The aim of this essay is to study how internationally adopted people of colours’ national identifications are created in interaction with other people outside of their closest social networks of people, and how this can affect their feelings of social belonging and exclusion. This is accomplished by examining qualitative ethnographic interviews through social constructivist theories and concepts such as Erving Goffman’s symbolic interactionism and theories behind national identifications. The essay explores how the internationally adopted participants are met by other people and how these social situations are constructed. The question “where are you from?” is central in this study. The essay studies how the participants identify themselves and how they express these self-identifications. Results show that the informants relate to a Swedish national identity one way or another and that they express this to others with the help of different symbols, behaviours and actions. The study material shows that the internationally adopted participants get stigmatised in Sweden both for being adopted and for being non-white, and thus risk getting feelings of exclusion from a Swedish national identity. Although there are some social interactions which make them feel connected to and included in certain communities of people which often include other adopted individuals or people of colour.

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Les adoptions internationales constituent un mode d'entrée particulier dans la filiation, mettant en exergue tous les questionnements universels touchant à la question de la filiation et forçant à l'élaboration de l'essence même du lien familial.La littérature sur l'adoption concerne principalement le devenir des enfants adoptés, en termes de développement psychologique et d'apparition de troubles psychopathologiques. Au sein de cette littérature, de nombreuses études, principalement anglo-saxonnes, se sont focalisées sur la question de l'identité culturelle des enfants adoptés, soulignant la corrélation entre identité biculturelle positive et forte (culture du pays de naissance et culture du pays d'accueil) et meilleur développement psychologique ultérieur.La notion d'identité culturelle des enfants adoptés est en revanche absente de la littérature française. Pourtant il semble difficile d'occulter la place que vient prendre, pour les parents comme pour les enfants, le pays de naissance de l'enfant et sa culture, ainsi que les conséquences, sur la construction identitaire de l'enfant, de se voir attribuer un statut d'étranger du seul fait de sa différence « visible ». Il semble alors nécessaire de complexifier la question culturelle en s'appuyant, non pas sur des postulats théoriques ou idéologiques, mais sur le discours des familles. Comment les familles appréhendent-elles la question des appartenances culturelles et de l'altérité de l'enfant adopté dans le cadre d'une adoption internationale ? Quels liens gardent-elles avec le pays de naissance de l'enfant et sa culture ? Ce travail de recherche s'inscrit dans une approche méthodologique qualitative et s'est focalisé sur le discours des parents adoptants, l'objectif étant de mieux comprendre leurs positions quant aux appartenances culturelles de leur enfant. 66 entretiens semi-structurés ont été recueillis auprès de parents ayant adopté au moins un enfant dans un autre pays que la France, de façon plénière. Le guide d'entretien explore le parcours de l'adoption, le choix du pays, le voyage dans le pays de naissance de l'enfant, les éléments connus de l'histoire de vie de l'enfant avant l'adoption, les liens au pays de naissance de l'enfant, à sa culture, les éventuelles expériences de racisme et de discrimination vécues par l'enfant. La méthode d'analyse du contenu des entretiens est une méthode qualitative, phénoménologique : l'Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.Les résultats de ce travail s'articulent autour de trois publications.Une première publication consiste en une revue de la littérature sur le concept d'identité culturelle chez les enfants en situation d'adoption internationale.La deuxième publication décrit les positions parentales retrouvées dans notre étude, quant aux liens gardés ou non avec le pays de naissance de l'enfant et sa culture, positions mises en évidence par l'analyse phénoménologique des entretiens. Trois grands types de représentations parentales sont retrouvés.Enfin une troisième publication met en évidence la présence, dans plus de la moitié des entretiens, d'expériences difficiles et violentes pour les parents, potentiellement traumatiques, au moment des premières rencontres avec l'enfant lors du voyage dans le pays de naissance. Les conséquences sur la construction des interactions familiales sont discutées.La discussion porte sur la notion de représentations parentales, fil rouge de ce travail, ainsi que sur les modalités de complexification de la question culturelle : à quel point la question de la culture vient-elle porter ou déplacer la question filiative ? En quoi parler de culture peut-il se confondre avec la question de la visibilité de l'adoption ?Ce travail de recherche a des conséquences directes sur la prise en charge et l'accompagnement des familles adoptantes. En effet représentations parentales et interactions familiales sont intimement liées et jouent un rôle déterminant dans le développement de l'enfant. / International adoption is a specific way to belong to a new filiation. Numerous studies have looked at various aspects of the internationally adopted children's outcome. Some studies have sought to show a correlation between the strength of their cultural identity and their psychological development. However the ethnic and cultural identity subject is missing in French research. Furthermore very few studies have examined the adopted children's cultural identity from the adoptive parents' perspective. The objective of this study is to use parents' discourse to explore their representations of their child's cultural belonging.The study includes 51 French parents who adopted one or more children internationally. Each parent participated in a semi-structured interview. The broad topics covered included the adoption procedure, the choice of country, the trip to the child's native country, the child's history before adoption, the current associations with the child's country of birth, the experiences of racism and discrimination. The sample includes 66 semi-structured interviews. The interviews were analyzed according to a qualitative phenomenological method, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis.The data were published in two original publications and one article has been submitted for publication: The first paper is a review of the cultural identity concept in the population of internationally adopted children.The second paper aims at describing three different parental representations of the child's cultural belonging.The third paper concerns the first parent-child encounters and highlights the difficult, sometimes traumatic experiences made then. We discuss parental representations, and the importance of complexifying the birth culture concept. Is questioning the birth culture replacing questioning the birth parents or even the perceivable physical differences between parents and children? Exploring parental representations of the adopted child enables professionals involved in adoption to provide better support to these families and do preventive work at the level of family interactions.

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Master of Science / Department of Family Studies and Human Services / Joyce Baptist / This report describes the role of cultural socialization in the ethnic identity formation of internationally adopted children. This report explores the process of integrating the child’s birth culture and the complexities that are involved in raising internationally adopted children. The theoretical frameworks of identity development and social construction will be used to provide a conceptual understanding of the process of ethnic identity development. This report will describe the use of Narrative Therapy and Child-centered Play Therapy to facilitate the process of identity development. Implications for clinical practice will be discussed.

The family has always been a central narrative theme in cinema. Korean cinema has been no exception, where the family has proved to be a popular subject since its earliest days. Yet Western scholarship on Korean cinema has given little attention to this dominant theme, preferring to concentrate on the film industry's recent revival and its blockbusters. Scholarship in Korea and in the Korean language, on the hand, has continuously discussed some of the major cinematic works on the family. However, such literature has tended to be in the form of articles discussing one or two particular works. A comprehensive study of the family in contemporary Korean cinema therefore remains absent both in Korean and in English. This thesis is an attempt to provide such a work, bringing together films on the family and writings on them in both Western and Korean scholarships, as well as filling the gaps where certain trends and patterns have gone undetected. How are the changes in the understanding of the family or in the roles of individual family members reworked, imagined, or desired in films? Taking this question as the starting point of the research, each chapter explores a separate theme: transformations in the structure of the family; faltering patriarchy and fatherhood; motherhood and the extremity of maternal love; and certain children's experiences of the family. The first chapter detects a general move away from the traditional patriarchal nuclear family and an interest in depicting alternative families, exploring shifting family forms in contemporary society and the public discourses surrounding them. The second chapter highlights the contradictory ways that the father has been illustrated in films during and after the IMF crisis. The third chapter explores a branch of recent thrillers that depicts mothers as dark and dangerous characters, offering an interesting cultural framing to the multiple perceptions of the mother figure in contemporary society. Finally, the last chapter aims to extend representations of the 'Korean family' to include films by/about those currently living outside of Korea, namely Korean emigrants and adoptees.

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