'This is not a civic duty': Racial selection, consumer choice and the 'multiculturalist' bind in the production of Korean-American adoption

Until the past decade the Republic of Korea provided more children for international adoption than any other place in the world. Since 1955, it is estimated that between 100 thousand and 150 thousand Korean children have been placed for adoption in American families. While Korea has been surpassed by China, Russia, and sometimes Guatemala in recent years, in terms of annual rates of overseas adoptions, Korea maintained its position as the top sender of children for international adoption starting in the late 1950s and continuing through the early 1990s.; While many studies have been done to track the adjustment of international adoptees in American families, this study considers the ways in which Korean-American adoption as an institution has been situated and maintained within American society. To explore this question I have investigated the institutional history of Korean-American adoption alongside the narratives of American adoption facilitators, adult Korean adoptees and adoptive parents of Korean children.; Two primary research questions guided my ethnographic data collection. The first question was how do adoption facilitators, adoptive parents, and adult adoptees differently or similarly assign meaning to Korean-American adoption at the levels of family, race and nationhood. My second research question was how, and to what degree, do the research participants envision the need for reform within the practice of Korean-American adoption. My analysis is based on interviews conducted with 6 adoption facilitators, 21 adoptive parents, and 24 adult adoptees and also relies on observations of adoption agency training sessions and numerous other adoption-related events.; My findings suggest that current international adoption discourse relies primarily on a consumer-oriented, rather than problem-oriented, approach to adoption. I identify the ways in which adoption facilitators avoid subjects pertaining to class and race-based privilege through a "multiculturalist" discourse. I also analyze two family socialization processes called racial navigation and kinship navigation and offer interventions regarding the ways in which these two processes are hindered by particular dominant institutional discourses. I conclude by looking to international Korean adoptees as members of a transnational movement that is potentially well situated to activate institutional and cultural change.