School of Social Science Seminar Series: Transnational Adoption - A Qualitative Study of Australian Parents of Children Adopted From Overseas
Event Details
- Date:
- Friday, 28 August 2009
- Time:
- 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
- Room:
- 816
- UQ Location:
- Michie Building (St Lucia)
- URL:
- http://socialscience.uq.edu.au/seminars/seminarseries_timetable_200902.pdf
- Event category(s):
Event Contact
- Name:
- Dr Rochelle Stewart-Withers
- Phone:
- 52020
- Email:
- r.stewartwithers@uq.edu.au
- Org. Unit:
- Social Science
Event Description
- Full Description:
- School of Social Science Seminar Series: Transnational Adoption: A Qualitative Study of Australian Parents of Children Adopted From Overseas
Speaker: Indigo Willing (PhD Candidate)
This seminar will discuss a qualitative study of 35 White Australian adoptive parents who reside in Brisbane, Queensland that have transnationally (and trans-racially) adopted children from nations in Asia and Africa.
My research explores the impact transnational adoption has on their lives and ongoing sense of identity, focusing on themes of migration and social constructions of ‘the family’, ‘race’ and ethnicity.
This includes examining the participants’ cultural biographies before they adopted, the circumstances that shaped their decisions to adopt, and how they define, and embody their roles as parents of children with backgrounds different to their own after they have adopted.
My findings reveal that the participants mostly grew up in and identified with predominantly White cultural environments yet in their adult years before they adopted surprisingly shift over to fostering a range of cosmopolitan interests, activities and attitudes following experiences of travel and greater encounters of diversity.
Upon adopting and mostly due to issues of infertility, they are then observed to reconstruct and facilitate a range of transnational ties and performances of ethnicity in order to build a sense of connection to people, places and practices that they associate with adoptees’ birth heritage.
In conclusion, I propose that transnational adoption needs to be seen as a complex, ongoing process that has a profound impact on transnationally adoptive parents’ own sense of identity and belonging. At the same time, I argue that racialised networks of power also shape and complicate how these adopters’ negotiate their families’ multiple heritages and identities.
Directions to UQ
- Google Map:
-
- Directions:
- St Lucia Campus | Gatton campus.
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