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Genealogy
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Adoption Is Stranger than Fiction
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Adoption Is Stranger than Fiction

A special issue of Genealogy (ISSN 2313-5778).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 September 2025) | Viewed by 10100

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Gonda Van Steen

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Classics and Centre for Hellenic Studies, King's College London, London WC2R 2LS, UK
Interests: modern Greek language; literature, history, and memory; especially relating to adoption movements and the public sphere modern productions of classical Greek theatre: performance criticism, reception, authoritarianism and censorship, gender studies, cultur; heritage studies and the politics of the past

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We seek abstracts for a Special Issue of Genealogy that will focus on intercountry adoption in its post-WWII forms, irrespective of national/ethnic origin or destination. Our Special Issue’s title is meant to suggest that well-laid plans and intentions can work out in unforeseen ways, affecting many more people than the adopted persons and the members of the first family. Of interest are:

  • Analyses and comparisons of accounts that may come from any parties involved in post-war intercountry adoptions and that draw on pertinent sources and/or life-cycle documentation (memoirs, letters, diaries, and other life-writing sources).
  • Lived experiences that are underpinned by theoretical perspectives and that engage with the current critical literature and scholarship and/or archival or other kinds of “elusive” sources.
  • Analyses of more creative interpretations, whether critical or not, e.g., novels drawing on intercountry adoption.
  • Explorations of post-WWII cross-border adoptions in popular media.
  • Analyses of personal, communal, national, political, diplomatic, legal, cultural, and other conditions, whether prevalent at the time that the “historical” adoptions took place or dominant in more recent decades.
  • Analyses or reports on country-focused longitudinal investigations.
  • Papers examining current adoptee activism.
  • Papers exploring root searches, reunions with biological parents, and/or post-reunion relationships. Of special interest are the voices of the adopted persons themselves, who have traditionally been less represented than the adoptive parents.

Please send an English-language abstract of maximum 350 words to Prof. Gonda Van Steen. Make sure that the abstract also addresses your methodology. The abstract should be received no later than 1 May 2025. The authors of abstracts will be notified of a decision by 25 May 2025. Full manuscript submissions will be invited by 1 September 2025 and need to be submitted in the template of the journal on the Genealogy MDPI platform. Manuscripts undergo double-blind peer review and follow the regular procedures of the journal Genealogy. Ideally, final manuscripts should be between 7000 and 10,000 words, and illustrations are welcome (with the proper permissions).

Prof. Dr. Gonda Van Steen
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Genealogy is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • child adoption
  • post-WWII intercountry adoption
  • adoption archives
  • lived experience
  • adoptee search and reunion

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Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Published Papers (8 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 406 KB  
Article
‘If We Do Not Speak Out, No One Else Will’: Adoptee Activism and Its Impact on Intercountry Adoption in The Netherlands
by Shila Khuki de Vries, Sarah Janaki Peshala de Vos and Kristen E. Cheney
Genealogy 2025, 9(4), 133; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy9040133 - 19 Nov 2025
Viewed by 949
Abstract
This article highlights the role of adoptee activism in raising awareness and changing policy regarding Intercountry Adoption (ICA) in The Netherlands. Through interviews with a selection of adoptees engaged in activism, this study shows that (i) adoptees became engaged in activism as a [...] Read more.
This article highlights the role of adoptee activism in raising awareness and changing policy regarding Intercountry Adoption (ICA) in The Netherlands. Through interviews with a selection of adoptees engaged in activism, this study shows that (i) adoptees became engaged in activism as a result of growing adoptee consciousness in combination with encountering irreconciliation; (ii) they employed many types of activism, sometimes with different goals and strategies; (iii) they cooperated in different constellations and with many allies such as journalists, lawyers and scholars; and (iii) their activism had significant impact on general awareness and government policy. Despite visible progress, reforms have fallen short of their needs, and implementation of government plans remains insecure. Many adoptees therefore feel compelled to continue their activism. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Adoption Is Stranger than Fiction)
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19 pages, 274 KB  
Article
The Face of Forced Consent in Postwar Adoptions from Greece: What Does It Look Like?
by Gonda A. H. Van Steen
Genealogy 2025, 9(4), 126; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy9040126 - 12 Nov 2025
Viewed by 401
Abstract
This article explores the nature of forced consent in 1950s child adoptions from Greece to the United States. It contributes to critical adoption studies by centering the lesser-known “sending country” of Greece and by drawing from a rare combination of biographical data and [...] Read more.
This article explores the nature of forced consent in 1950s child adoptions from Greece to the United States. It contributes to critical adoption studies by centering the lesser-known “sending country” of Greece and by drawing from a rare combination of biographical data and testimonies, microhistorical contexts, and otherwise scant archival sources. At stake is the exceptionally well-documented treatment of a Greek birthmother who consented to the overseas adoption of her daughter under conditions of socioeconomic pressure. The article illustrates and denounces the aggressive postwar American approach to child adoption from Greece, which left no room for a strengths-based approach to the dependent nation, let alone to the unwed birthmother. The systemically disempowered birthmother and adopted daughter become paradigmatic of many more such seemingly private but essentially biopolitical adoption processes, which may elude notice for lack of proper documentation. Drawing also on conversations with the affected adoptee in later life, this article further endorses recent child-centered, diachronic historical methods and interdisciplinary approaches, as well as a call for truth and reconciliation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Adoption Is Stranger than Fiction)
24 pages, 334 KB  
Article
International Adoptees’ Sexual Health: To Be Seen or to Be Visible?
by Anna Linde and Michael C. Sims
Genealogy 2025, 9(4), 125; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy9040125 - 6 Nov 2025
Viewed by 1646
Abstract
International adoptees share the experience of unwanted separations as well as exposure to racism. Previous research has a general focus on adoptees’ infancy, childhood, and adolescence rather than adoptees in adulthood, which makes their own contributions and voice in research insufficient. The purpose [...] Read more.
International adoptees share the experience of unwanted separations as well as exposure to racism. Previous research has a general focus on adoptees’ infancy, childhood, and adolescence rather than adoptees in adulthood, which makes their own contributions and voice in research insufficient. The purpose of this study is to address the gap in research around sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHRs) for adoptees in adulthood. By interviewing 35 international adoptees in Sweden and with the use of semi-structured interviews, the connection between Sexual Health and being adopted was explored. Anchored in a decolonial approach, this study draws on Hooks’ Critical Race Theory and Simon and Gagnon’s script theory when analysing the informants’ answers. Findings show that adoptees’ sexual health is partly shaped by structural racism, internalised norms, and the tension between expectations and adoption narratives. The knowledge gained from this study is expected to be of importance to people in the care sector as well as people working with adoptees because of its importance in understanding and exploring the lived experience of adoptees. Although the study is conducted in a Swedish context, it is relevant in a wider environment as it contributes to how colonial and historical contexts may inform and continue to impact adult adoptees’ sexual health, reflecting the complex interplay between societal expectations, personal identity, and sexual and reproductive health and rights. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Adoption Is Stranger than Fiction)
13 pages, 257 KB  
Article
Complicating the Search Imperative in Transnational Adoption: An Anthropological Analysis of Non-Searching Transnational Adoptees in Belgium and Spain
by Atamhi Cawayu and Chandra Kala Clemente-Martínez
Genealogy 2025, 9(4), 124; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy9040124 - 6 Nov 2025
Viewed by 1224
Abstract
In critical adoption scholarship, significant attention has been devoted to the searching and returning transnational adoptee, while those who opt not to search altogether remain largely overlooked. This article addresses this gap by examining the experiences of transnational adoptees who, despite being raised [...] Read more.
In critical adoption scholarship, significant attention has been devoted to the searching and returning transnational adoptee, while those who opt not to search altogether remain largely overlooked. This article addresses this gap by examining the experiences of transnational adoptees who, despite being raised in the 1990s and 2000s amid increasing openness about origins and adoption, choose not to search. Drawing on two anthropological studies with Bolivian adoptees in Belgium and Nepali adoptees in Spain, the article explores how agency and choice are shaped in relation to the decision not to search. It further examines how socio-political, cultural, and historical legacies—such as the enduring secrecy surrounding adoption and the privileging of closed familial models—have shaped adoptees’ convictions toward their origins, including the decision not to search. Foregrounding the perspectives of non-searching adoptees reveals that their position is not merely oppositional to that of the searching adoptee but rather emerges from the very same structural conditions within the adoption system—namely, a system built on silence, erasure, and restrictive notions of belonging. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Adoption Is Stranger than Fiction)
16 pages, 439 KB  
Article
Eternally Vulnerable? Foreign-Born Adoptees Under U.S. Citizenship Rules
by Vivian Jessica Salles Vieira Pinto
Genealogy 2025, 9(4), 117; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy9040117 - 1 Nov 2025
Viewed by 484
Abstract
This article examines how the insecure and precarious legal status of adoptees gives rise to vulnerabilities, with a particular focus on the citizenship of foreign-born adoptees. The primary objective of this work is to identify vulnerabilities associated with U.S. citizenship rules. While adoption [...] Read more.
This article examines how the insecure and precarious legal status of adoptees gives rise to vulnerabilities, with a particular focus on the citizenship of foreign-born adoptees. The primary objective of this work is to identify vulnerabilities associated with U.S. citizenship rules. While adoption is often assumed to guarantee both familial belonging and a legal status of citizenship, the U.S. legal framework frequently reveals gaps that leave adoptees in vulnerable positions. By tracing how administrative requirements, adoptive parents’ lack of due diligence, and fragmented legal pathways create insecurity, this article shows that the law itself may generate or exacerbate vulnerabilities it purports to resolve. Drawing on the concepts of vulnerability and navigating the intersection of family law and immigration law, the analysis highlights how citizenship is more than a legal status, affecting deeper issues of identity-building and belonging. The article concludes by underscoring the need for a protective, adoptee-centered, coherent approach to citizenship rules, one that offers better legal permanence for adoptees. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Adoption Is Stranger than Fiction)
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19 pages, 308 KB  
Article
Adoptees Traveling Worlds: Love and Multiplicitous Being in Adoptees’ Autofictional Writing
by Sophie Withaeckx
Genealogy 2025, 9(4), 114; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy9040114 - 16 Oct 2025
Viewed by 633
Abstract
In the adoptive family, discourses of love have been mobilized to attach the adoptee to the intimate space of the nuclear family, thereby detaching them from other spaces and meaningful others. In this article, I engage with the question of what kinds of [...] Read more.
In the adoptive family, discourses of love have been mobilized to attach the adoptee to the intimate space of the nuclear family, thereby detaching them from other spaces and meaningful others. In this article, I engage with the question of what kinds of love have been erased in the adoptive family, how understandings of love impact upon adoptees’ subjectivity and which ways of imagining the self, in its connection to present and absent others, thereby become disabled. In order to assess whether alternative understandings of love, self and kinship can be imaginable within the adoptive family, I turn towards two works of autofiction written by adoptees: Shâb ou la nuit by the French author Cécile Ladjali and The girl I am, was and never will be by US author Shannon Gibney. In examining their articulations of love and the difficulties of finding words for that which might exist outside of dominant, quasi-hegemonic discourses, I draw on Maria Lugones’ articulation of love as connected to her theory of world-traveling. This enables us to understand adoption narratives and searches as attempts to reconnect with pre-existing worlds and meaningful others, made inaccessible by the Euromodern institution of adoption. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Adoption Is Stranger than Fiction)
25 pages, 694 KB  
Article
Adoption Agrafa, Parts ‘Unwritten’ About Cold War Adoptions from Greece: Adoption Is a Life in a Sentence, Adoption Is a Life Sentence
by Gonda A. H. Van Steen
Genealogy 2025, 9(3), 81; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy9030081 - 20 Aug 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 988
Abstract
This essay focuses on the Greek adoptees’ search for identity and on the agrafa, or the “unwritten” territories, into which this search penetrates. The Greek adoptees represent an underresearched case study of the postwar intercountry adoption movement (1950–1975). Creating a narrative of [...] Read more.
This essay focuses on the Greek adoptees’ search for identity and on the agrafa, or the “unwritten” territories, into which this search penetrates. The Greek adoptees represent an underresearched case study of the postwar intercountry adoption movement (1950–1975). Creating a narrative of the self is key to the adoptees’ identity formation, but their personal narrative is often undermined by stereotypes and denunciations that stunt its development. The research presented here has been guided by questions that interrogate the verdict-making or “sentencing” associated with the adoptees’ identity-shaping process: their sentencing to subjugation by stock opinions, the denouncing of their alternative viewpoints about “rescue” adoptions, and the verdict of their entrapment in feel-good master narratives. This essay also explores broader research questions pertaining to modes of interrogating “historic” adoptions from Greece. It is concerned with the why rather than with the how or the who of the oldest, post-WWII intercountry adoption flows. In what forums and genres (narrative, visual, journalistic, scholarly) are Greek adoption facts and legacies articulated, mediated, and/or materialized? How do memories, both positive and negative, underpin current projects of self-identification and transformation? What are the adoptees’ preferred outlets to speak about embodied experiences, and are those satisfactory? Based on a mixed methods approach, the essay ties these steps in identity growth to the Adoptee Consciousness Model, illustrating the five phases of consciousness that the adoptees may experience throughout their lives. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Adoption Is Stranger than Fiction)
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20 pages, 321 KB  
Article
The Swedish Adoption World and the Process of Coming to Terms with Transnational Adoption
by Tobias Hübinette
Genealogy 2025, 9(3), 77; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy9030077 - 6 Aug 2025
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2418
Abstract
In October 2021 the Swedish government committee of inquiry, the Adoption Commission, was appointed, which presented its final report in June 2025. The Adoption Commission investigated irregular and unethical adoptions to Sweden from the 1950s until today, and it was a part of [...] Read more.
In October 2021 the Swedish government committee of inquiry, the Adoption Commission, was appointed, which presented its final report in June 2025. The Adoption Commission investigated irregular and unethical adoptions to Sweden from the 1950s until today, and it was a part of an ongoing global process of coming to terms with past concerning transnational adoptions. This qualitative media text study examines how the Adoption Commission was perceived by the Swedish adoption world’s three stakeholders, the adoptive parents, the adoption organizations, and the adoptees, between 2021 and 2024 and in relation to transitional justice theories, with a focus on the issues of retributive and restorative justice. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Adoption Is Stranger than Fiction)
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