Evidence of child abduction for intercountry adoption challenges our notions of altruism. The history of illicit adoptions and child abduction is presented with specific emphasis on Guatemala as a case example. Drawing on data produced in an ethnographic research, the analysis searches to elucidate how those involved in intercountry adoption in Spain (mainly adoptive and prospective adoptive parents) deal with signs of fraud and corruption. The results point out how these discourses usually dismiss the failures of the system and revolve around the idea of rescue. The rights of birth families – and even their mere existence – are usually absent in the discussion.
AnagnostA. (2000) ‘Scenes of Misrecognition: Maternal Citizenship in the Age of Transnational Adoption’, Positions-East Asia Cultures Critique8(2): 389–421.
BergquistK. (2009) ‘Operation Babylift or Babyabduction? Implications of the Hague Convention on the Humanitarian Evacuation and “Rescue” of Children’, International Social Work52: 621–33.
4.
BhargavaV. (2005) Adoption in India: Polices and Experiences. New Delhi: SAGE.
5.
BriggsL.MarreD. (2009) ‘Introduction: The Circulation of Children’, in MarreD.BriggsL. (eds) International Adoption Global Inequalities and the Circulation of Children, pp. 1–28. New York: New York University Press.
6.
BunkersK.M.GrozaV. (2012) ‘Intercountry Adoption and Child Welfare in Guatemala: Lessons Learned Pre and Post Ratification of the 1993 Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption’, in GibbonsJ.L.RotabiK.S. (eds) Intercountry Adoption: Policies, Practices, and Outcomes, pp. 119–31. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing.
Casa Alianza, Myrna Mack Foundation, Survivors Foundation, The Social Movement for the Rights of Children and Adolescents, Human Rights Office of the Archbishop of Guatemala and The Social Welfare Secretariat (2007) ‘Adoptions in Guatemala: Protection or Business?’. Available online at: https://www.brandeis.edu/investigate/adoption/docs/InformedeAdopcionesFundacionMyrnaMack.pdf (accessed 10 September 2010).
9.
CheneyK.E. (2014) ‘Executive Summary of the International Forum on Intercountry Adoption and Global Surrogacy’, ISS Working Paper Series/General Series596: 1–40. Available online at: http://hdl.handle.net/1765/77408 (accessed 1 December 2015).
10.
Comas d’ArgemirD.MarreD.San RománB. (2016) ‘La regulación política de la familia: Ideología, desigualdad y género en el Plan Integral de Apoyo a la Familia’ [The Political Regulation of Families: Ideology, Inequality and Gender in the Integral Plan of Support to the Family], Política y Sociedad53(3): 853–877.
CostantinoR. (2006) ‘Femicide, Impunity, and Citizenship: The Old and New in the Struggle for Justice in Guatemala’, The Journal of Mujeres Activistas en Letras y Cambio Social6(1): 107–21.
13.
CreswellJ. (2007) Qualitative Inquiry & Research Design: Choosing among Five Approaches, 2nd edn.Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
14.
CruzN.SmolinD.DilworthA.RotabiK.S.DiFilipoT. (2011) ‘Stolen Children: Illegal Practices in Intercountry Adoption and the Need for Reform’, invited presentation for the Human Rights Impact Litigation Clinic of the American University Washington College of Law, Washington, DC, 4April2011.
15.
FaircloughN. (1992) Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity Press.
FonsecaC.MarreD.San RománB. (2015) ‘Child Circulation in a Globalized Era: Anthropological Reflections’, in BallardR.L.GoodnoN.H.CochranR.F.JrMilbrandtJ.A. (eds) The Intercountry Adoption Debate: Dialogues Across Disciplines, pp. 157–93. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
18.
FreundlichM. (1998) ‘Supply and Demand: The Forces Shaping the Future of Infant Adoption’, Adoption Quarterly2(1): 13–46.
19.
FreundlichM. (2000) ‘Market Forces: The Issues in “International Adoption”’, in FreundlichM. (ed.) Adoption and Ethics, pp. 37–66. Washington, DC: Child Welfare League of America.
20.
GraffE.J. (2008) ‘The Lie We Love’, Foreign Policy169(November/December): 59–66.
HallS. (1992) ‘The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power’, in HallS.GiebenB. (eds) Formations of Modernity, pp. 275–320. Cambridge: Polity Press; The Open University.
23.
HollingsworthL.D. (2003) ‘International Adoption among Families in the United States: Considerations of Social Justice’, Social Work48(2): 209–17.
24.
HowellS. (2006) The Kinning of Foreigners: Transnational Adoption in a Global Perspective. New York; Oxford: Berghahn Books.
KohlerH.P.BillariF.OrtegaJ.A. (2002) ‘The Emergence of Lowest-Low Fertility in Europe during the1990s’, Population and Development Review28(4): 641–80.
27.
MarreD. (2004) ‘La adopción internacional y las asociaciones de familias adoptantes: Un ejemplo de sociedad civil virtual global’, Scripta Nova. Revista electrónica de geografía y ciencias socialesVIII: 170–4. Available online at: http://www.ub.es/geocrit/sn/sn-170-4.htm (accessed 10 September 2014).
28.
MarreD. (2009) ‘Los silencios de la adopción en España’, Revista de Antropología Social18: 97–126.
29.
MarreD.BestardJ. (2009) ‘The Family Body: Persons, Body and Resemblance’, in EdwardsJ.SalazarC. (eds) European Kinship in the Age of Biotechnology, pp. 64–78. London; New York: Berghahn Books.
30.
MezmurB.D. (2009) ‘From Angelina (to Madonna) to Zoe’s Ark: What Are the A–Z Lessons for Intercountry Adoptions in Africa?’, International Journal of Law, Policy and the Family23(2): 145–73.
31.
PadgettD.K. (1998) Qualitative Methods in Social Work Research: Challenges and Rewards. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
32.
Real Academia Española (2007) Diccionario de la lengua española. Madrid: Real Academia Española.
33.
RileyM. (2015) ‘An Imbalance of Justice: Birth Mothers in Uganda’, in BallardR.L.GoodnoN.CochranR.MilbrandtJ. (eds) The Intercountry Adoption Debate: Dialogues across Disciplines, pp. 618–25. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
34.
RobyJ.L. (2007) ‘From Rhetoric to Best Practice: Children’s Rights in Intercountry Adoption’, Children’s Legal Rights Journal27(3): 48–71.
35.
RobyJ.L.MatsumuraS. (2002) ‘If I Give You My Child, Aren’t We Family? A Study of Birthmothers Participating in Marshall Islands–U.S. Adoptions’, Adoption Quarterly5(4): 7–31.
36.
RotabiK.S. (2012a) ‘Child adoption and war: “Living disappeared” children and the social worker’s post-conflict role in El Salvador and Argentina’, International Social Work57(2): 169–180.
37.
RotabiK.S. (2012b) ‘El uso de la fuerza, el fraude y la coerción en algunas adopciones en Guatemala: Los casos graves de secuestros que cuestionan el principio del “interés superior del menor”’ [Force, fraud, and coercion in some Guatemalan adoptions: High-profile abduction cases challenge the `best interests of the child’], Scripta NovaXVII (395). Available online at: http://www.ub.edu/geocrit/sn/sn-395/sn-395-24.htm (accessed 7 December 2015).
38.
RotabiK.S. (2014) ‘Force, fraud, and coercion: Bridging from knowledge of intercountry adoption to global surrogacy’, ISS Working Paper Series / General Series600: 1–30. Available online at http://hdl.handle.net/1765/77403 (accessed 1 August 2015).
RotabiK.S.GibbonsJ.L. (2012) ‘Does the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption adequately protect orphaned and vulnerable children and their families?’, Journal of Child and Family Studies21(1): 106–119.
41.
San RománB. (2005) La aventura de convertirse en familia. Madrid: Blur Ediciones.
42.
San RománB. (2007) Adopción y escuela: guía para educadores y familias. Madrid: Blur Ediciones.
43.
San RománB. (2009) ‘Adopciones en la encrucijada’ [Adoption at the crossroads], Magazine, 20December, 52–61.
44.
San RománB. (2013) ‘From “children of the heart” to “abandoned children”: Construction of the “origins” of adoption in Spain’, Papeles del Psicólogo, 34(1): 2–10.
45.
San RománB. (2015) ‘De la dificultad de pensar la construcción de la identidad sin anclajes fijos: la adopción transnacional en España’ [On the difficulty of thinking about identity construction without fixed anchors: transnational adoption in Spain], Scripta Nova. Revista Electrónica de Geografía y Ciencias SocialesXIX(19). Available online at: http://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/ScriptaNova/article/view/15093/18334.
46.
San RománB.MarreD. (2014). ‘Understanding the fluxes of adoption demand: the case of Spain’, in International Forum on Intercountry Adoption & Global Surrogacy. The Hague: International Social Services, 11–13 August.
47.
SelmanP. (2009a) ‘The Movement of Children for International Adoption: Developments and Trends in Receiving States and States of Origin, 1998–2004’, in MarreD.BriggsL. (eds) International Adoption Global Inequalities and the Circulation of Children, pp. 32–51. New York: New York University Press.
48.
SelmanP. (2009b) ‘The Rise and Fall of Intercountry Adoption in the 21st Century’, International Social Work52: 575–94.
49.
SmolinD.M. (2004) ‘Intercountry Adoption as Child Trafficking’, Valparaiso University Law Review39: 281–325.
50.
SmolinD.M. (2006) ‘Child Laundering: How the Intercountry Adoption System Legitimizes and Incentivizes the Practices of Buying, Trafficking, Kidnapping, and Stealing Children’, Wayne Law Review52(1): 113–200.
51.
SmolinD.M. (2007a) ‘Child Laundering as Exploitation: Applying Anti-Trafficking Norms to Intercountry Adoption under the Coming Hague Regime’, Vermont Law Review32: 1–55.
52.
SmolinD.M. (2007b) ‘Intercountry Adoption and Poverty: A Human Rights Analysis’, Capital Law Review36: 413–53.
53.
SpradleyJ.P. (1979) The Ethnographic Interview. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
54.
StakeR.E. (2000) ‘The Case Study Method in Social Inquiry’, in GommR.HammersleyM.FosterP. (eds) Case Study Method: Key Issues, Key Texts, pp. 20–6. London; Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
55.
Terre des HommesT and UNICEF (co-producers) and Sylvain SA (director) (2010) Paper Orphans (Documentary Film). Image Ark Pvt. Ltd.
