Paper short abstract:

The aim of this paper is to explore the blurring of "parents/kinship" with "users/consumers" that pervades the narratives of adoptive families, their organisations, professionals, bureaucrats, and policy makers working on international adoptions in Spain.

Paper long abstract:

Since 2004, Spain has received more internationally adopted children than any other country in the world after the USA. This is a phenomenon leaded by adoptive families organised in powerful associations generally by country of origin of their adopted children. The aim of this paper is to explore the blurring of "parents/kinship" with "users/consumers" that pervades the narratives of adoptive families, their organisations, professionals, bureaucrats, and policy makers working on international adoptions in Spain. Spain has one of the lowest birth rate in the world (1.17 children per woman in 1997 and 1.37 in 2007) and the highest rate in international adoption. In 2006, 43 percent of families who applied for an international adoption in Catalonia -the region with the international adoption highest rate in Spain and in the world per inhabitants- already had children, 52 percent were not infertile and only 35 percent have had some infertility treatment. According to the data and the law, international adoption in Spain is not a form of assisted reproduction. Should be understood this process of 'outsourcing' or 'offshoring' of some reproduction's functions in the same way that other processes of 'outsourcing' or 'offshoring' of productive's functions to the East, South and/or cheaper cost immigrants spaces?