of transnational adoptions has continued to decrease dramatically in every European country, but it is difcult to say if that dwindling has anything to do with the rise of the Far Right and the backlash against multiculturalism. Other reproduction technologies, not least surrogacy, seem to have taken over transnational adoption, even in countries like Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, always the biggest receivers, in relation to population size, of foreign-born adopted children in Europe. Adult transnational and transracial adoptees are being portrayed more and more as “successfully integrated immigrants” in right-wing propaganda in countries like Sweden, and politicians who are adopted themselves belong to right-wing parties in many Western European countries. On a more daily basis, nonwhite adoptees risk encountering and experiencing racial discrimination and hate crimes just like other immigrants and minorities of color in Europe, due to the increasing support for the Far Right following the so-called refugee crisis year. Te issue of citizenship has not yet come to the forefront, however, in relation to transnational adoption and transnational adoptees in Europe, and there are no reports about deportations of adoptees, although there are probably individual adoptees who hold dual citizenships because their citizenship in their birth country has not been severed by their adoptive parents. Transracial adoption has also come to the forefront in the debate concerning the so-called ISIS children and in relation to Roma children. Ulf Kristersson, leader of the biggest Swedish right-wing opposition party, an adoptive father himself, and previously the chairman of the second biggest adoption agency in the Western world (the Swedish Adoption Center), has called for the adoption of the “ISIS children” who are stuck in prisonerof-war camps afer the fall of the last stronghold of ISIS in Syria. Matteo

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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Salvini, Italy’s strongman and leader of the powerful populist party La Lega, has argued that Roma children should be removed from their mothers and communities to be adopted by non-Roma majority Italians. Te sociopolitical environment in Australia, the Pacifc Western nation considered in this collection, has also shifed to more conservative approaches. Te Liberal Party took power in 20 4 under Prime Minister Tony Abbott, followed by Malcolm Turnbull in 20 5 and Scott Morrison in 20 8. During that time, the political discourses and policies of multiculturalism began to wane. Currently, politicians and mainstream media are directing the nation’s attention toward ideas of security and citizenship in ways that can push against past ideas of multiculturalism as part of the nation’s identity. Tat push includes four main moral panics refecting similar trends in the United States: frst, over asylum seekers and “boat people”; second, about Black African Australian youth not integrating and instead turning toward violence and street gangs; third, over Muslims as potential terrorists; and four, over Asians and Covid- 9. Exploring how the xenophobia and racism encouraged by these “panic attacks” impacts nonwhite adoptees and their families is an area for future research. Citizenship can also be a vulnerable issue for intercountry adoptees in Australia. Not until changes to adoption visa laws in 984 and a 20 5 amendment to Australia’s Citizenship Act of 2007 did citizenship become a legal expectation for children adopted from other nations. For many individuals who were adopted prior and might unknowingly be without citizenship, deportation issues refect those seen in the United States. A key example is the case of Edward McHugh, who was adopted from the Cook Islands at the age of six and faced deportation in 20 8 at age ffy. McHugh holds an Australian birth certifcate and passport stating that he is Australian, but his adoptive parents did not apply for citizenship for him when he was a child. His order of deportation arose from his breach of section 50 of the Migration Act due to a criminal conviction. He awaits court decisions while being held in an immigration detainment facility. Te ground gained during the time of the 2008 national apology to Australia’s Stolen Generations by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of the Labor Party may, in hindsight, be only symbolic, as the placement of Indigenous children in out-of-family care has doubled since. Rudd also issued a formal apology in 2009 to the Forgotten Generation made up of Australians removed as children from their families and placed into state institutional and foster care, many of whom sufered abuse. A number were forced child migrants involved in Australia’s immigration programs from Britain and some parts of Europe up to the twentieth century, but the apology was

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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not openly extended to include children adopted internationally afer the 950s. Meanwhile, adoptions into Australia from other nations continue to unfold, albeit in smaller waves than in European and North American nations. According to the most recent government data available, only 269 intercountry adoptions were approved into Australia in 2008, and that fgure has steadily dropped each year, with only 63 intercountry adoptions recorded in 20 8. Tat downward trend may indicate the impact of more careful practices to safeguard children from illicit adoptions. Te United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Hague Convention both recommend intercountry adoption only as a fnal option, afer attempts at keeping children with their original families and communities are exhausted. Such considerations are also voiced by adoptee-led groups, such as Intercountry Adoptee Voices, a network run by Lynelle Beveridge, a Vietnamese adoptee who led a delegation of adoptee groups to meet with authorities in Te Hague in June 20 9. At the same time, postadoption services for transnational adoptees in Australia are being stripped of funding. Te depletion of resources neglects the needs of older individuals impacted by past adoption practices as well as adoptees from the millennial generation and younger. It includes the 20 8 removal of federal funding for adoptees to access search support free of charge through the Intercountry Adoption Tracing and Reunifcation Service facilitated by International Social Services. Since the Pacifc focus of the present collection is limited to Australia, the unfolding of adoption issues in neighboring nations, such as New Zealand, remains a rich and underexamined area of study. Still, the issues raised in the analyses herein can ofer insights for a broader range of contexts, including future policies and practices. A broader focus is vital for us to understand the impacts of adoption across life courses, countries of adoption, and generations. Generally speaking, conservative approaches to multiculturalism and immigration weigh heavily in places around the world at the time of this collection’s publication. Te long-term impacts on adoption, including transnational and transracial adoption, are not yet known, but we can anticipate dangers that might lie ahead, in some cases in very stark contrast to the diferently insidious efects of liberal multiculturalism. Te situation leaves this volume’s editors in a curious place and with a paradox. While the majority of its essays challenge and subvert the tidy liberal sentimentalist narratives that enable the continuation of transnational and transracial adoption, and while we editors encourage the dismantling of so many idealist approaches to multiculturalism, we are now faced with

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

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a reductive and conservative counterapproach that has declared war on liberal multiculturalism. We conclude this study pondering what a comfortable nonidealist, antiracist approach to transracial adoption might look like, if one is at all possible. In the course of the preparation of this collection, we have seen both liberal and conservative models and the potential damage they cause. We look forward to seeing how critical adoption scholars engage with our global political climate in the years to come and how they will navigate the obvious polemical confict of liberal multiculturalism and reductive conservatism in the future.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Contributors

Bruno Cornellier is an assistant professor of cultural studies in the English Department at the University of Winnipeg. He is the author of La “chose indienne”: Cinéma et politiques de la représentation autochtone au Québec et au Canada and several articles on the subject of settler colonialism. His research focuses on race, settler nationalism, cinema, and cultural theory. Katrien De Graeve is a postdoctoral researcher at the Research Foundation–Flanders, an affiliate to the Department of Languages and Cultures at Ghent University. She recently worked as a fellow of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. She holds a PhD in comparative sciences of culture from Ghent University, and her doctoral thesis examined parenting practices and belonging in transnational Ethiopian adoption in Belgium. Her research interests include the intersection of, on the one hand, critical care, kinship and family studies, and the anthropology of migration and postcoloniality and, on the other, transnational adoption and guardianships of refugee minors. Patricia Fronek is a senior lecturer at the School of Human Services and Social Work at Griffith University. She is a member of the Australian College of Social Workers and the president of Australian and New Zealand Social Work and Welfare Education and Research. Her research concentrates on intercountry adoption in Australia, and her fieldwork has related to health, disability, adoption, and surrogacy issues. Fronek has led research projects in these areas, presents at conferences, and publishes her work in peer-reviewed books and journals. Riitta Högbacka is an adjunct professor of sociology at the Department of Social Research at the University of Helsinki. Her research examines glo265 Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

266 | Adoption and Multiculturalism

balization and global inequality, changing family forms, transnational adoption, and the circulation of body parts. She is the author of Global Families, Inequality and Transnational Adoption: The De-Kinning of First Mothers (20 6), and guest editor of a special issue on transnational adoption for Genealogy (20 9). Margaret Homans is a professor of English and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Yale University. She teaches feminist literature, Victorian literature, queer studies, and courses on adoption narratives and is the author of The Imprint of Another Life (20 3). Other notable adoption studies by her have appeared in Narrative, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, and Contemporary Women’s Writing. Tobias Hübinette is an associate professor in intercultural studies at Karlstad University in Sweden and has a doctoral degree in Korean studies. His research and writings focus on issues concerning (post)colonialism, race, whiteness and Swedishness, National Socialism and fascism, KoreanSwedish and East Asian–Swedish relations, and transnational adoption and transracial adoptees. He is a member of TRACK (Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea) and is engaged in contexts related to adoption and Korea. Sibo Kanobana graduated from Ghent University with a master’s in comparative sciences of culture. He is a policy advisor for ethnic diversity, intercultural communication, and multilingualism at that university’s Diversity and Gender Policy Unit. He coauthored a book about the forced adoption of mixed-raced children from Belgian Congo into Belgium. His writings focus on the black experience and interculturalism, and he is currently working on an ethnographic study on race, identity, and black cultural practices in Flanders. Kimberly McKee is an assistant professor in the Department of Liberal Studies at Grand Valley State University. She received her PhD in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies from the Ohio State University and is the assistant director / secretary of the Korean American Adoptee Adoptive Family Network (KAAN). She is currently revising her book manuscript about what she declares is the transnational adoption industrial complex— the neocolonial, multimillion-dollar industry that commodifies children’s bodies. Her book will center the voices of transnational adoptees as the authorities for understanding adoption experiences.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Contributors | 267

Lene Myong is a professor of gender studies at the University of Stavanger, Norway. She is cofounder and member of Think Tank Adoption (Tænketanken Adoption), a group of transnational adoptees committed to creating new and interdisciplinary perspectives on adoption and adoptionrelated themes. She is coeditor of the anthology Critical Kinship Studies (20 6), and her work has been published in such journals as Cultural Studies and Sexualities. Kim Park Nelson taught comparative race and ethnic studies and Asian American studies as an associate professor of American multicultural studies at Minnesota State University Moorhead. Her research focuses on the lived experiences of Korean American adoptees, the social politics of race, American adoption and racial representations, and public discourse around transnational and transracial adoption. She is the author of Invisible Asians: Korean American Adoptees, Asian American Experiences, and Racial Exceptionalism (20 6). Heidi Ruohio received her doctorate in social work in 20 6. Her research interests include transnational adoptees’ experiences of belonging as well as identity and ethnicity issues, (in)visibility of migration. She has worked several years as a university teacher in social work at the University of Jyväskylä, and now develops national social work education in regard of adoption-related issues. Zlatko Skrbiš is PVC at Australian National University and a professor of sociology in the university’s School of Social Science. His research focuses on questions about identity in transition, culture, and migration. He is the author of many articles and four books: Long-Distance Nationalism ( 999), Constructing Singapore (with Michael Barr, 2008), The Sociology of Cosmopolitanism (with Gavin Kendall and Ian Woodward, 2009), and The Uses of Cosmopolitanism (with Woodward, 20 3). He is currently involved in two projects: Cosmopolitan Encounters in Contemporary Australia (with Woodward) and Social Futures and Life Pathways of Young People in Queensland (with Bruce Tranter and Clive Bean). Jessica Walton is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. Her academic background is in sociocultural anthropology. Her research focuses on intercountry adoption and issues of identity and belonging for transnational adoptees and has also concentrated on everyday experiences of racism in education and on interethnic relations in South Korea. Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

268 | Adoption and Multiculturalism

Indigo Willing is a research fellow at the Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research at Griffith University and a Humanities Traveling Fellow sponsored by the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She was a Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Fellow for a Vietnamese diaspora project at the University of Massachusetts. Willing received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for her volunteer work developing the Adopted Vietnamese International network. Her research focuses on cultural diversity in Australia, migration, ethnicity, family studies, and transnational adoption. Jenny Heijun Wills is an associate professor of English and Chancellor’s Research Chair at the University of Winnipeg. Her research and teaching focus on Asian American and African American literatures and cultures. She is the author of several articles and book chapters on transnational, transracial Asian adoption and of the award-winning memoir, Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related (Penguin Random House Canada). Richey Wyver is currently studying for a master’s degree in international migration and ethnic relations at Malmö University. He researches and writes about international and transracial adoption from a postcolonial theoretical lens. He is active in campaigning for adoption reform and for the rights of adoptees and families of adoption loss, and he plans to continue his research about postcolonial theory and international adoption at the doctoral level. Research Assistants, University of Winnipeg

Rachel Epp Navdeep Gill Dunja Kovacevic Funding and In-Kind Support

Te Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Te Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, Stanford University Te Research Ofce at the University of Winnipeg

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Index

abortion, 3, 225–26, 229 activism, , 244; activist, 80, 99, 0 , 5– 6, 230, 244 Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, 82, 84–85 Adopters (adoptive parents), 24, 26, 35, 44–45, 47, 50–59, 00–6, 08–9, 0, –2 Afghanistan, 79–80 Africa, 0, 47, 50, 57, 26, 84, 20 , 204, 207, 232, 260; African, 3, 82, 77–79, 84–87, 90, 202–3, 207–8, 2 , 2 3– 5; Africanness, 80; Central Africa, 3, 5, 3, 204, 209 Afro-descent. See Black People Agamben, Giorgio, 246 agency, 45, 53, 205 Ahluwalia, Pal, 29 Ahmed, Sara, 29, 8 –82 Åkesson, Jimmie, 36 Allen, Moses, 64 Allen, Satchel, 64 Allen, Woody, 2, 5 –52, 59–60, 63– 66 altruism, 22, 26 ambiguity, 8, 3, 39, 20 , 2 3, 2 6, 250 ambivalence, 56, 70, 75, 83, 85, 0, 28, 3 , 37, 39, 42, 208, 244 Anagnost, Ann, 86 Angelides, Steven, 59 Anthias, Floya, 20 antiracism, 4, 26, 29, 44; Canada, 260; color-blind, 2, 29, 43, 224; international adoption, and, 26, 3 –33, 230– 33; multiculturalism, and, 4, 3– 4, 27,

32, 40–43, 224; national identity, 2, 26; nonidealist, 264; political, ; Sweden, 2, 4, 2– 4, 32, 40, 42–43, 224, 230–33; transracial adoptee mimics, 40–43 apology, 9, 262 appropriation, 3 Arcand, Denys, 245 Asianness, 36 A Single Square Picture (Robinson), 85 assimilation, 8, 39, 42, 83, 247; adoptees of colour, 83, 90; “American” lifestyle, 6; assimilationist, 5, 7, 23, ; Australian policies, 23; class, and, 9 ; Denmark, , 5; discourse, 53; Finland, 80; forced, 30, 227; kinning projects, 4, 240–4 ; logics, ; national specifcity, 2; rhetoric, 65; transnational adoption, and, 53 attachment, 25, 69, 86, 43, 243 attitude, 22, 26, 46–47, 58, 75, 88, 37–38, 64, 8 , 84–85, 225 Australia, 2–4, 8– , 2 –25, 29–30, 37–39; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands, 9, 47; Australian, 9– , 2 , 23, 25–36, 44– 52, 55–59; Australianness, 5 , 56, 59; 50; First Australians, 2, 7, 8–9, 27; Lost Innocents, 9; Queensland, 50; Stolen Generation, 9, 262; White Australia policy, 9, 23, 29 authenticity, 34, 5 , 4 , 42, 209; nonauthentic, 34 autochthony, , 3, 99; autochthonic ideology, 3 269

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

270 | Index Balibar, Étienne, 8 , 227 Banting, Keith, 2 Bar-Tel, Daniel, 38 Belgium, 3, 5, 3, 49, 99–200, 202–4, 2 0, 2 4, 2 6; Afro-Belgian, 5 (see also Black People); allochtoonen, 5; autochthonen, 5 belonging, 8, 23, 35–36, 43, 50–5 , 56, 4 – 42, 83, 2 0, 246; adoptive parents, role of, 53–55; anxiety, 25 ; class, 77; conficted, 32; contested, 22, 30, 39; cultural invisibility, 85–86; Ebron, Paula, 48; embodied identities, 32–33; familial, , 54, 8 , 86 9 , 24 , 246; global, 55; Hage, Ghassan, 28–30; Hall, Stuart, 36; language, 239; mimicry, 39, 42; multiple, 3 ; narratives, 53, 55, 57–58, 246; Québécois, 239–42; racial, 44–68, 42, 77, 86, 200– , 2 5– 6, 209, 250; racialization, and, 208–9 Berque, Jacques, 244 Bhabha, Homi K., 2, 27–28, 3 –32, 37, 39, 4 –42, 44 Birkmose, Liselotte Hae-Jin, 5 biogenetic, 26–27, 88 biopolitics, 3, 2 3, 223–24, 226–27, 229, 23 –32, 246 birth country, 49, 52, 54, 07, 4, 7, 2 2, 26 birth culture, 22, 27, 46–47, 49, 52, 57–58, 75, 82–83, 2 2– 3 birth family, 80, 89–90, 57, 2 3 birth father, 70, 76, 80–8 birth parent, , 69–70, 79, 8 , 84–86, 88– 90, 42, 225 birth sibling, , 69–709 Black people, 3, 7 , 83–85, 90, 203, 2 6; Afro-Asians, 50; anti-Black racism, 50–5 blood, 30, 55, 57, 70, 72–73, 76, 78–79, 82– 83, 28–29, 24 , 243, 25 , 253; blood ties, 48, 84, 33, 249 body, 2, 32–33, 26–3 , 33–35, 39, 4 , 44; bodily schema, 33; embodiment, 2, 32; embody, 4, 46, 243, 252; female body, 29, 72–74, 79, 52–53, 56; racialized body, 78, 226 Boltanski, Luc, 85

Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo, 8 Borshay Liem, Deann, 72, 85 Botfeldt, Tytte, 08 Bouchard, Gérard, 242, 246, 252–53 Bouchard, Lucien, 252 Brazil, 20 Briggs, Laura, 54, 09, 232 British Empire, 82, 249; British Commonwealth, 9– 0, 248 Buddhist, 76 Burundi, 209 Butler, Judith, 25 Canada, 4–5, 7, 4, 240, 247–48, 250, 252, 259–60; Canadian, 5, 7–8, 6, 239, 247–48, 253, 259–60; French Canadian, 242, 244, 248; Japanese Canadian, 6 Caribbean, the, 3–4, 20 Carruthers, Ashley, 3 –32 categorization, 56, 4 ; categorize, 29, 3 , 58, 35, 86–87, 230 celebrity, 47, 49, 82, 230 Césaire, Aimé, 2 4 Chameleon, 36–37 Charest, Jean, 252 Le chat dans le sac (Groulx), 244–45 Chile, 79 China, 50, 78–79, 55, 79, 20 , 203, 247; Australian Chinese diaspora, 52; birth parent searches, 69–70, 89–90; China doll 53–54; Chinatown 53; Chinese, 52, 57, 78, 90, 36–39, 53, 80; Chineseness, 52, 37; Guilin, 79; one-child policy, 89; Sinophobia, 37 Christianity, 47, 82–84; Catholic, 245, 248, 252, Christian, 0, 47, 82–83, 85, 28, 36, 203, 230; Lutheran, , 00, 02 Chung, Ook, 239, 25 citizenship, 5, 36, 8 –82, 204, 2 0– , 260–62, 267; citizen, 6, 44, 53–55, 58, 27, 50, 54, 58, 82, 227, 247, 253, 260; citizenry, 46, 242, 250 civil rights movement, 26, 52, 2 4 Claiming Others: Transracial Adoption and National Belonging (Jerng), 250 class, 54–55, 69, 72, 78, 9 , 20 , 228; classed, 225–26; middle class, 0, 50, 77,

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Index | 271 78, 86, 90–9 , 200, 203; working class, 8 , 53 cross-cultural, 70, 78 Cold War, 4, 50, 55, 83 Collard, Chantal, 249 collectivity/collectives, 29, 38 Colombia, 34, 78–79, 85 colonialism, 2, 8–9, 2, 24, 47, 54, 59 26, 30, 32, 209, 239; anticolonial, 2, 43– 44; colonizer, 83, 28, 39, 44, 244; colonized, 28, 3 , 36, 39, 209, 243–45, 253; decolonial, 242–43, 253; decolonization, 26, 27, 244; decolonized, 245; neocolonial, 3, 2, 56; recolonized, 244 color blindness, 27, 8, 27, 3 , 85; antiracism, 2, 29–3 , 43, 44, 224–25, 23 – 33; celebrating/valorizing, 2, ; Denmark, 07–9; “diference,” and, 2 , 23–24; Flanders, 99–200, 202–4, 2 0– , 2 5– 6; ideologies, 5 , 204, 2 ; language, 23 ; national fantasies, 30, 40; racelessness, 22; racial privileging, 23; racialization, 205; Sweden, 27, 29, 40, 42, 224, 225, 23 ; transcendent love discourse, 07–8, 50–52, 60–62. See also postraciality; racism Confucianism, 77, 80, 84; Confucian, 74– 75, 78, 80 Congo, 5, 202, 204, 209 conservatism, 264; conservative, 24, 242, 245, 262–64 cosmopolitanism, , 54–55, 58–59, 87; cosmopolitan, 6, , 45, 5 , 75–76, 78, 85–86 counter-geographies, 53 Cullen Green, Michael, 50 cultural pluralism, 6 culture keeping, 49 culture work, 49, 52, 54, 2 2– 3 Dahlberg, Paula, 43 David, Ohad, 38 Denmark, 3, 4, 2, 78; Adoption Centre, 00; Adoption House, 6; Adoption Political Forum, 6; adoption reporting, 02–4, – 8; Adoption & Society, 2; color blindness, 07– ; Copenha-

gen, 6; Danishness, 09, 5; Forgotten Children, 04; Kastrup, 09; Korea Klubben, 4– 6; Tink Tank Adoption, 6; transnational adoption discourses, 00– , 05–7 De Graeve, Katrien, 44–45 desire, 3 , 34–35, 00, 0, 33–35, 4 , 44, 53, 55–56, 62, 86, 243, 245 deterritorialization, 2, 3 diaspora, 52, 59, 204, 2 4, 239 Diogenes, 54 disavowal, 3, 36; disavow, 87, 29, 33, 36 discrimination, 25, 28, 4, 39, 77, 8 , 83, 200– , 204, 208, 2 3, 2 5– 6, 229, 26 ; discriminatory, 9, 55; nondiscriminatory, 3, 223–24, 226, 229, 233, 252 displacement, 25, 79, 25 DNA testing, 86 Dorow, Sara, 49, 249 Driscoll Derickson, Kate, 60 Dumont, Mario, 253 Duplessis, Maurice, 245 Ebron, Paula 47 emotion, 7 , 73, 208; emotional, 59, 69– 70, 73–74, 79–8 , 85–86, 89–90, 65, 24 Eng, David, 72 Essed, Philomena, 4 Essentialism, 47 Estonia, 79 ethics, 49, 99; ethical, 53, 59l; unethical, 227 Ethiopia, 50, 56, 6, 79, 202–3, 205, 2 2 ethnicity, 8, 0, 47–48, 80, 85, 2 0– , 2 5, 248; ethnic food, 49; ethnic group, 7, 8 ; ethnic nationalism, 24 –46; symbolic, 32 ethnonationalism, 4, 239–4 , 25 ; ethnonationalist ideology, 252 eugenics, 4, 223–30, 232–33; race hygiene, 225–27 Europe, 5, 0, 2 , 230, 248; Central Europe, 230; Eastern Europe, 9, 2, 44, 26 ; half-European, 244; nonEuropean, 4, 99, 204; Northwestern Europe, 3–4, 228; Western Europe, 77, 79, 90

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

272 | Index exceptionalism, 2 exclusion, , 23, 56, 58, 00, 26, 86, 204, 239, 248 exotic, 32, 34–35, 37, 53–54, 245; exoticization, 205; exoticized, 39, 62, 245; exoticness, 56 Facebook, 82, 86–87 Families with Children from China, 89. See also China Fanon, Frantz, 244 fantasy, 2, 76, 34–35, 54, 56, 58, 6 Farrow, Dylan, 2, 52, 59, 64–65 Farrow, Mia, 2, 5 –52, 60, 64 Faulkner, William, 8 femininity, 55–56, 63, 245 feminism/feminist, 26, 33, 36, 43, 54, 62, 65, 232 fetish, 80, 54; fetishism, 33, 40; fetishization, 35, 56, 6 feldwork, 20 –2 Find Holger Danske (Lee Langvad), 5 Finland, 3–4, 228, 230; cultural invisibility, 87–89; cultural visibility, 83–87; ethnic hierarchies, 77, 80–83; Finnishness, 3, 8 –82, 86, 90–9 ; Helsinki, 78; migration and adoption, 78–80 First Person Plural (Borshay Liem), 72, 85 Flanders 3, 99–200; Black identity, creation of, 2 – 6; blank, 204; color blindness, 202–4; Flemish language, 99–203, 206, 2 0, 2 5; Flemishness, 5, 203, 209– ; racialisation, 205–9; zwart, 202, 206–7 Forkert, Joshua, 25 fostering, 04, 0, 84, 2 , 225, 227, 260; foster mother, 87 Foucault, Michel, 225–27 France, 86, 249; French, 5, 8, 206, 209, 239, 242, 244, 247–48, 253–54 Freud, Sigmund, 25 –52 Fugitive Visions (Trenka), 70–75 Futerman, Samantha, 86, 88–89 Garvey, Marcus, 2 4 gaze, 44, 49, 37, 39, 42, 44, 53–56, 86

generation, 53, 8 –82, 88, 2– 3, 244, 246, 263 genetic, 26, 8 , 89, 57–58, 65, 223, 225, 249 Germany, 2 , 73, 04–5, 07–8, , 79, 227–28, 260; brown children, 07–8 gif, 4, 72, 240 Gilmartin, Mary, 53 Global South, 26, 32, 232–33 globalization, Google, 82 Grant, Charles, 28, 32, 44 Grassby, Al, 25–26 Gray, Kim, 45 Groulx, Gilles, 244 grounded theory, 23, 5 Hage, Ghassan, 2 , 28–30, 47 Haiti, 208, 247, 249 Hall, Stuart, 36 Hannerz, Ulf, 54, 58 Harris, Oliver J. T., 33, 36 Hatje, Ann-Katrin, 225 Heidegger, Martin, 33 hierarchy, 2, 3, 48, 5 , 27, 77, 80–85, 87, 90–9 , 206; hierarchical, 0, 35; hierarchies 0, 46, 75, 32, 44, 78, 80, 89, 90–9 Hirschman, Lisa, 57–58, 65 Te History of Sexuality (Foucault), 225 homeland, 49, 52–53, 7 , 30 homogeneity, 28; homogenization, ; homogenize, , 54, 226; homogenous, 4, 0– , 00, 228, 23 Hong Kong, 37, 50 Hopgood, Mei-Ling, 70, 76–8 , 83–85, 87–88, 90 host land, 53 Howard, John, 23–24, Harmony Day, 24 Howell, Signe, 250 humanitarian, 46, 00– , 03–4, 06, – 2, 55, 80, 86, 203 humanities, 3 hybridity, 3 ; hybrid, 45, 3 , 2 5 idealism, 3, 24, 2, 5 –52 Identity, 28, 33, 48, 57–59, 63, 246–47,

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Index | 273 254; constructions, 44, 45; culture, distinguished, 247; discourses, 8, , 22; ethnic and racial, 7, 3, 23, 32, 35, 47 0, 7, 3 , 4 –42, 8 , 83, 99–222; familial, 55–56; hierarchies of, 0; hyphenated, 3 –32, 36, 44; identifcation, 22, 32, 35–36, 44–45, 5 , 54, 58, 72–74, 78, 90, 32, 39, 6 , 202, 209; markers, 99; mimicry, and, 39; mistaken, 53; national, 2, 4, 7–8, 22–23, 46–47, 5 , 53, 57, 33, 77, 8 , 83, 240, 242, 249 immigrants, 2, 5, 3– 4, 45, 47, 59, 00, 7, 85–87, 99, 204, 246, 254, 26 ; antiimmigration, 4, 77, 80, 260; exemplars of multicultural success, 3, 6; hostility toward, 4, 54, 77, 8 , 90–9 ; immigration policy, 9, 23, 25, 29, 249; Immigration Restriction Act (Australia), 23; kinning, 239–4 ; nativism, and, 8 ; transnational family adoptions, 248–52; White Australia, 9, 23, 29. See also assimilation imperialism, 53, 60, 239, 249; empire, 4, 83, 228; imperial, , 86, 204, 227; imperialist, 56, 243 incest, 2, 52, 56–60, 65–66 inclusion, , 35, 53, 56, 00, 60, 62, 9 India, 4, 50, 55; 3, 28, 78–79, 203, 249; Indian, 0, , 28, 86, 232 Indigeneity, 48; anti-Indigenous, 260; Indigenous People, 7, 8, 24, 244 Infertility, 26, 46, 00, 26, 3 , 34, 200 insider, 202 institution, 9, 80, 08, 6 , 225–27, 229, 232; institutionalization, 3, 224–25; institutionalize, 4–5, 08, 226, 229–32 integration, 7, 3– 4, 2 , 23, 80, 80, 9 , 99, 240–4 , 252, 254; integrationist, 23, 26 interculturalism, 3, 240, 252–53; intercultural, 4, 58, 240–42; interculturalist, 4, 240–4 , 252 International Korean Adoptee Association, 87; Gathering, 87 International Social Services, 263 interpellation, 28–29, 36; misinterpellation, 0, 2 –22, 28–32, 34–35, 36, 46

intersectionality, 2; intersectional, 62, 20 intervention, 3, 99, 3, 227, 242, 253 intimacy, 70, 77, 79, 87, 07, 09, 38, 40, 42, 86 in vitro fertilization, 229 Iran, 80 Iraq, 79–80 Irish, 248 Jaakola, Magdalena, 80 Jacobson, Heather, 49 Japan, 6, 50, 239; Japanese, 53, 239; zainichi, 239 Jerng, Mark, 250 Jews, 230, 245, 248, 253; anti-Semitism, 248 Johnson, Kay Ann, 89 justice, 7 Kase, Sundraya, 6 Kay, Jackie; 80–85, 87–90 Kempf, Arlo, 27 Kim, Eleana, 32, 43, 55 Kim, Hosu, 232 Kim, Hwai Chun, 00 Kim, Jodi, 54 Kindertransport, 230 King, Martin Luther, 2 4 kinning, 4, 34, 85, 240, 250 Klein, Christina, 06 Knowles, Caroline, 57, 59 Korea; adoptees from, 0– 2, 2 –22, 28– 32, 34; gijichon, 55; Korean Australians, 28, 3 –32, 36; Korean Social Services, 03; Koreanness, 30, 38; Korean War, 25, 99, 03, 50; Seoul, 7 , 75, 87 Kymlicka, Will, 7, 2 , 6 Te Language of Blood (Trenka), 70, 76, 78–79 Längtansbarnen (Weigl), 27, 33 Latin America, 0, 78, 232; latina, 85; Latin American, 3, 84–85, 90; latino, 8 Lee Langvad, Maja, 5 Lentin, Alana, 24

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

274 | Index Lewis, Michael, 65 Lewis Herman, Judith, 68 liberalism, , 2, 43; lef-liberal, 26, 43, 228, 230–3 liminal, 63 Lindblad, Frank, 33, 40 Lippard, Cameron D., 8 literature, 2, 48–49, 55, 85, 33, 58, 240, 244, 250; memoir, , 69–90, 7, 64; novel, 27, 35, 239, 25 Lobo, Michele, 47 Lolita (Nabokov), 58 love, 25, 73, 78, 87, 43, 254; apolitical (limits of), 27, 07, 0, 50–5 , 6 ; birth country, 49, 76; birth family, 72–73, 77, 79; color blind, 50, 5 , 60–62; discourse of, 25–27, 62; sexual “love,” 65; transcendent discourse, 07–8, 50–52, 60–62 Lucky Girl (Hopgood), 70, 76, 78 80 Lundberg, Patrik, 35–4 , 44; Gul utanpå, 35 Macaulay, Tomas Babington, 28, 32, 44 McGinnis, Hollee, 83 McKinley, Catherine, 82 Maco, Frank, 52 Maheu, Pierre, 245 Malcolm X, 2 4 Mandela, Nelson, 2 4 marginalization, 5–6, 8–9, 22, 26, 32, 35, 59, 202, 227, 247, 25 Markusson Winkvist, Hanna, 23 Mascarenhas-Keyes, Stella, 202 masculinity, 244–45 Mattson, Greggor, 228 Memmi, Albert, 244 menace, 27–28, 39–40, 42, 44 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 32–33 Middle Brother (Sharp), 7 Middle East, 232, 260 migrants; quiet migration, 46; transmigrants, 44, 48–49, 53. See immigrants Mills, Sean, 244 mimicry/mimic, 3, 2; adoptee as mimic, 29–32, 34–39; belonging, 39, 42;

identity, and, 39; menace, 39–43; nature of, 28–29; transracial adoptee mimics, 40–43 Minh-ha, Trinh T., 36 - 37 Minnesota; Lutheran Social Services, 00, 03; Children’s Home Society, 03; Minneapolis, 02, 07, 4, 7; St. Paul, 02, 4, 7; Teatre Mu, 6 mixed race, , 0 , 07, 09, 0, 5 , 84, 206 morality, 26, 85; moral panic, 262 Moreton-Robinson, Aileen, 6– 7 mourning, 73, 88, 4– 5 multiculturalism; banal, 53, 60–62, 66, 80; everyday, 0; melting pot, 5–6, 8; mosaic, 5, 8; multicultural discourse, , 50; multicultural policy, 7–8, 23–24, 26, 29, 32, 6 ; narratives, 99; ofcial, 7; United States, in, 2, 4–6, 07, , 259–60 multilingualism, 5; multilingual, 3–5 multiplicity, 36 multiracial, 45, 0 , 07, muslim(s), 33, 99, 242, 253, 26 –62; antiMuslim, 260; Islamophobia, 33, 42 Myers, Kit, 37 Nabokov, Victor, 58 Nadeau, Chantal, 243, 246, 249 narrative, 70, 85, 90, 04, 59, 200, 233; adoptee, 4– 5, 8, 36–37, 39, 246; adoptive parents, 3, 45, 50–52, 89, 2 5; belonging, 58; child “rescue” 25, 09, 7– 8; coherent identity, 48, 20 ; counternarratives, 20 ; female sexuality, 52, 54, 58–59, 60, 62, 245; kinship, 249– 50; multicultural, 99; national, 2, 239– 40, 25 , 259; reunion, 72; rewriting, 5 ’ sentimentalist, 263; victim-blaming, 58–59 Nash, Catherine, 48, 57 national identity, 29, 47, 5 ; civic nationalism, 24 –42; ethnic nationalism, 242; ethnonationalism, 25 ; homonationalism, 243; nation as family, 25–26; national narrative, 2, 239–40, 25 ,, 259; nationalism, ,7, 5 , 36, 77–78, 8 , 209– , 24 , 250, 252; nationalist ideol-

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Index | 275 ogy, 78, 8 ; neo-nationalism, 243; racism and nationalism, 77–78, 80–83, 89; white nationalism, 5 , 56 nation building, 46, 50, 223, 228, 232, 233 Native American, 30–3 , 250. See also Indigeneity nativism, 77, 80–8 , 83, 89–90; nativistic ideology, 78, 8 Nazi, 07; 33; 36; 226–27, 230 Netherlands, the, 4, 4 , 228 New Zealand, 5, 8, 263 Nigeria, 70, 82–84; Abuja, 82; Igbo, 82–84; Lagos, 82, 84, Nigerian, 80, 82–83, 85; Nzagha, 82–83; Ukpor, 82 Nkrumah, Kwame, 2 4 Nordic countries, 3–4, 78, 9 ; Nordic race, 223, 225, 227–28, 230–3 ; Scandinavians, 02, 27, 90 norm, 29, 54, 6 , 63–64, 82, 207; heteronormative, 226, 243–45; nonnormative, 57, 59, 65–66, 2 2; normality, 42, 57; normative, 0, 49, 5 –53, 56–57, 0 , 42, 56, 59, 2 2, 246, 252 Norway, 4, 05, 228 Obama, Barack, 5 , 259 Oh, Arissa, 05 O’Halloran, Kerry, 248 Ollen, Elizabeth Weber, 90 ontology, 33; ontological, 2, 22, 33–36, 20 ; ontologies, 22, 34, 36 Oparah, Julia Chinyere, 4 openness, 24–26, 45, 5 , 54–56, 58–59, 86, 243 Operation Babylif, 9, 06, 55 oriental, 2, 52–54, 56, 6 ; orientalism/ orientalist, 2, 52–56, 62, 66 orientation, 23, 28, 45, 47, 59, 242, 246 orphan, 9, 03, 06, 30–3 , 50, 55–56, 59, 6 , 239; orphanage, 232; orphanhood, 239, 25 otherness, 28, 33, 28, 33, 35, 37, 40, 42, 44, 56, 82, 200 outsider, 6, 45, 83, 82, 20 –2, 209 Parizeau,Jacques, 24 –42 parenthood, 46, 58, 80

Parreñas Shimizu, Celine, 54 particularity, 2 –22, 30 Pate, SooJin, 55 patriarchy, 54; heteropatriarchal, 245; patriarchal, 85 patriotism, 54–55, 88 people of colour, 4, , 53, 8 , 82, 204 Perry, Pamela, 82 phenomenology, 32; phenomenological, 22, 32, 36 Philippines, 50, 3, 54, 249 Pinder, Sherrow O., 6 policy 00, 200; anti-adoption, 4; China’s one-child, 89; domestic adoption, 25; immigration, 9, 23, 25, 29, 249; integration, 80; multicultural, 7–8, 23–24, 26, 29, 32, 6 ; race matching, 0; Sweden’s progressive reproduction, 223–33; White Australia, 9, 23, 29 polycentric, 6 Ponte, Iris Chin, 90 popular culture, 86, 53, 63, 66, 2 4 populism, 26 ; populist, 4, 33, 36, 209, 252, 262 postraciality, 2, , 2 , 24, 27, 29, 36, 5 ; discourses, 22; idealism, 3, 24; myths, 3 Pratt, Richard, 30 Previn, Soon-Yi, 5 –53, 59–66 progressivism, , 00; progressiveness, 2, 243 pronatalist 3, 229, 233 psychoanalysis, 69; psychoanalytic, Puar, Jasbir, 243 purity, 3, 2, 54, 60, 225, 228, 240 Québec, 7; C.R.A.Z.Y., 244, 246; de souche, 239–42, 245, 249, 25 –54; métissé, 244; Montréal, 244, 247; Parti pris, 244–45; Parti Québécois, 242; pure laine, 4, 239–40, 249, 252; Quiet Revolution, 240, 242–43 queer, 240, 243, 246; queering, 243; LGBTQ people, 229, 243 racelessness, 22, 27, 29 race science, 3, 223, 228, 230, 232

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

276 | Index racial thinking, 3, 223–24, 226, 228–33 racialization, 29, 36, 54, 54, 6 –62, 66, 80–83, 90, 200, 205–8, 2 5– 6 racism, 2 –22, 23, 24, 27, 35, 54, 8 , 08– 0, 4, 8, 6 –62, 2 5; anti-Black, 50–5 , 207; “culturalist,” 88; denial/dismissal of, 2, 27–28, 46, 0, 204; everyday, 3 , 36, 38, 40–4 , 86, 90, 208–9; internal, 33; nationalism, and, 77–78, 80– 83, 89; racial stereotyping, 46, 7, 3 , 35, 37, 53, 82–83, 87, 204, 207, 209; “racism without races,” 99; structural, 54. See also antiracism; color blindness; postraciality rainbow family, 36 Ralph, David, 56 recognition, 7, 9, 23–24, 28, 36, 53, 77, 84, 04, 8 Red Dust Road (Kay), 80 refugee, 2, 3, 27, 77, 79, 86, 9 , 230, 232, 260–6 reifcation, 46; reify religion, 7, 200, 202, 2 0, 2 5, 248 representation, 25–26, 70, 85, 88, 90, 99, 09, 38, 4 , 53–54, 204 reproduction, 3, 203, 26 ; reproduction technique, 229, 23 –32; Sweden’s progressive reproduction policy, 223–33 “rescue” narrative, 25, 09, 7– 8 reunion, , 5 , š69–72, 76–78, 80–8 , 84– 90, 2 rhetoric, 59, 99, 52, 55, 60–62, 65–66, 83, 230, 240, 253; rhetorical, 62, 240 Rifin, Mark, 242–43 Robb, John, 33, 36 Robinson, Katy, 85 romance, 69, 240, 242–46, 250–52 Romania, 80 Rosaldo, Renato, 82 Russia, 4, 8, 3, 78–79, 83, 87–88; Russianness, 83, 87, 90; Russophobia, 83; Russkie, 83, 87–90 Rwanda, 209, 2 ; Rwandese, 202 Said, Edward, 53 sameness, 23–24, 42 Sassen, Saskia, 53 Saukkonen, Pasi, 79–80

Schueths, April M., 8 Scotland, 83; Nairn, 8 search, v, , 23,69, 80–83, 86, 88—90, 02, 2– 6, 8– 9, 40, 206, 263 secularism, , 00, 243; secular, , 02, 203, 252 sexual abuse, 57–58, 65 sexual violence, 57 sexuality, 56, 64–66, 20 ; female sexuality narratives, 52, 54, 58–59, 60, 62, 245; gendered stereotyping, 52, 54, 56, 59–62, 66, 2 6; hypersexuality, 52; kinship, and, 240, 243–46; nonsexuality, 35 Sharp, Eric, 7 Shin, Sun Yung, 7, 4 Shiomi, Rick, 6 Shohat, Ella, 6 sibling(s), 00; behaviors, 73, 84; connections, 8 , 83, 88; reunions, , 69–90 Signell, Sonja, 33, 40 Sikhs, 253 Sinophobia, 37 Skype, 78, 86–87 slavery, 208. 250; slave trade, 27 slippage, 28, 3 , 37, 39, 245 Social Democrats, 228; Social Democratic, 230 socialize, 22, 32–33, 43, 90 social science, 3, 2 , 47–48 social welfare, , 88, 02, 0, 57, 226–27, 229 solidarity, 7, 2 6; international, 32, 42 Somalia, 79 South Africa, 78–79, 85, 2 4 South America, 8, 26, 85; South Americans, 34–35, 90 South Asia, 26 Soviet Union, 79, 83, 87 Spivak, Gayatri, 29 Sri Lanka, 50 Staeheli, Linda, 59 Stam, Robert, 6 stereotype/stereotyping, 3, 3 , 54, 77; colonial, 204; gendered, 52, 54, 56, 59–62, 66, 2 6; racial, 46, 7, 3 , 35, 37, 53, 82–83, 87, 204, 207, 209 sterilization, 3, 224–29, 232–33

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Index | 277 Sweden; antiracism, 2, 4, 2– 4, 32, 40, 42–43, 224, 230–33; color blindness, 27, 29, 40, 42, 224, 225, 23 ; Family Law and Parental Support Authority, 33; Feminist Initiative, 32; Green Party, 32; mervärdig, 226; mindervärdig, 226; progressive reproduction policy, 223–33; Roma, 225, 227; Saamis, 227, 232; Save the Children, 27; Sweden Democrats, 33, 36; Swedishness, 2, 4, 2, 29–30, 35–39, 4 –44; Travelers, 227–28, 232; Tornedalians, 227, 232 Swifen, Amy, 249 Switzerland, 77–78 Syria, 79 Taiwan, 50, 70, 76–77, 79; Taipei, 78; Taitung, 78; Taiwanese, 70, 78, 83–84 Taylor, Charles, 242, 246, 252–53 Tailand, 50, 79; Tai, 09 Ternstrom, Stephan, 6 third world, 54, 27, 32, 230–33, 244 Tomas, Mary, 60–63 Tigervall, Carina, 40 Till, Emmett, 50 tolerance, 7, 09; intolerance, 2 transnationalism, 5 , 76 trauma, 76, 8 , 30–3 , 57, 250; traumatic, 9, , 70; traumatized 33, 260 Trenka, Jane Jeong, 70–76, 78, 80–86, 88– 90, 7, 4 La Trilogie Coréenne (Chung), 239 Trudeau, Pierre Elliot, 5 Turkey, 3 ; Turkish Australians, 3 –32; Turkishness, 32 twins, 86–88 Twinsters (Futerman), 86, 90 Twitchell, James B., 65 unaccompanied children, 46, 230, 248 United Kingdom, 9, 228, 230; England, 9; global English, 75, 78, 84–86, 88; London, 86–87 United States, 83, 99– 00, 03, 05–7, 7; adoptive parents, practices, 5 , 53, 4, 82; African American, 04, 0– , 50, 2 , 2 4, 248, 262; Asian American, 00, 6, 52–54, 56, 59, 66; Connecticut,

52, 64; Hawaii, 79; Holt, 50; ideological narratives, 09– ; immigration and naturalization services, 02, 260, 262; Latino immigration, 8 ; Los Angeles, 86–87; Midwest, 02–3; multiculturalism, 2, 4–6, 07, , 259–60; Native Americans, 30; racism, 50–52, 248; transnational adoption, 248–50 universality, 2 –22, 28, 30–3 ; nonuniversality, 28; universal, 29, 3 –32, 36, 57, 87, 247 Valentine, Gill, 54 Veronis, Luisa, 48 Vietnam, 25, 44, 50, 03, 06, 79, 247; adopted Vietnamese, 45; Hanoi, 34–35; Vietnamese, 9– 0, 45–46, 06–7, 34– 35, 80, 263; Vietnam War, 9, 25, 46, 06, 0, 7, 250; Volkman, Toby Alice, 89 Walcott, Rinaldo, 7 Wang, Leslie, 90 Wanting a Daughter, Needing a Son: Abandonment, Adoption, and Orphanage Care in China (Johnson), 89 Weide, Robert B., 65 Weigl, Kerstin, 27, 33–35, 44 Werbner, Pnina, 55 whiteness, 6, 0– 3, 00, 8, 30–3 , 62– 64, 84, 89–90, 99, 209, 25 ; cultureless, 82; discourses, 3; disruptions, 59; hierarchies, 46–48; nonwhiteness, 38; not-quite whiteness, 33; power, and, 87–89; social construction, 57, 203, 205, 207; systemic, 35; white privilege, 0– , 48, 39, 6 , 99, 228, 25 ; white space, 2, 35, 39, 4 , 44; Williams, Raymond, 24 –42 World War II, 5, 7, 03, 78, 83, 204, 244, 248 xenophobia, 2 , 09, 5 , 99, 253, 262 Yngvesson, Barbara, 2, 25, 232 Young, Robert, 30–3 , 37, 39 YouTube, 86 Yugoslavia, 79 Zangwill, Israel, 6

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.

Wills, Jenny H, Tobias Hubinette, and Indigo Willing. Adoption and Multiculturalism: Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. E-book, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2020, https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.10032835.