This study is about the group of transnational adoptees, which means adoptions that includes a transfer of children to families who racially and culturally different from them. The Swedish research regarding to this group of adoptees is relatively limited. Especially in relation to the phenomenon like race, whiteness and racism. There is a need for more knowledge about what it means to be Swedish and non-white, something that the group adoptees has experience of.                      The purpose of this study is to examine if, and in that case how, it is possible to discern a pattern of Swedishness boundaries using the adoptees experience, and to find out how notions of race interacts with these experiences. The study is based on a qualitative approach and the empirical material consists of interviews with four adoptees. To understand my empirical data I have chosen to work with several different theoretical perspectives to illustrate the phenomenon as can be seen as border guards of Swedishness concerning to the adoptees. These phenomenon’s are: race and whiteness, and racialization and (everyday) racism. I am also inspired by the American research field of critical race and whiteness studies, but from a Swedish context.                       The results show that the main limit for Swedishness goes at the adoptees non-white bodies. It is also by their non-white bodies as they get their belonging in Sweden questioned and can be considered as almost Swedes. It is also their non-Swedish appearance that allows them to be exposed to racialization and racism in everyday life. Thus, it is possible to argue, on the basis of the adoptees stories, that race as construction exists and that we must speak of it to be able to understand how it, as adopted (Swedish), is to live in a non-white body in Sweden today.

Denna uppsats handlar om adoption utifrån identitet och anknytning och fokuserar på hur föräldraskap påverkas av dessa faktorer. Syftet är att undersöka hur internationellt adopterade vuxna upplever sitt föräldraskap och hur detta påverkas i förhållande till identitetsutveckling och anknytning. Tidigare forskning har visat att det inte finns endast ett sätt att uppleva adoption på, utan erfarenheter skiljs åt från individ till individ. Det har visat sig finnas ett begränsat utbud av forskning av ämnet adoption och föräldraskap och där resultatet varierat. Uppsatsen utgår ifrån en kvalitativ metod, då denna anses som mest passande för att kunna ta del av intervjupersonernas egna erfarenheter och tankar kring föräldraskap som adopterade. Materialet är insamlat genom semistrukturerade intervjuer från sex individer som blivit adopterade till Sverige och materialet har sedan analyserats utifrån en tematisk analysmetod. Resultatet visar att adoption har påverkat adopterade individers föräldraskap på så sätt att utseendemässiga likheter och att ha samma blod är av stor betydelse, samt upplever större kontrollbehov och separationssvårigheter. Det framkommer även att adopterade inte kan tänka sig att adoptera själva, vilket förklaras med att det inte anses vara enligt barnets bästa. / This study explores adoption based on identity and attachment and focuses on how parenting is affected by these factors.  The purpose of this study is to investigate how transnational adopted adults experience their parenthood and how this is affected in relation to identity development and attachment. Previous research has shown that there is not only one way to experience adoption, but experiences are separated from individual to individual. There has been a limited range of research on adoption and parenting and where results have varied. The study is based on a qualitative method, as this is considered most suitable for being able to take it from the participants' own experiences and thoughts about parenthood as adopted. The material is collected through semi-structured interviews analyzed based on a thematic analysis method. The results show that adoption has affected the parenting of adopted individuals in such a way that similarities in appearance and having the same blood are of great importance, as well as experiencing a greater need for control and separation difficulties. It also appears that adoptees cannot imagine adopting themselves, which is explained by the fact that it is not considered to be in the best interests of the child.

This PhD Dissertation was completed through 2011 to 2016 and was nominated for a CAGS-UMI Distinguished Dissertation Award. / My dissertation explores transnational adoptions of black African children by white Western parents as a site through which to think about global affective relationality and transnational histories within intimate proximities. The image of an interracial, transnational family can seem to be a fulfillment of the potential for transcendent love symbolized by humanitarian fundraisers such as Live Aid— a love that collapses borders and brings together races in multicultural bliss. Furthermore, adoptions of African children can potentially challenge discursive systems of categorization that frame the black body as existing outside the body politic. At the same time, however, we cannot understand transnational adoption without taking into account the histories of power that make possible and potentially limit the contours of these affective orientations. Indeed, representations of a transnational family consisting particularly of black African children and white Western parents not only invoke the logic of white moral motherhood within the context of contemporary globalization; they also point to European philosophical traditions that presuppose the colonizer’s right to the black body. In this project, thus, I ask: what are the sociopolitical and cultural motivations behind the desire to express humanitarian love towards African children through the act of adoption? How might these motivations create avenues for exclusion and exploitation even as they create new geographies of belonging? To answer these questions, this project brings the affective domain of contemporary transnational adoption between African children and white American parents into conversation with histories of colonial transnational intimacies and the precarious lived experiences of classed and racialized individuals in the African postcolony. In challenging popular celebratory fictions of the transnational family, it critically examines not only the utopian aspirations and social costs of transnational adoption as a humanitarian project, but also the very affect produced and channeled through adoption as a humanitarian act. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / My dissertation takes a multidisciplinary approach to analyze transnational adoptions of black African children by white Western parents. It offers answers to the following questions: 1. How do the ghosts of colonialism, along with the violent realities of globalization, expose the inequities hidden within idealized humanitarian narratives of rescue underlying global adoptions while at the same time revealing their transformative potential? 2. How can we account for the experiences and psychic struggles of the African adoptee, and what do their contradictions of idealized Western narratives tell us about the fantasies and anxieties of their Western parents? Ultimately, I argue that while the transnational family suggests transformative transnational connections, Western humanitarian frameworks have also sought to manage the messiness of these connections, to fix white and black bodies into old colonial roles, and to exclude certain bodies, namely those of the African birth mothers, out of the affective realm of transnational adoption. At the same time, these attempts at management, I argue, only speak to the productive potential of these messy relations to transform and exceed colonial limitations.