Leinaweaver Jessaca
Department of Anthropology, Brown University, Box 1921, Providence, RI, 02912.
Soc Cult Geogr. 2015;16(5):508-521. doi: 10.1080/14649365.2014.994669. Epub 2015 Jan 6.
International adoption relocates minors, and only minors, from one country to another. The centrality of age to adoptive migration may prevent us from seeing the significance of generation: the prospective parent's age is also examined and evaluated for its relationship to the child's age and what this relationship will mean for the creation of a family. Because international adoption results in children crossing borders to enter new kinship formations, the assumptions under which it operate require closer geographical analysis. Generation, or the age range that separates dependents and their caretakers, is a significant but unstated motivator of international adoption policies and practices. This article argues that a normative and biologised sense of intergenerational difference is embedded in international adoption. The presence of generational ideology in national laws and international norms regarding international adoption demonstrate a broader sense in which policies situate more privileged families as acceptable and others as inadequate. I draw material for this analysis from both legal documents and documents which aim to provide interpretation of those laws, with reference to international adoptions from Peru.
跨国收养将未成年人（且仅为未成年人）从一个国家迁移至另一个国家。年龄在收养移民中的核心地位可能使我们忽视代际的重要性：准父母的年龄也会因其与孩子年龄的关系以及这种关系对组建家庭意味着什么而受到审查和评估。由于跨国收养导致儿童跨越国界进入新的亲属关系结构，其运作所依据的假设需要更深入的地理分析。代际，即分隔受抚养者及其照料者的年龄范围，是跨国收养政策和实践中一个重要但未阐明的推动因素。本文认为，一种规范的、生物学化的代际差异观念嵌入在跨国收养之中。国家法律和关于跨国收养的国际规范中代际意识形态的存在表明了一种更广泛的观念，即政策将更具优势的家庭视为可接受的，而将其他家庭视为不适当的。我从法律文件以及旨在对这些法律进行解释的文件中获取分析素材，并参考了秘鲁的跨国收养情况。
