Migrants between worlds: inclusion, identity and Australian intercountry adoption

Abstract

When migrant issues of identity, citizenship and marginalization are considered, research has traditionally focused on those who have arrived as adults or as complete family groups. While there has been considerable research on child migration to Australia, intercountry adoption remains a small yet significant area of research. However, past adoption research has usually considered intercountry adoptees through the paradigm of adoptees facing challenges of identity and family integration, rather than as migrants in their own right. As migrants, intercountry adoptees usually consist of children from non-European, non-English speaking backgrounds living with English speaking European Australian families. This provides such migrants with both advantages and disadvantages. On the positive side, they are raised as part of the dominant cultural group and share this privileged status and identity, having access to cultural capital and social benefits that derive from membership of this group. On the negative side, they have the physical attributes of the outsiders/others, can be perceived by those who do not know them as outsiders/others, and often have limited opportunity to share in their birth culture. Repositioning intercountry adoptees as migrants rather than adoptees provides new opportunities to address the challenges faced by them, their families and their Australian host society.