Geographies of transnational adoption: demographics, regulation, economics and representation..

Abstract

This PhD project addresses the political, economic and cultural geographies of transnational child adoption. The research conducts a detailed exploration of two key elements with this complex and rapidly evolving practice of family development. First, it examines the legal and fiscal transactions that are required for transnational child adoption (TNA) within key receiving countries. Focusing on TNA practice trends within the US and UK, it explores the regulations and economies of this unique family building process on local, national and global scales. The aim of the research is to accurately describe the political economies and geographies of TNA receiving families residing in the UK and the US. Secondly, this project explores key debates within public discourse around reproductive options that inform the rhetoric around receiving families as distinctly ‘modern’ family formations. It addresses the ways the new practice is differentiated, normalised or negotiated in relation to both understandings of the family and relatedness as well as wider issues of multiculturalism, transnationalism, social capital production and the technical intensity of modern reproductive practices. In particular, this work considers the extended geographies of receiving families that are conventionally represented in relation to notions of relatedness and family through ideas of intimacy, closeness and proximity. This thesis responds to an urgent need for more updated and comprehensive quantitative, qualitative and legal research on the recent escalation of TNA in comparison with other globalized family building alternatives that have similarly broadened in parental accessibility over the same period. Based on a critical review of current TNA practice, this research explores how and why TNA has become a contested topic of public discourse and increased in cultural visibility in excess of its numerical significance relative to other forms of family formation.