Post-Soviet Americans: Familial and National Belonging for Russian Adoptees in the U.S.

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the following research questions about Russian adoption in the U.S.: First, how do disputes to claim and care for children play out in national politics? Second, how do adoptive parents and adoptees do family across differences of age and national origin, particularly with older child adoptees? Finally, where and to whom do adoptees feel they belong? In Chapter 3, I demonstrate that the figure of the disabled or “special needs” Russian child as belonging in the U.S. appeared in both the U.S. and Russia press responses to the Dima Yakovlev Law banning adoptions to the U.S. Focusing on disabled children’s supposedly happy lives served as a rallying cry to continue international adoptions. This focus on disabled children perpetuated an approach of being child-centered that was objectifying rather than inviting children and adoptees to participate in discussions and policy decisions affecting their lives. In Chapter 4, I highlight parents’ experiences of adopting from Russia, analyzing how they give accounts (1) of the process of drawing boundaries around who now counts as family and (2) what activities the family shares as adoptive parents work to transform adoptees into American children and to do culture-keeping (or not) as a family now putatively Russian-American. I demonstrate the complexity in how adoptive families decide who counts as family in the cases in which adoptees have biological siblings. In Chapter 5, I forefront the stories of Russian adoptees on their own journeys and negotiations within U.S. families and highlight a counterhegemonic discourse of some adoptees’ ambivalence in coming to the U.S. Adoptees may have been most familiar with and preferred communal living with children and caregivers who shared their culture and language. While their life chances may have been limited were they to have stayed in institutional care and then aged out, childhood studies encourages taking seriously children’s own perspectives. I suggest continuing to ask how adoptees can be invited to participate as decision-makers in their own lives, defining family, care, and belonging for themselves and having meaningful opportunities to connect with and critique their countries and cultures of origin and adoption.