Transnational Adoption

On January 27th 2015, in the case of Paradiso and Campanelli v. Italy, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decided, by five votes to two, that a child born by surrogacy abroad and those who ordered him enjoy protection of the right to family life even though the child was obtained fraudulently, against payment, without genetic link and after a very short period of cohabitation. The Court concluded that Italy could refuse to recognise the filiation established in Russia, but that taking the child away from the sponsors infringed their right to private and family life.

This paper posits adoption as a function of failed political, economic, and social policies. These policies derive historically from injurious views of populations not ascribed political embodiment. As a tool of dispossession, displacement, and disinheritance, adoption joins other extirpating practices. Given this history, the current focus on Muslim-majority countries as sources for adoptable infants is neither charitable nor coincidental. In this regard, Islamophobia is defined as an additional prejudicial justification for adoption. Islamophobia promulgates this justification based in part on faulty readings of the Quran. This maps readily onto similar use of the Bible. This paper offers a contingent, expansive, and corrective reading of these Books. It advances a countervailing argument for child welfare that questions and resists adoption's negation of family, community, and place.

The aim of this chapter is to analyse the meanings of resemblance within the context of the Catalan family. Resemblance expresses continuity between individuals and is a good starting point for reflecting on how the constitution of a person through kinship is not limited to isolated individuals, but refers to people that relate to one another. It is our hypothesis that family resemblances are not a true confirmation of the biological truths of kinship but rather are linked to the relacional aspect of kinship and to a way of constructing bonds between people. We analyse resemblance as a way of creating continuities between individual persons in a kinship network and also as a way to visualise the double face of Euro-American kinship in the body: that is, what is given and what is made in the constitution of the individual person.

Publikace je určena náhradním rodinám, které vychovávají děti s romskými kořeny, zájemcům o náhradní rodinnou péči a odborníkům, kteří s těmito rodinami pracují.
Teoretická část, zpracovaná Doc. PhDr. Jiřím Kovaříkem, PhD. a Mgr. Martinou Vančákovou, je věnována stručné historii Romů a výsledkům výzkumu, který srovnává úspěšnost náhradní rodinné péče u romských a neromských dětí. Další kapitoly se věnují některým praktickým postupům, které pomáhají pěstounům a osvojitelům budovat pozitivní identitu jejich přijatých romských dětí. Přibližují programy Střediska náhradní rodinné péče určené pěstounům a osvojitelům. Obsahují také několik autentických příběhů romských dětí. Publikaci obohacují fotografie Michala Černého.

A group counseling proposal for the special population of young adult women with a history of foster care and/or adoption. The plight of young adults who have spent some or most of their childhood in foster care or have reached "adulthood" still in crisis is not well known across the general population. This is a group of individuals that have nothing left to lose and everything to gain from therapeutic interventions.

[This article was edited and translated into Arabic for the Legal Agenda newsletter, appearing there under the title: "التبني كأحد مظاهر الإختفاء القسري".]

The dominant cultural mode portrays adoption as an act of charity and beneficence. This despite the growing elaboration to the contrary by adoptees come of age as well as their mothers, families, and communities from whom they go missing. This trope also runs counter to more popular cultural conceptions of adoption. In these the implied absence of filiation is still a mark and a stain on the one so branded. Nonetheless, this stigma is often alleviated via informal kinship practices. On the contrary, those who abscond with children are painted literally as bogeymen. The disparity of viewpoints makes sense when the historical roots of modern-day adoption are reviewed. These roots derive from class-based concepts of the nuclear family and the exaltation of the individual over the community. Historically, adoption evolved from indentured servitude, the emptying of poorhouses, the eradication of the Indigenous, the population of colonies, and the procurement of cheap labor from abroad. The rise of American empire post–World War II necessitated that the mythology of adoption shift to primarily evoke family creation. Its vestigial historical and socially experimental derivations nonetheless categorize adoption as a mutable manifestation of class warfare, as well as of colonial and imperial power.

Informal and/or communal kinship practices are thus inverted and formalized under the rubric “adoption”. In this formalization and use against targeted populations, the origins of the institution carry forward as manifestations of current adoption industry practice. The practice is reinforced and becomes hegemonic. Receiving and source populations continue to reflect the class disparity that has always been at the core of this transfer of children and rupture of filiation. This transfer maps readily onto extirpative practices also based in economic and political class disparities. These include slavery, trafficking, gentrification, deportation, immigration, land occupation, apartheid, incarceration, enforced statelessness, etc. The origins of the practice and its global expansion/universalization reveal an international “cosmopolitan class”. Expanding further, this divide denotes a difference in sheer political embodiment, between polis and zoë. Via the adoption of children across borders and class strata, dominant classes empower nation-state agency in a continuation of colonial and missionary incursions against subject populations. The perpetuation of the practice is based in shared class interests in globalization and the neo-liberal order. In this way, adoption is added to a list of deleterious practices of dispossession, displacement, and disinheritance employed against those deemed to be extraneous to the body politic.

El número de niños abandonados o privados de cuidados familiares ha aumentado de manera alarmante en Bolivia. Este estudio de caso documenta los retos de las adopciones locales en este país. El gobierno ha llevado a cabo nuevas regulaciones que impiden la adopción internacional, pero los organismos de Cochabamba pretenden desarrollar una cultura de adopción local. Tienen experiencia en el desarrollo infantil, e identifican y apoyan a las familias bolivianas de acogida. No obstante, encuentran dificultades para realizar su trabajo por falta de colaboración y sensibilización de las instituciones estatales y jurídicas, las cuales tienen el poder de decisión.

This mixed-methods study examines 20 adult Hong Kong Adoptees (HKADs) with an average age of 53.7 years who attended a Gathering of HKADs in Hong Kong. It has three elements (pre-and post-Gathering surveys and an interview). All participants engaged in two of the three parts of the study, while 14 of those 20 participated in all three parts. Survey data for the HKADs revealed significantly increased comfort with their Hong Kong identities following the visit to Hong Kong. Interviews with 20 attendees yielded themes surrounding reasons for attending; experiences and emotions; and the challenges and benefits of the gathering and returning to Hong Kong.

Friend and comrade Nate George found the following article while researching in the archives of the American University of Beirut. This article, glibly entitled “Child Lib!”, is from the weekly magazine <i>Monday Morning</i>, published by the Karam family. At first glance, especially for adoptees from Lebanon, the article reads like an objective overview of the necessity of adoption in their homeland. Quite on the contrary, it is a troubling read, redolent of much more sinister reactionary forces at work. In terms of Lebanon, it defines the adoptee as a colonized entity from a colonized place, unable to speak of her adoption for having achieved the "Lebanese dream": a pure foreign acculturation. I’m publishing it here with extensive notes based on my own research and what I’ve learned about this place these past eleven years. I hope it might be useful to those trying to piece together the puzzle of their adoption narrative.

"Las relaciones de parentesco han sido definidas en términos de altruismo y mutualidad de los seres. En estas relaciones se sintetiza el aspecto cooperativo de los humanos. Los parientes son personas que participan intrínsecamente en la existencia de cada uno; son miembros unos de otros.
En este libro hemos querido presentar de forma etnográfica una de las relaciones que en nuestro imaginario cultural mejor expresa la relación de mutualidad del ser: la maternidad.
En la primera parte, Reproducción, adopción y acogimiento, nos hemos preguntado por los cambios que supone la medicalización de la concepción y del nacimiento en la maternidad. ¿Sigue el nacimiento siendo la condición inicial de la persona? ¿Cómo se introduce la donación anónima de gametos en la historia personal? ¿Cómo se construye una relación de mutualidad en la adopción y acogimiento? ¿Cómo las madres constituyen el inicio de la mutualidad en formas de nacimiento y lactancia que podrían ser consideradas «tradicionales»? ¿Por qué la tradición innova?
En la segunda parte: Nuevos contextos de filiación, presentamos diferentes formas de maternidad en parejas gays y lesbianas, en madres solteras por elección. Analizamos la maternidad en relación a personas con alguna discapacidad intelectual. ¿Cómo se constituye la mutualidad de seres en el caso de la otredad intelectual? Finalmente, nos preguntamos por el aspecto personal (mutualidad, amistad) y el aspecto político (el principio de justicia) que presiden los cambios actuales en la experiencia de la maternidad."

THIS CHAPTER LOOKS ATHE STEADY DECLINE SINCE 2004 IN ANNUAL NUMBERS OF INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTIONS TO 23 RECEIVING STATES. FOLLOWING A PERIOD OF STEADY GROWTH IN WHICH NUMBERS HAD DOUBLED FROM 1993 TO 2003. THE CHAPTER ALSO CONSIDERS CHANGES IN THE STATES OF ORIGIN SENDING MOST CHILDREN OVER THIS PERIOD

Η αναγνώριση αλλοδαπών αποφάσεων υιοθεσίας παραμένει απροσπέλαστη για τον ενωσιακό νομοθέτη. Τα ελληνικά δικαστήρια προστρέχουν, ανάλογα με την περίπτωση, είτε σε διμερείς συμβάσεις δικαστικής αρωγής, είτε στο εγχώριο δίκαιο. Παράλληλα, κυρώθηκε και ισχύει στη χώρα μας από το 2009 η πολυμερής σύμβαση της Χάγης του 1993. Τη σύμβαση αυτή επικαλούνται σποραδικά (και ίσως λίγο αμήχανα) τα δικαστήρια της χώρας.
Στις πέντε αποφάσεις που ακολουθούν, καταγράφονται δύο αιτήσεις από Βουλγαρία και Γερμανία, και μία από Κύπρο. Η Ελληνική Δημοκρατία έχει και με τις τρεις χώρες διμερή συμβατικό δεσμό. Από την επεξεργασία των αποφάσεων προκύπτουν μερικά ερωτήματα, από τα οποία κάποια σχετίζονται αποκλειστικά με το πεδίο της διασυνοριακής υιοθεσίας, ενώ κάποια άλλα με τη γενικότερη θεματική της αναγνώρισης αλλοδαπών αποφάσεων. Θα ξεκινήσουμε από τα γενικότερα με κατεύθυνση προς τα ειδικότερα.

"En la introducción del libro The Ethics of Anthropology: Debates and Dilemmas publicado en 2003, su editora, la antropóloga británica P. Caplan (2003) señalaba que en los años precedentes, especialmente desde 1997, se había producido una ‘explosión discursiva’ sobre aspectos éticos en Occidente en diferentes ámbitos de la sociedad: la política, los gobiernos, la economía, la educación, la universidad, la academia y las ciencias, la antropología entre ellas (Caplan, 2003: 1-3).
Una ‘explosión discursiva’ que se ha incrementado durante 2008 y 2009 en diferentes ámbitos: económico (con la crisis vinculada al crédito y a los ‘activos tóxicos’ pero, sobre todo, a las remuneraciones percibidas por quienes se dedicaban a ello), político (por las causas que llevaron a las guerras de Afganistán y, sobre todo, de Irak pero, también, por el conocimiento del uso indebido de dinero público por parte de parlamentarios británicos que condujo a la primera dimisión de un presidente del Parlamento en los 300 últimos años, por no mencionar los distintos procesos judiciales en que se hallan inmersas distintas figuras públicas españolas) y religioso (por la difusión de los resultados de diez años de investigación sobre los abusos a menores cometidos en Irlanda (El País 03/06/2009, El Periódico 21/05/2009 y 03/06/2009) por miembros e instituciones de la iglesia católica, similares a casos denunciados también en Italia, Estados Unidos o Australia).
Desde la perspectiva de Caplan (2003), en el caso de la antropología, la ‘explosión discursiva’ relacionada con lo ético no tuvo que ver tanto con la gestación, aceptación y adscripción a un código ético, inherente a toda ciencia, (no sólo las ciencias sociales), sino más bien con el hecho de que la ética está en el centro o en el corazón de la disciplina antropológica, es decir, en las premisas con las que operan quienes la practican, en su epistemología, teoría y prácticas; es decir, en todo eso que podría resumirse en ¿para qué y/o para quién se hace antropología? Y, en ese sentido, ¿necesita la ética de la disciplina ser repensada cada tanto tiempo porque cambian las condiciones de la existencia y el quehacer de la propia disciplina? y/o ¿La ética es algo que depende de los diferentes contextos en que se hace antropología? (Caplan, 2003: 3).
Como un intento de respuesta a esas preguntas y a lo que podría estar sucediendo en la disciplina en España -reducción de los puestos de trabajo en las universidades e ingreso de antropólogos y antropólogas a otros ámbitos del mercado laboral, creación del Colegio Profesional, aprobación del grado en Antropología, incremento de auditorías y control de calidad de las tareas inherentes a la profesión en el ámbito universitario, entre otras-, de lo cual, el presente libro podría ser un ejemplo, hace tres décadas G. Appell (1978: 1 citado por Caplan, 2003: 5) señaló que es precisamente cuando los límites de una disciplina se redefinen que los discursos éticos se incrementan. Es decir que los debates en torno a la ética son parte del camino a través del cual quienes hacen antropología procuran constituirse como una comunidad moral.
Escribir sobre antropología, reproducción y ética no es tarea sencilla. Los antecedentes con los que es posible dialogar sobre antropología y reproducción, antropología y ética o reproducción y ética son escasos. Sobre antropología, reproducción y ética es imposible porque los ejemplos son inexistentes. Sin embargo, al mismo tiempo que considero que no es una tarea sencilla, probablemente por eso mismo, creo que es imprescindible, al menos intentarlo. Y eso es lo que me propongo hacer en este artículo: abordar el tema, al tiempo que reclamar su inclusión no sólo en la agenda de la disciplina sino también en la de las prácticas sociales y las regulaciones políticas de las ‘nuevas’ formas de reproducción.
Comenzaré reseñando brevemente los antecedentes existentes sobre ética y antropología, antropología y reproducción, para hacer luego un breve recorrido por los cambios que han tenido lugar en la reproducción en España, que la han convertido en uno de los primeros países del mundo en procesos de reproducción asistida y adopción transnacional. Finalmente, procuraré responder –o agregar más preguntas- a aquella que según Caplan (2003) resume la relación entre antropología y ética: ¿para qué y/o para quién es la antropología?"

An angel with no face embraced me And whispered through my whole body; "Don't be ashamed of being human, be proud! Inside you vault opens behind vault endlessly. You will never be complete, that's how it's meant to be." -Tomas Tranströmer, "Romanesque Arches"

One Hundred Good Wishes Quilts (OHGWQ) are a contemporary form of material culture that commemorates an American family’s adoption of a Chinese child. Made and/or coordinated by parents in the midst of adopting, OHGWQ are community-based objects constructed from fabrics donated by a large number of family, friends, and acquaintances. A practice that spread largely via the internet starting around 2000, the OHGWQ tradition is based upon a host of phenomena and contexts: the sudden growth of China adoption in the late 1990s and 2000s; indigenous patchwork and quilting practices in China and the U.S.; the Western history of cultural appropriation; and present-day forms of web-based communication.
Drawing on interviews with nearly two dozen adoptive parents, this research utilised a phenomenological approach to explore the experience of making a OHGWQ, a form of material culture never previously studied. The work explores how OHGWQ function on the individual or personal level, in such ways as celebrating a significant moment in a family’s history, making the adoption process seem less onerous and interminable, building support for a non-traditional method of family-building, and giving makers the opportunity to participate in a form of “everyday creativity” (Gauntlett 2011). The thesis also examines the OHGWQ’s place and meaning in the lives of those who organise and/or make the projects and within American society and culture at large.
In particular, the thesis demonstrates that the OHGWQ project plays several “in-between” roles, functioning as a link or transitional device in each case: between being a non-maker and a maker, between disparate Eastern/Western cultural practices, between various groups of people, and between pre- and post-adoption senses of identity for the family as a whole and potentially for the adoptee. In essence, it is argued that OHGWQ connect people, cultures, and ideas.

In November, 2013, over the course of the month, I collected various responses I had given on Yahoo! Answers and the like concerning the topic of adoption. It was a response to National Adoption Awareness Month, a thirty-day celebration of the industry of trafficking and extirpation that is adoption in the Global North. Each year since then I refloat these answers on social media, and each year I think to myself how desperately sad it is that adoption activists are still at it after so many decades, and also how this seemingly innocuous hashtag of #NAAM causes so much harm to adoptees around the world in terms of reliving the painful reality of what adoption represents.

The problem for adoptees arguing about their position in society is similar to what has been experienced previously by other marginalized groups looking to make a space within the hegemonic culture. Namely, how to expand out from what is considered simply a personal issue; an individual hang-up; a “selfish” focus on one’s condition. The individualistic and solipsistic dominant culture ironically turns around and tells its absconded-with children to not be so “selfish” as to complain. In other terms, this was used against other groups as well—”don’t be ‘uppity'”; “know your role”. We should literally be seen and not heard. Those days are over.

What follows is a reversal of roles. 30 answers to 30 questions that have come up in discussion boards and various “answer” web sites that pretend to be objective but more often than not stifle debate, delete contrarian posts, and disallow membership to those with a minority point of view—the web site Canada Adopts! is probably the most fascistic in this regard. This is understandable, however, when we consider that the answers to the questions, when removed from a personal or individual emotional plane, and instead focusing on the economic and political realm, are harder to justify by those in power—and thus the retaliation, the backlash, and the twisted framing of the dominant culture of those seeking infants as being somehow minority, victimized, and on the defensive.

Armed with this positioning of the argument, the anti-adoption movement is poised to join its brothers and sisters in other liberation movements of dispossessed and marginalized peoples the world over in the struggle for equality, true equality; the status of polis for all, and the end of the false positioning of the dominant mode of thinking as anything other than what it is: the political and economic destruction of those who don’t fit in to its view of the world. Nothing more and nothing less.

The questions listed out include:

    Do people who have been adopted blame others all their lives for their adoption?
    Can someone please tell me more about the darkside of adoption?
    When/why did the word “bitter” get associated with non-compliant adoptees?
    Why would someone think that Adoption erases a child’s identity?
    What do you anticipate your response will be if another family member/friend decides to adopt?
    What about the children? Is it better for a child to live in hell?
    Does anything anyone say about adoption hurt you anymore?
    [What do you think of this] “Gotcha Day” celebration?
    Should international adopters send the children back?
    Do you believe God has a play in infertility/fertility/adoption?
    Why is it common for infant-adoptive parents to be ridiculed?
    Have you felt in your life like you’re always searching for something?
    In adoption-speak, what difference between “from China” and “Chinese”?
    Should I write this letter to the mother of the child in my care?
    Wouldn’t you want Lebanese orphans to be saved like you?
    Why are people so against adoption here?
    Shouldn’t we praise those who disrupt their adoptions?
    What if I make every effort to help my child through their grief?
    Is there a difference between an adopted child and a “Western” child?
    Why don’t more people adopt?
    What can adoptive parents do to change things?
    What do you think of expatriate adoptions abroad?
    Doesn’t it say to adopt in the Bible?
    Is it okay to not get U.S. citizenship for an internationally adopted child?
    What are you grateful for as an adoptee?
    Is there any value in an adoptee cultural camp?
    What does “adoptee” mean to you?
    What are you [adoptee] trying to accomplish on this blog?
    Isn’t it valid to compare adoption with a pregnancy?
    Why are adoptees never asking, always answering questions?

The point here was always to shift the debate from the personal to the economical and political. “Entitled opinion” of course exists where history is concerned, but at least changing the parameters of the discussion gets us away from the purely emotional, and the mythologies that take advantage of this.

Os testemunhos de adultos adotados sobre a busca de informações de seu passado são frequentes em outros países. O que eles significam e por que se apresentam usualmente revestidos de uma dimensão vital, descrevendo a urgência da procura de um tempo do qual, por vezes, não há mais do que raras reminiscências? Parte-se do livro de Christina Rickardsson relacionando-o às narrativas de Kiko Goifman e Sophie Brédier a fim de se realizar a investigação. Analisa-se a denominada “busca das origens”, com base em bibliografia das ciências humanas e sociais. Evidencia-se a possibilidade de reconfiguração do parentesco propiciado pela adoção, destacando-se os processos de identificação e o papel da memória, a relação entre família natural e substituta. Os testemunhos descrevem experiências de tradução na qual vestígios mostram-se impossíveis de serem assimilados à família adotiva, expressando a divisão subjetiva do adotado e exigindo dele a reinvenção de si.

International adoptions of Ugandan children rose by 400 percent from 2010 to 2011, many under irregular and suspicious circumstances (Lumu 2014) due to a ‘legal guardianship loophole’ that allows prospective adoptive parents to take children under their guardianship out of the country even before a child’s adoptability has been determined. Ugandan courts then lose jurisdiction because such adoptions are finalized in the adoptive country.
This article highlights the emerging social justice issues associated with these trends, as well as the irreversible damage of such actions on children’s growth and development. The courts play a critical role in adoption and legal guardianship cases, using their discretionary power to promote the best interests of children and ensure their safety, survival and development. Because judicial officers are more empowered than any other
authority, we argue that they must exercise this discretion with social justice in mind; a fair and transparent process of judicial decision-making that recognizes human value, children’s capabilities, and wellbeing as well as treats all parties equally – regardless of their social status – is essential if children are to be protected from adoption abuses and trafficking. A watertight adoption procedure is the only means of ensuring the appropriate identification of adoptable children and guaranteeing that children are regarded as individual rights holders rather than the property of
adults.

This chapter is a first step towards a comparative history of child adoption law and practices in Western Europe since child adoption became legal in Germany (1900), Sweden (1917), France (1923), England and Wales (1927) and Italy (1942). Relying mainly on long time series from these five countries, I analyze the incidence and the developments of domestic adoptions of both unrelated and related children as well as more recent developments in inter-country adoption. In most Western European countries child adoption incidence increased from the early 20th century to approximately the 1970s, likely because of rising demand for child adoption. Child adoption incidence has decreased since the 1970s because of a fall in adoptable children from both domestic and foreign backgrounds. In addition, the people of Sweden and England and Wales have long adopted children much more frequently than those of Germany, let alone France and Italy. The history of child adoption in Western Europe thus reflects major demographic trends since 1900 as well as a North-South gradient in child adoption incidence.

La adopción responde a dos cuestiones: dar una familia a un niño/a (o un niño/a a una familia…) y proteger un niño/a en dificultad familiar. Se inscribe en dos tipos de procesos, la filiación y la protección de la infancia, que razonablemente se refuerzan la una a la otra. La primera, la filiación, establece un vínculo entre el niño/a y sus adoptantes que, por un lado, modifica sus referencias de identidad como su apellido, su lengua, su nacionalidad, o su cultura; por otro lado, le otorga nuevos derechos y deberes. La otra, la protección, es la justificación moral del establecimiento de este vínculo jurídico."

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La « question des origines » traverse les débats contemporains sur la filiation ; il faudrait aujourd’hui, pour la sécurité psychique des enfants, révéler les conditions initiales des conceptions et/ou les existences antérieures à leur arrivée au sein des familles. En se concentrant sur le cas de l’adoption internationale, cette contribution interroge les effets sociaux et politiques de cette nouvelle injonction à la « transparence », et questionne les modalités pratiques qui permettent l’édiction d’une histoire. Mettre en mots « son » passé et y « accéder » sont autant d’actions individuelles pour partie conditionnées par la force des Etats et leur politique d’archivage, révélant l’épaisseur public des récits (auto-)biographiques.

In one of the first volumes to address social work practice with this emergent and often marginalized population, practitioners and scholars specializing in transnational issues develop a framework for transnational social work practice. They begin with the historical and environmental context of transnational practice and explore the psychosocial, economic, environmental, and political factors that affect at-risk and vulnerable transnational groups. They then detail practical strategies, supplemented with case examples, for working with transnational populations utilizing this population's existing strengths. They conclude with recommendations for incorporating transnational social work into the curriculum.

After the Council for the Administration of Criminal Justice and Protection of Juveniles published its policy advice to the Dutch government to stop intercountry adoptions in late 2016, a new movement of adoptees emerged. In this thesis, I turn to queer theory to critically reflect upon this new adoptee movement on a primarily theoretical and conceptual level. Taking a Foucauldian biopolitical framework, I first conceptualize how the Dutch self-perception as a white nation—an imagined genetic community—informs a biopolitical discourse of social belonging based on origin. Based on previous scholarship, I then show how a discourse of neoliberal colour-blindness comes to facilitate the dynamics of this biopolitical discourse of social belonging, deploying mechanisms of assimilation and roots-essentialism. I subsequently apply this conceptual analysis to contemporary Dutch adoptee politics to show how certain activist aims and strategies tie into these normalizing mechanisms of assimilation and roots-essentialism. Then, I turn to the work of David Eng, to demonstrate how his concept of queer diaspora provides an answer to queer liberalism, which is very similar to neoliberal colour-blindness. I take up the psychoanalytical underpinnings of queer diaspora, most notably the concept of racial melancholia, to re-interpret contemporary Dutch adoptee politics. Subsequently, I re-interpret the concept of racial melancholia itself by considering the common conflation of race and ethnicity. I show that such a re-interpretation suggests a strategy that entails building communities to bridge the gap between adoptees of colour and non-adopted people of colour. Finally, I turn to the work of José Esteban Muñoz to show how John McLeod’s concept of adoptive being can be read as a strategy of disidentification, not least because disidentification and adoptive being build on racial melancholia in a similar fashion. I conclude by formulating several brief thoughts on how disidentification constitutes a promising strategy for an adoptee politics that aims to question the racial norms of neoliberal multiculturalism and colour-blindness.

White Milk. In Denmark, 'lactose intolerance' refers to a medical diagnosis and a condition where the person is unable to digest lactose, a sugar found in milk and dairy products. However, 75% of the world's population is considered lactose intolerant which raises the question: under which circumstances is lactose intolerance considered a disease in Denmark? In order to answer this question, this article examines different subjectifying processes in relation to health, race, ethnicity, and the consumption of food, and the relation of all of these factors to milk. The analysis focuses on a publication by the Danish adoption organization Adoption og Samfund (Adoption and Society), a special issue on food. Influenced by the work of Butler (1990, 2004), Omi & Winant (1986) and Myong (2009), I find that milk comes to determine whiteness and Danishness in the publication. Consequently, lactose tolerance functions as a figure for the normalized body belonging to the white adopter, who is framed by firstness and situated in the Global North. At the same time, lactose intolerance functions as a figure for the deviant, weak, medicalized body belonging to the adoptee of colour who is framed by otherness and situated in the Global South. Hence, drinking milk (or not) positions the subject either as part of a privileged majority or an underprivileged minority.

This chapter considers laws and social realities determining the status of the Moroccan child born inside or outside of marriage. It considers first, the legal grounds for filiation and second, the legal framework for guardianship of parentless (abandoned or orphaned) children. In both the legal and social approaches to these two issues, there are several constants over time, especially the strong – but not absolute – influence of Maliki jurisprudence. Proposed reforms in the deeply conservative fields of family and guardianship laws indicate that judges are not only considering the 2011 Moroccan Constitution, the 2004 Family Code (Moudawana) and the 2002 kafala (guardianship) law, but also the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and its concept of the best interests of the child. I argue that in regards to kafala guardianships, which are handled under contract law rather than family law in Morocco, the state occupies an ambivalent position, mandating replacement care at the level expected of biological parents while denying the child the rights and responsibilities of biological children. Recent cases in the Moroccan courts question longstanding conservative approaches to gender as well as family, raising the possibility of female-headed families (not only households) by issuing family booklets to women, and increasing calls to recognize biological paternity as entailing responsibilities otherwise only expected of fathers with paternal filiation through marriage.
Keywords Morocco 􏰀 Adoption 􏰀 Family 􏰀 Family law 􏰀 Islamic guardianship 􏰀 Private international law

While same-sex marriage is visibly gaining momentum (see Australia, Austria, Germany and Malta this year), many countries have not fully recognised the rights of same-sex couples. This usually takes the form of civil unions (e.g. Italy and Greece) or of no recognition (e.g. Poland and Lithuania). However, other solutions are also possible. For instance, some countries recognise only same-sex marriages celebrated abroad (e.g. Armenia and Estonia).
In Northern Ireland, adoption has been available to same-sex couples since 2013, even though the Northern Ireland Assembly voted against same-sex marriage (Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, Re Judicial Review [2013] NICA 37). However, in many countries where there is no same-sex marriage, these couples cannot access adoption. This is the case in Italy, even though the case that is commented here brings some good news.
In Italy, the Adoptions Act (Legge No 183/1984) allows only married couples to adopt a minor. Since only heterosexual couples can get married, same-sex couples are de facto excluded from the adoption. However, this regime applies only to internal situations (e.g. two women domiciled in Italy adopting a minor in Italy). Different rules apply to the adoption by same-sex couples in other countries, once the couple asks the Italian authorities (ufficiale di stato civile) the recognition of the effects of the adoption. This is the topic recently clarified by the Court of Appeals of Genoa, with ordinanza No 1319 of 1 September 2017.
The Court of Appeal rejects all the defenses put forward by the civil servant and holds that same-sex adoptions celebrated abroad should be automatically regognised in Italy by the competent civil servants, without any need for a judicial scrutiny.
The main reason is that even though Italian unmarried couples cannot adopt in Italy, there is no public policy or ordre public (ordine pubblico) consideration preventing the full recognition of the effects of foreign same-sex adoptions.
Con ordinanza n. 1319 del 1 Settembre 2017, la Corte d’Appello di Genova si è pronunciata in tema di trascrizione della sentenza straniera concedente l’adozione a una coppia di coniugi del medesimo sesso e trascrizione del certificato di nascita del minore adottato. Il collegio genovese dichiara l’efficacia della sentenza straniera e ordina la trascrizione della stessa e del certificato di nascita nei registri dell’Ufficio di Stato Civile sulla base di tre considerazioni. Innanzitutto la vicenda è regolata dalla legge n. 218/1995 (nel prosieguo anche ‘legge sul diritto internazionale privato’ o ‘legge d.i.p.’) e non dalla legge n. 184/1983 (nel prosieguo anche ‘legge sulle adozioni’). Ne segue che la regola è il riconoscimento automatico dell’adozione da parte dell’ufficiale dello stato civile, mentre il vaglio del Tribunale dei Minorenni previsto dalla legge sulle adozioni è eccezionale e limitato alla c.d. adozione internazionale. Quest’ultima si ha quando una coppia residente in Italia adotta un minore in stato di abbandono e residente all’estero. In secondo luogo, i provvedimenti de quibus vanno obbligatoriamente riconosciuti al ricorrere di quattro condizioni: competenza dell’autorità che li ha emessi, efficacia nell’ordinamento estero considerato, non contrarietà all’ordine pubblico e rispetto dei diritti di difesa. La detta non contrarietà è la condizione principale è sul punto la Corte d’Appello è cristallina nello statuire che la limitazione dell’adozione alle coppie unite in matrimonio non è una norma fondamentale, di talché la sua violazione non attiva il limite dell’ordine pubblico internazionale, il quale negli anni è andato significativamente erodendosi per via pretoria. Il nucleo di questo limite è nel rispetto dei diritti fondamentali dell’uomo, che, in subiecta materia, prendono il volto del prevalente interesse del minore. In quest’ultimo si sostanzia il terzo ordine di considerazioni del collegio. L’interesse del minore deve valutarsi in concreto, alla luce del diritto alla continuità delle relazioni affettive e al tranquillo godimento dello status filiationis. L’importanza dell’interesse del minore è tale che, un provvedimento che potrebbe prima facie sembrare in contrasto con l’ordine pubblico, non è da considerarsi tale perché riflette l’interesse del minore. In conclusione, l’ordinanza annotata consolida e chiarifica il diritto vivente sotto almeno tre profili. Anzitutto, le coppie omogenitoriali integrano a pieno titolo il concetto di famiglia, il che si riverbera sul fatto che è nell’interesse del minore crescere nel suddesto consesso familiare. Un secondo profilo attiene alla conferma dell’ordine pubblico internazionale come norma ad applicazione eccezionale e interpretata in modo tale da assicurare la massima apertura possibile agli ordinamenti stranieri. Terzo, con più diretto riguardo al caso di specie, si conferma quanto statuito dalla Corte d’Appello di Milano con ordinanza del 5 Ottobre 2016 in tema di riconoscimento e trascrizione di provvedimenti stranieri di adozione a favore di coppie omogenitoriali (v. M.M. Winkler, Riconoscimento e trascrizione di un’adozione straniera da parte di una coppia same-sex: la pronuncia della Corte d’Appello di Milano). In pari tempo, la sentenza può essere vista come un passo avanti rispetto al decreto del Tribunale per i Minorenni di Firenze che, il 7 Marzo 2017, pur riconoscendo l’efficacia di un’adozione omogenitoriale di due cittadini italiani residenti nel Regno Unito, non aveva riconosciuto la natura schiettamente internazionalprivatistica della vicenda, applicando invece il meno favorevole regime dell’art. 36, comma 4 legge sulle adozioni (v. il commento di A. Schillaci, “Una vera e propria famiglia”: da Firenze un nuovo passo avanti per il riconoscimento dell’omogenitoritalità).
PLEASE CITE AS Guido Noto La Diega, 'Corte d'appello di Genova: riconoscimento automatico di adozione omogenitoriale nazionale straniera' (Articolo 29, 4 December 2017) <http://www.articolo29.it/2017/corte-dappello-genova-riconoscimento-automatico-adozione-omogenitoriale-nazionale-straniera/>