Theorizing Korean transracial adoptee experiences: Ambiguity, substitutability, and racial embodiment

Abstract

This article articulates a critical phenomenological account of the being of the Korean transracial adoptee, through an analysis of three fundamental interrelated experiences. First, I argue that adoptee being is marked by epistemological ambiguity, or the impossibility of knowing and the ambiguous value of any knowledge gained. Second, the arbitrary sense of one’s place and identity contribute to a sense of substitutability among adoptees. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s concept of the body schema, I then argue that for the Korean adoptee, racial difference is inscribed in the body schema as absence. The article ends with a discussion of the complexities of racial embodiment that underpin adoptees’ identifications and experiences of belonging and place, and which result in what I term ‘hyper(in)visibility’.

From model minority to racial threat: Chinese transracial adoptees’ experience navigating the COVID-19 pandemic.

“…Phenomenology was chosen because of its ability to capture the common social realities of this unique cultural group in the context of contemporary events (Moustakas, 1994). This qualitative approach aligns with multicultural values, as it gives voice to marginalized groups and is represented in recent adoption studies with transracial adoptees (see Benoit et al, 2018;Gustafsson, 2020). Phenomenological inquiry honors participants' perceptions and meaning-making processes that are salient amid a greater social experience (Moustakas, 1994).…”

Critical Adoptee Standpoint: Transnational, Transracial Adoptees as Knowledge Producers

“…Whereas transracial transnational adoption, particularly of Asian children, was purported to mimic families with shared biogenetics, adoptee-authored research outlines the challenges of this logic in a racialized society (Laybourn 2024;Pate 2014;Walton 2015;Williams Willing 2004). Gustafsson (2021) theorizes an adoptee "hyper(in)visibility" that shifts depending on the context but maintains adoptees' illegibility under dominant racial logic. The transracial adoptee is hypervisible by outsiders as a non-white member of a white family, yet rendered invisible by family members when their racialized experiences are unacknowledged.…”

“…However, in the 1990s, a wave of Korean adoptees began authoring their own stories through video memoirs, documentaries, anthologies, and other personal writings, bringing in a more nuanced and critical analysis of adoption (see: Kim (2000) for a discussion of "Korean adoptee auto-ethnography"). In the following years, research by Korean adoptee experts from a range of academic disciplines systematically analyzed questions regarding racial, ethnic, and cultural identity development, adoption policy, socialization, citizenship, media representation, gender and family, and inequality (Bae 2018;Brian 2012;Gustafsson 2021;Laybourn 2018Laybourn , 2021Laybourn , 2024Laybourn and Goar 2022;McGinnis et al 2009;McKee 2019;Meier 1999;Park Nelson 2016;Palmer 2010;Pate 2014;Prébin 2008Prébin , 2013Raleigh 2018).…”

Korean Adoption to Australia as Quiet and Orderly Child Migration

“…Their perceived bare vulnerability was a call to action, but they were also legally constructed as such since the 'orphan' in adoption documents was not necessarily a parentless child. Korean adoption agencies administratively produced orphanhood to more efficiently and systematically administer overseas adoptions on a large scale (Gustafsson 2021a(Gustafsson , 2021b Despite revisions to the adoption law in 1976 (Adoption Promotion and Procedure Act), the Korean adoption system has allowed legal guardians, grandparents, or other relatives with custody to finalise adoptions if able to provide documentation of "unusual circumstances (e.g., a dead or missing parent)" (H. Kim 2016, p. 6). Due to loopholes and lack of regulatory oversight, the relinquishment of a child to an adoption agency did not always involve the consent of the original mother.…”