Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in the realm of Flemish-Ethiopian adoption, this paper explores the capabilities of the parenting work that deals with or tends to deny adoptive children’s migrant status to generate empowerment and inclusivity.

Paper long abstract:

Transnational adoption is often viewed as a way of reproduction, rather than as an involuntary, though privileged migratory movement. This paper, however, argues that thinking of adoptees as migrants has the capacity to put the dramatized and exceptionalized experiences of adoptees in a broader framework, and as such, de-pathologize the adoptees' condition, as well as to lay bare global inequalities that are underlying transnational adoption and that tend to be domesticated within the family. Moreover, focusing on how adoptive families deal with/deny their children's migrant status and on how they cope with privilege and exclusion reveals deeply rooted nativist ideologies and essentialist views on identity that complicate adoptees' (and migrants') lives.

To explore how the migratory condition of adoptees is negotiated within families, I draw upon ethnographic fieldwork and interviews among Flemish parents who have adopted children from Ethiopia, providing descriptive detail about their parenting practices in relation to their children's perceived difference. I investigate (1) how the parenting work can be interpreted as part of processes of 'othering' and subjection as well as self-construction and resistance and (2) if the parenting work can represent a political act of citizenship, capable of generating empowerment and expanding exclusivity. By focusing on transnational adoption as a migratory practice that is negotiated within the realm of the family, this paper aims both to further our understanding and theorization of the dynamics and consequences of transnational adoption and to contribute to an approach in migration studies that is concerned with the intimate and subjective.