Adoption with complications: Conversations with adoptees and adoptive parents on everyday racism and ethnic identity
- 6 July 2010
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in International Social Work
- Vol. 53 (4), 489-509
- https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872809359272
Abstract
This study is based on qualitative interviews with 20 adult international adoptees of colour and eight adoptive parents with internationally adopted children in Sweden regarding their experiences of racialization, ethnic identifications and coping strategies. The findings suggest that the non-white bodies of the adoptees are constantly made significant in their everyday lives in interactions with the white Swedish majority population, whether expressed as ‘curious questions’ concerning the ethnic origin of the adoptees or as outright aggressive racialization. The study argues that race has to be taken into consideration by Swedish adoption research and the Swedish adoption community, to be able to fully grasp the high preponderance of psychic ill health among adult adoptees as found by quantitative adoption research.Keywords
This publication has 9 references indexed in Scilit:
- Intercountry adoptees in out‐of‐home care: a national cohort studyActa Paediatrica, 2007
- Suicidal behaviour in national and international adult adopteesSocial psychiatry. Sozialpsychiatrie. Psychiatrie sociale, 2006
- ‘Working harder to be the same’: everyday racism among young men and women in SwedenRace Ethnicity and Education, 2005
- Intercountry adopted children as young adults--A Swedish cohort study.American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 2003
- Suicide in first- and second-generation immigrants in Sweden A comparative studySocial psychiatry. Sozialpsychiatrie. Psychiatrie sociale, 2002
- Suicide, psychiatric illness, and social maladjustment in intercountry adoptees in Sweden: a cohort studyThe Lancet, 2002
- Adopted Children in the Labour Market — Discrimination or Unobserved Characteristics?International Migration, 2002
- Routings: "Race," African Diasporas, and Swedish BelongingTransforming Anthropology, 2002
- A Critique of Postcolonial ReasonPublished by JSTOR ,1999