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© 2009 Kazuyo Kubo 2009 Kazuyo Kubo TRANSNATIONALIZING FAMILIES: RACE, MULTICULTURALISM AND TRANSNATIONAL ADOPTION BY KAZUYO KUBO DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Gillian Stevens, Chair and Director of Research Associate Professor Moon-Kie Jung Assistant Professor Catherine Kenney, Bowling Green University Associate Professor Anna Maria Marshall Associate Professor Assata Zerai ABSTRACT This dissertation analyzes how people situate race when defining their own families through transnational adoption. Drawing from literature on multiculturalism, post civil rights colorblind racism, and family formation, I argue that perspectives on multiculturalism, colorblind ideology, and existing racial hierarchy significantly affect how prospective adoptive parents and adoption agency workers view race after the decision to create a family through transnational adoption. I first outline a brief history of transnational adoption and introduce some of the key actors that are involved in transnational adoption processes. I, then, provide an overview of demographic characteristics of families that contain adopted children from overseas by using data drawn from the 2000 U.S. Census. These analyses show that in cases where the parents’ race does not match their adopted child’s race, an overwhelming number of parents adopt Asian children. Turning to the data drawn from interviews and participant observation, I discuss how the adoption agencies educate adoptive parents in regards to how those parents build multicultural/multiracial families. I argue that presumptive notions of multiculturalism and acknowledgements of racism have influenced how adoption agencies educate adoptive parents. Finally, drawing on my interviews with adoptive parents, I examine how they internalize ideas about different racial groups. The discussion includes how adoptive parents decide to adopt transnationally as opposed to adopting domestically. I also investigate how their own perceptions of racial stereotypes and their perceptions of the communities in which they reside influence their understanding of race. ii To Father and Mother iii ACKOWLEDGMENTS At this final stage of completing my doctoral degree, I can’t help but to think about the tremendous amount of support and encouragement I have received from many people. Without them, I could not have made this journey. First, I would like to express my gratitude to the adoption agencies and adoptive parents who not only structured my project, but also guided me throughout my research with their insights and first-hand experiences in the field. I am so grateful to the staff members and the social workers for allowing a stranger, who had no prior professional or personal relationships with them into their world. To the parents who shared their stories with me, I honestly do not know how to thank them. It must not have been very easy to talk about their private lives to a person whom they just had met, but all of them provided a warm welcome into their family to help me understand the paths they took to create a family of which they were proud. Needless to say, I could not have completed this dissertation without advice and encouragement from dissertation committee members. I thank Gillian Stevens, my advisor, who has been so patient with me throughout my graduate career when I went through many ups and downs formulating my research, drafting the chapters, and finalizing the dissertation. Many times I exited through her office door feeling encouraged and motivated about my research. While acknowledging the stimulating comments and challenges she has given on my drafts, I am also grateful for her considerations in making sure that I always had a good working environment so that I can write. I am thankful to Moon-Kie Jung who always reminded me of the importance of theoretical contributions in my research. I am thankful to Catherine Kenney for her energy in closely engaging with my draft chapters. I am thankful to iv Anna Maria Marshall for giving me insightful comments about the role of the state in adoption and pushing me to incorporate it into my research. Also, I thank Assata Zerai for her dedication in helping me improve multiple sides of my research as well as teaching. I cannot leave out to thank three academic departments that housed me during my dissertating years. First, I would like to thank the Department of Sociology. I would specially like to thank Julie Woolsey and Shari Day for their support. Second, I would like to thank the Department of Sociology at Dickinson College for providing me with resources necessary during my writing phase. I am especially grateful for the support I received from Daniel Schubert, Susan Rose, and Vickie Kuhn. Finally, I would like to thank the Race and Ethnic Studies Department at the University of Redlands for keeping me inspired during my final phase of completing the dissertation. I am especially grateful to Keith Osajima for inviting me to present my research at a forum. The comments and conversations I had with the participants kept my motivation up while finalizing my chapters. The numerous support and encouragement my friends and family have given me are invaluable. To my friends Emin Adas, Hae-Jeong Ahn, Peter Asaro, Laura Chambers, Cheng-Heng Chang, Angel Delgado-Reyes, Cassandra Delgado-Reyes, Serife Genis, Doug Grbic, Keith Guzic, Hiromi Ishizawa, Jin-Ho Jang, Soo-Chul Kim, Ryuta Komaki, Diana Mincyte, Erin Murphy, Anya Pantuyeva, Keun-Young Park, Amit Prasad, and Srirupa Prasad, I owe many thanks for their friendship as well as for the laughter we shared together. I am so grateful to Roberto Cruz and Helen Cruz for their warm support always. Thanks to Fred and Diane Woodward for their extraordinary support, especially during my first years in the United States. I thank v Sachiko Ujiie for encouragement she has given me throughout my graduate career. I do not know how to express my gratitude to Adrian Cruz without whom I could not accomplish many things, which I had never imagined I could do in my life. I thank you very much for that. Lastly, I would like to thank my parents Masatoshi and Setsuko Kubo for their ever-unconditional love and support and trust that I was doing something meaningful all those years. This dissertation is dedicated to them. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION……………………………………………1 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORIES……………….28 CHAPTER 3: METHODS AND DATA…………………………………...55 CHAPTER 4: RECENT PATTERNS OF ADOPTION IN THE UNITED STATES………………………………………………...74 CHAPTER 5: TRANSCENDING RACE? THE DILEMMA OF MULTICULTURALISM IN TRANSNATIONAL ADOPTIVE FAMILY FORMATION……………………………………………………93 CHAPTER 6: DESIRABLE DIFFERENCE: THE SHADOW OF RACIAL STEREOTYPES IN CREATING TRANSRACIAL FAMILIES THROUGH TRANSNATIONALADOPTION…….………...131 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION—FAMILY AND RACE………………… 161 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………….173 TABLES……………………………………………………………………185 FIGURES…………………………………………………………………..194 APPENDICES……………………………………………………………...196 AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY………………………………………………...197 vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 INTRODUCTION Family formation usually involves having children. While many couples start a family by having biological children, many decide to do so through adoption. Creating families through adoption is by no means a new practice in the United States. Transnational adoption, however, emerged as a new alternative for interested parents after World War II and grew popular in the 1980s. By the turn of 21st Century, the United States had granted over 200,000 entry visas for children to be adopted from over 100 countries around the globe (U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services 2003). One important outcome of transnational adoption is the creation of transracial families. My dissertation, therefore, analyzes how family formation is affected by race in examination of recent transnational adoption practices in the United States. I draw upon a rich assortment of data based on US Census figures, ethnographic studies of two adoption agencies in the Midwest, and in-depth interviews with agency staff and adoptive parents. Unlike families created biologically, adoptive families with a “stranger”— where there is no genetic kinship between parents and the child—are created through a series of legal processes (Melosh 2002). For transnational adoption, there are even more layers of procedures parents need to go through. One important layer of the legality is how race has historically played a role in the creation of families. Until the 1960s, many states not only outlawed miscegenation, but also made interracial adoption illegal (Freundlich 2000). Within the legal, political, and social climate of the time, “racial matching” between adoptive parents and children was highly desirable and “racial mixing” was viewed as unacceptable (Freundlich 2000). The 1 reconsideration of race led by the civil rights movement influenced the breakdown of the consensus on race-matching practices of adoption. As a result, many adoption agencies became more open to interracial placement while many still remained closed to the possibility of transracial placement (Moran 2001). Nonetheless, interracial adoption continued to be an unacceptable practice with one “acceptable exception,” which was the small number of adoptions of Asian children (Freundlich 2000). The adoption of Asian children
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