Ambiguous loss refers to a loss that is unknown or undefined, making it difficult to cope with and resolve. Using a life course perspective that asserts that humans have agency to affect change in their own lives, this study focuses on an adoptee’s perceived ability to enact change in the situation surrounding the ambiguous loss that they may have experienced as a result of their adoption. Life course perspective also incorporates the concept of life trajectories, which explain how an early life experience can affect an individual over the course of his or her life. This study describes the essence of coping with adoption-related ambiguous loss from the viewpoint of adult adoptees.

Lotería is a hybrid poetry collection that follows the life of the speaker as a queer, Hispanic transracial adoptee raised by a conservative Catholic family in Central Florida, focusing on their struggle to fit into the binaries assigned to and expected of them across religion, race, gender, and sexuality. This collection is separated into three sections, each expanding on the one before as the speaker journeys through life, exploring their identity and their connection with the world around them. In the first section, poems such as "(Non)Binary Star" and "Size 6 Woman Size 18 Daughter" sift through the speaker's conflict of being a queer, adopted child and feeling like an outsider in their own home, particularly in relation to their adopted mother, while also exploring the way religion was routinely used as a vehicle for shame and obedience. Poems like "Poet as Wolfdog" and "Wolfdog as Poet" in the second section explore the speaker's relationship with themself as they learn to push against the boundaries of the binaries they're familiar with and to become more comfortable in expressing their identity as an adoptee while leaning into more fantastical language and imagery. The final section steps outside of the home of the speaker and considers the relationship between them, their body, and the world at large, in poems like "The Cycle of Life in Skagaströnd," which turn the act of traveling into a spiritual experience. The use of hybrid forms such as numbered lists, dictionary definitions, and elongated prose throughout Lotería serve as tangible examples of the body and soul of the speaker as they navigate their existence between and across forms, roles, and binaries.

This dissertation explores the lifelong racial and ethnic identity development of Korean transracial adoptees raised in the U.S. Midwest. Using seventy-seven in-depth, semi-structured life history interviews, geographic region, age cohort, gender, and exploration type emerged as the most significant factors shaping adoptees' sense of group belonging. Their unique life experiences as Asian Americans in White families created liminal belonging as "a part yet apart" from White, Asian, and even, at times, Korean adoptee communities. As they aged and encountered new life stage responsibilities and pressures, adoptees in the study experienced greater exposure to racial and ethnic diversity and were generally more willing to explore their identities during early and mid-adulthood. The large population of Korean adoptees in the Midwest, and Minnesota in particular, increased opportunities for exposure to other Korean adoptees and Korean adoptee culture. Involvement typically provided adoptees with a full-fledged sense of belonging that eluded them in traditionally defined Asian, Korean, and White communities. An empowering Korean adoptee identity emerged that was based on explicitly acknowledging adoptees' unique life circumstances in-between non-adopted Asians and Whites and challenged conflations of race, ethnicity, and culture.

The purpose of this study has been to explore which experiences of exposure transnational adoptees choses to tell about in their Instagram accounts and create an understanding for their experiences and thoughts with the help from theories and earlier research. We have by performing a netnografic study, found our empiric material from two transnational adoptees accounts on Instagram to answer our question formulations: Which experiences of exposure does transnational adoptees publish on Instagram? and: How does transnational adoptees explain the correlation between these experiences and their adoption? It appears in our empiric conclusion and in the analysis that themes of affiliation, indebtedness, racism, colour blindness and identity occur in both transnational adoptees account when it comes to exposure in relation to adoption. These experiences and thoughts are analysed with help from earlier research and theories. The theories we used are postcolonial perspective, stigma theory, intersectionality and social identity theory. In the discussion, conclusions are made about the analysis, where it among other things shows that experiences and thoughts of indebtedness appears to be a larger theme than in our selected earlier research. This phenomenon can be understood using the postcolonial theory, that gives a possible explanation about the occurrence of indebtedness. We discuss further about the relations between physical appearance, affiliation, and lack of racial reflection as how they appear to be distinctive factors for exposedness of the transnational adoptees in this study.

Adoption Proceedings Abstract This thesis deals with the current legal regulation of adoption proceedings. Adoption proceedings are one of the non-contentious proceedings which are initiated on basis of motion and in which court decides on the personal status of the adoptee and adopter. The thesis is divided into 5 parts in which the procedural and substantive regulation of adoption is discussed with the aim to provide an explanation of adoption proceedings as the legal regulation of this institute does not fully respect the division of the law into substantive and procedural. After a brief introduction, the first part is devoted to the historical excursion in which I describe the basics of the adoption as set by the ancient Roman law. In the longest chapter of first part I focus on the interpretation of the development of adoption after the establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic and the change of the position of court in the process of adoption. The concept of adoption is defined in the second part of this thesis and after that I focus on international treaties and laws that govern adoption in the Czech legal order. In the third part I describe the prerequisites for adopting a minor as set by substantive law with an emphasis on regulation regarding consent to adoption and pre-adoption custody of the...

Establishment and revocation of adoption in our country and in other legal systems Abstract The diploma thesis is devoted to the establishment and revocation of the adoption of a minor child in the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and the Australian state of New South Wales. The thesis consists of an introduction, seven parts and a conclusion. In the first part the author deals with the historical development of the institute of adoption in the Czech territory, explaining the idea and conception of adoption according to Czech Civil Code and its division according to theoretical typology. The second part discusses the conditions of adoption. The author pays special attention to the position of the child and his / her best interest, as discussed by Czech law and international human rights conventions. Further explanation is focused on adopter and the position of child's parents. The third part of this thesis is focused on adoption service and adoption's procedurals in the court. In this section, the author describes how the child is adopted. It also deals with the legal position of persons involved in the proceedings, representation and proceedings obstacles. In the fourth part, attention is focused on the consequences of adoption decisions for the child and other persons. The author emphasizes the difference...

This degree work investigates a Chinese ethnic identity in a Swedish social environment by means of translating national and cultural symbols, representing China and Sweden, into colors and materials within garments and accessories.Furthermore, this project demonstrates a transracial adoptee identity journey, through the act of conforming as a reaction to Swedish norms.To conduct the study, personal experiences of being a Chinese, Swedish adoptee have been applied to direct this work. An illustration of a timeline concerns the past and the present stages of a transracial adoptee identity and demonstrates the identity journey in chronological order, divided into five stages. This degree work generates new expressions within the social sustainability field in fashion by showcasing the absurdity to conform to Swedish norms. This work identifies how identity is formed by biological and social factors from a transracial adoptee perspective. This degree work demonstrates the complexity of transracial identity formation, through several layers, and criticizes Swedish norms through dress. It can spread awareness of the anxiety for transracial’s to fit into norms and recognition for those affected by it.

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Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Family Studies and Human Services / Jared R. Anderson / Sandra M. Stith / Adoption trends have shifted in the past two decades and as a result, could impact established assumptions about behavior problems among adopted children. A comprehensive meta-analysis was published in 2005 attempting to come to more definitive conclusions regarding adoption behavior and moderators of adoption behavior. However, the study used a sample from over a dozen countries over a 44 year span. This study is a meta-analysis that has replicated many of the questions investigated by the previous analysis with a much more recent 15 year sample of adoptees placed only within the United States. The results show that combined international and domestic adoptee samples, as well as separate international and domestic adoptee samples are more likely to have total, externalizing, and internalizing behavior problems than their non-adopted counterparts. In addition, age at time of assessment, gender of adoptees, and length of time spent with adoptive family may moderate some of the behavior problems experienced by adoptees. Pre-adoptive adversity, age at time of assessment, and study quality were not shown to have moderating influence on behavior of adoptees.

Bakgrund: Idag finns väldigt få transnationellt adopterade personer som är äldre (definierat enligt WHO som 60+) som en naturlig följd av att organiserad adoption började under 1960-talet. Men i takt med en allt mer åldrande befolkning behöver vi öka vår förståelse för eventuella framtida behov hos adopterade. Det kan vara behov som uppstår senare i livet eller till följd av tidigare erfarenheter. Forskning har visat att transnationellt adopterade har ett antal utmaningar som att de oftare har en ökad risk för missbruk, suicid och suicidförsök, utsätts för vardagsrasism och många står utanför arbetslivet. Det är en brist på ändamålsenligt post-adoptionsstöd för de många utmaningar som transnationellt adopterade kan möta under livet. Syfte: Syftet var att undersöka föreställningar om adoptionsspecifika utmaningar och behov vid åldrande hos transnationellt adopterade.   Metod: Kvalitativ metod användes där tio transnationellt adopterade personer, som är representanter för föreningar för transnationellt adopterade eller som möter transnationellt adopterade i sin yrkesprofession som terapeuter/psykolog, intervjuades med semistrukturerade intervjuer. Insamlat data analyserades genom fenomenografisk metod. Resultat: Resultatet visade ett utfallsrum med fyra beskrivningskategorier: 1) Föreställningar genom livet, 2) Betraktad av andra, 3) Avsaknad av empowerment, och 4) Transnationell förflyttning. I dessa beskrivningskategorier framkom  ett flertal utmaningar i att åldras som transnationellt adopterad. Utfallsrummet omges av det behov av stöd och resurser som kan finnas för att uppnå ett hälsosamt åldrande som transnationellt adopterad. Slutsatser: Det framkom att transnationellt adopterade riskerar att få ett antal utmaningar och särskilda behov av stöd och resurser när de blir äldre. Dessa kunskaper kan vara till nytta för olika intressenter för att kunna stötta den framtida äldre transnationellt adopterade personer i deras vardag och öka kunskaperna om hur det är att vara transnationellt adopterad.