This research project focuses on the fabrication of kinship, especially in the cases of the adoption of older children. We are particularly interested in thinking about the ways in which government technologies aimed at domestic and international adoptions act as mediators in the fabrication of kinship in these “late adoptions”.
The issue of late adoptions has posed challenges to public policies in Brazil, France and Spain. Concretely, despite the historical, institutional and regulatory differences between these countries, in all three countries, the number of adoptees decreases as the age of the child/adolescent increases, both in domestic adoptions as well as internationally.
Faced with the change in profile of children available for adoption (no longer only babies and toddlers) in the three countries, public authorities have engaged in promoting a “new mentality” among adopters, including campaigns of consciousness-raising as to the need for late adoptions.
This change of mentality, especially with regard to the modes of operation of government technologies in the field of late adoptions, is still incipient in adoption groups in Brazil, while in France and Spain the practice has been more solidly consolidated within state institutions.
In the policy proposals,
of late adoption, we can delineate the major processes of the fabrication of kinship and parenting: temporality of kinship, biography and memory, functions and prescriptions of parenting, consolidation of bonds and the place of biological relatives. In methodological terms, the project is based on carrying out ethnographic research in reference institutions in the field of adoption. Research will include participant observation of institutional agents' meetings with would-be parents seeking to adopt a child as well as in-depth interviews with agents, parents and (if possible) children.
Full title:
Fabrication of kinship and technologies of government in late adoptions: a comparative study in Brazil, France and Spain.
CNPq Nº 26/2021 - Support for Scientific, Technological and Innovation Research: Scholarships Abroad.
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