ABSTRACT

Transnational adoption has been celebrated as a form of altruism through which children orphaned by war, natural disasters, or other circumstances are given new homes and the opportunity for better lives. However, it is important to remember that adoption also represents the movement of children, often too young to give consent, across national, and often racial boundaries to become a permanent part of their new families. In this sense, transnational adoption has been critiqued by some, as much as it has been celebrated by others, both for the procedural irregularities that sometimes involve the trafficking of children or the adoption of children who are not true orphans, and for the broader inequalities that define the transfer of children from poorer to wealthier nations, and from the global south to the global north. These critiques do not intend to diminish the altruism of those who wish to adopt, nor the

potential positive aspects of adoption itself. Indeed, many proponents of adoption argue that the transnational adoption system works effectively, giving homes to children who need them. But it is also important to understand key issues associated with the politics of international adoption and the rights of children that frame international adoption as a very specific type of migration. This chapter places the movement of international adoptees within a broader context of

shifting historical and geopolitical conditions, and unequal global flows. Drawing in part on my own research with US families who have adopted from China, and more broadly on the growing transnational adoption literature, I provide an overview of the very specific type of migration that international adoption represents. This form of migration is shaped by the circumstances that orphan children or compel birth parents to relinquish their children for adoption, and the policies and politics within both sending and receiving countries that regulate adoption practices and shape the reception of adoptees into these countries. I discuss the cultural and political economy of transnational adoption, sketching out the

shifting historical and geopolitical contexts that open up adoption flows. I also address more critical approaches toward adoption relating to the commodification and trafficking of children and discussions of adoption as the creation of a forced diaspora (Hubinette 2007).