Abstract
Over a 70-years period after the Korean War (1950–1953), more than 200,000 South Korean children were displaced to the United States for adoption (Kim, 2015; McKee, 2019, 2016; Nelson, 2007; Laybourn, 2024). In Barn’s case study of transracial adoption in the USA, transracial adoption (TRA) is defined as “an adoption that involves the placement of children in families that are racially and culturally different from them. In modern western societies, this practice largely involves the placement of minority ethnic children in white adoptive families” (Barn, 2013, p. 1273). This global phenomenon, described as an “easy fix” to thousands of unwanted mixed-race children, grew into a market facilitating intercountry adoption and overlooking “the best interests of the child” (McKee, 2016, p.156). Nowadays, children’s commodification “underscore the supply and demand nature of transnational adoption” (McKee, 2016, p. 153) which is still ongoing through this global adoption market. Transnational adoption (TNA), also referred to as “adoption across borders” (Volkman, 2020, p.1), or the transfer of children from one country to the other. Adoptees have been considered foreign others, aliens, and “outsiders within” (Hübinette, 2004) unable to fit into the predominantly White society. Issues of race and belonging result in the negotiation of their hybrid identity in the third space (Bhabha, 1994; Soja, 2010) that implies a dynamic navigation between their adoptive milieu and their birth culture to which they are later introduced.I explore the discourses surrounding TNA and TRA through media portrayals and adoptees’ narrative derived from their ‘acts of remembering’ (Mazzei, 2013). I analyse adoptees’ identity negotiation process and how different adoptees maintain different discourses depending on social changes and other lived circumstances. The materials under analysis encompass news briefings from the 1950s and 20 selected adoptees’ accounts from the Side by Side website which encompasses 100 South Korean adoptees’ narratives. I use van Dijk’s sociocognitive approach to critical discourse analysis in conjunction with the Discourse Historical Approach discursive strategies (Reisigl & Wodak, 2008) to decipher the power dynamics between the United States and South Korea, as manifested in the 1950s media portrayals. I also use Reflexive Thematic Analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022) to explore adoptees’ accounts.
The originality of this study lies in the approach undertaken to visualise this project in terms of three stages for identity negotiation and three layers of paternalism. The fusional model of dual identity negotiation analyses adoptees’ processes of identity negotiation by integrating Du Boisian ‘double consciousness’ with the conceptual frameworks of both Bhabha (1994) and Soja (2010) regarding third space. Subsequently, I dive deeper in adoptees’ accounts to depict a certain narrative resonance. This is achieved through comparing different adoptees’ responses to their own vécu (lived experience), which forges a better understanding of their identity negotiation processes.
The three layers of American paternalism is engrained in the core-periphery relationship discourse as a new form of neocolonial control over South Korea through the “Transnational Adoption Industrial Complex, or TAIC” (McKee, 2016). Paternalism constitutes a central focus of this research, which I suggest comes under three layers: humanist paternalism, state paternalism, and family-level paternalism. These data-driven patterns facilitate a deeper comprehension of the
issue of TNA and offer potential models for future research endeavours, because they provide a basis for developing a more profound exploration of the underlying roots of these issues. The findings of this research following the eclectic approach to critical discourse studies (CDS) has made a significant contribution in the field of critical adoption studies (CAS), marking it as the first contribution of its kind to my knowledge.
| Date of Award | 7 Apr 2025 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Isabelle Cockel (Supervisor), Lee Sartain (Supervisor) & Natalya Vince (Supervisor) |