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Placing the “Gift Child” in Transnational Adoption

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Barbara Yngvesson
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Abstract

In this article I focus on discourses of freedom and exclusive belonging that structure the conventions of giving in transnational adoption, and I examine state practices for regulating the production and circulation of children in a global market economy. I argue that while the gift child, like the sold child, is a product of commodity thinking, experiences of giving a child, receiving a child, and of being a given child are in tension with market practices, producing the contradictions of adoptive kinship, the ambiguities of adoption law, and the creative potential in the construction of adoptive families.

Type
Papers of General Interest
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 36 , Issue 2: Special Issue on Nonbiological Parenting , 2002 , pp. 227 - 256
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 Law and Society Association.

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Footnotes

Research on which this paper is based was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant no. SBR-9511 937) and by faculty development grants from Hampshire College. I am grateful to the individuals who agreed to be interviewed for this project, to staff of Stockholm's Adoption Centre, without whose support and assistance it would not have been possible, and to Susan Coutin and Bill Maurer, with whom I have been collaborating on a related project.

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