Paper short abstract:

Some Spanish families have re-connected and establish a relationship with the family of the child they adopted overseas. How do they confront hegemonic discourses on adoption & kinship? How do they deal with or reproduce cultural differences and inequalities that cross those relationships?

Paper long abstract:

Transnational adoption has been built over the 'clean break principle': the assumption that it was necessary to cut all ties with the past (including any tie with the birth family) to ensure the inclusion of adopted children in their new family and their new nation. However, some adoptive families have re-connected with their children's first families. This practice is highly controversial in Spain and disapproved by most adoption practitioners and adoptee activists. Some of these families have engaged in different kinds of relationships with their children's first families, ranging from the exchange of letters or e-mails to visiting the birth relatives during the holidays. With an ethnographic approach, the study produced data by participant observation in a listserv where these adoptive families share their experiences and insights, and through in-deep interviews with some of those parents. The paper will examine how they contest not only the hegemonic discourse on adoption in Spain, but also on families and kinship. The analysis will take a close look at how these 'transnational family networks' are crossed by cultural differences, inequalities and power asymmetries, and how adoptive families deal with and/or reproduce them.