No Place Like Home

No Place Like Home

By Ben Woodruff

Adopted Territory: Transnational Korean Adoptees and the Politics of Belonging by Eleana Kim is most easily contrasted by Rhacel Parrenas book Children of Global Migration.  In the Parrenas book, the examination was on the children left behind in their communities as their parents went abroad to work. Kim instead looks at the children that are removed entirely from that culture and raised in a transplanted sense in Europe or the United States.

This examination of how people lose a sense of community because they are taken as children to a new country is really something that can’t be used enough. In the introduction to Uprootings/Regroundings Questions of Home and Migration, the editors Ahmed, Castaneda, Fortier, Sheller discuss that one can be grounded even if not fixed in geography. Adoption of Korean children by generally white Europeans and Americans reflects this intersection of race, class and gender with transnationalism.

In this case, the migration is not to engage in commerce for a short time and then returning to the country of origin or to live abroad and then sending the proceeds to the “home” country to support family left behind. Instead this is a group of children that are taken from their home countries without a consideration of their consent and placed in an environment divorced from the one they were born into. The children are uprooted in the language used by Ahmed et al.

The relationship of this migration is one ultimately of power. The Koreans live in a poor country relative to the United States, Germany, and Norway where most of the adopting families live. That difference in wealth leads to a difference in power. Also an issue that is not mentioned at length but one reason for the adoption from Korea is because of the access. The United States has maintained a presence in South Korea since 1945 and increased the presence with the war in 1950.

The South Korean government was dependent upon the United States since it was established after the Second World War. This difference in power does bring into question what decision can be made for the adults giving children up for adoption. And what does not being chosen for adoption means for the children left behind?