Babies without Borders: Adoption and Migration across the Americas

by Karen Dubinsky

Overview

International adoptions are both high-profile and controversial, with the celebrity adoptions and critically acclaimed movies such as Casa de los babys of recent years increasing media coverage and influencing public opinion. Neither celebrating nor condemning cross-cultural adoption, Karen Dubinsky considers the political symbolism of children in her examination of adoption and migration controversies in North America, Cuba, and Guatemala.

Babies Without Borders tells the interrelated stories of Cuban children caught in Operation Peter Pan, adopted Black and Native American children who became icons in the Sixties, and Guatemalan children whose 'disappearance' today in transnational adoption networks echoes their fate during the country's brutal civil war. Drawing from extensive research as well as from her critical observations as an adoptive parent, Karen Dubinsky aims to move adoption debates beyond the current dichotomy of 'imperialist kidnap' versus 'humanitarian rescue.' Integrating the personal with the scholarly, Babies Without Borders exposes what happens when children bear the weight of adult political conflicts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781442698437
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	03/23/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	204
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Karen Dubinsky is Professor of History and Global Development Studies at Queen's University. She is the author and editor of several books, including Within and Without the Nation: Transnational Canadian History (2015).

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1: Children and the Stories We Tell About Them

Chapter 2: The National Baby: Creating Monumental Children
From Operation Peter Pan to Elian Gonzalez

Chapter 3: The Hybrid Baby: Domestic Interracial Adoption
Since the 1950s

Chapter 4: The Missing Baby: Transnational Adoption and
The Vanishing Children of Guatemala

Chapter 5: Conclusion: Setting the Agenda for a
Happy Childhood

Selected Bibliography

What People are Saying About This

Ellen Herman

'Deeply researched, beautifully written, and brimming with insight, Babies Without Borders illustrates how profoundly narratives about rescuing and stealing children have distorted our understanding of international adoption throughout its history. From Cuba and Canada to Guatemala, babies caught up in the wars, refugee migrations, and other global calamities of the past half-century have paid a very high price for the privilege of serving as symbols of national pride, vulnerability, and destiny. Dubinsky refreshingly shifts our attention from Asia to Latin America, insists on telling stories from both sides of the border, and offers compelling evidence for the view that international power is inextricably linked to some of the most intimate experiences of family life—including her own.'

Louis A. Perez

'By making children the subject of her research, Dubinsky has provided original insight into the moral premises by which power is exercised and experienced. To approach children as highly-prized objects within paradigms of transnational privilege-the continuation of politics by other means-is to expose in the most intimate of settings the ways that the powerful and the powerless are drawn together into an inexorable relationship with one another, with all too predictable outcomes. This is a thoughtful and thought-provoking work of exemplary scholarship.'

Editorial Reviews

"By making children the subject of her research, Dubinsky has provided original insight into the moral premises by which power is exercised and experienced. To approach children as highly-prized objects within paradigms of transnational privilege–the continuation of politics by other means–is to expose in the most intimate of settings the ways that the powerful and the powerless are drawn together into an inexorable relationship with one another, with all too predictable outcomes. This is a thoughtful and thought-provoking work of exemplary scholarship."

Louis A. Pèrez

"Babies Without Borders is meticulously researched. The prose is intelligent and dense."

Contemporary Psychology - Judith L. Gibbons

"Deeply researched, beautifully written, and brimming with insight, Babies without Borders illustrates how profoundly narratives about rescuing and stealing children have distorted our understanding of international adoption throughout its history. From Cuba and Canada to Guatemala, babies caught up in the wars, refugee migrations, and other global calamities of the past half-century have paid a very high price for the privilege of serving as symbols of national pride, vulnerability, and destiny. Dubinsky refreshingly shifts our attention from Asia to Latin America, insists on telling stories from both sides of the border, and offers compelling evidence for the view that international power is inextricably linked to some of the most intimate experiences of family lifeincluding her own."

Ellen Herman

"Dubinksy researched three ethnic and national sources of adoption in the postwar Americas that created political storms and left the field of transnational and transracial adoption polarized between those who view these adoptions as postcolonial baby snatching and those who believe these adoptions rescue poor abandoned kids . . . establishes a more nuanced way of viewing cross border adoptions."

Choice Magazine - N. Zmora

"Intensely researched and historically relevant to current trends, Dubinsky's book provides insight into both the social workers and political realms of adoption from a multinational perspective."

Farnad J. Darnell

"Intensely researched and historically relevant to current trends, Dubinsky's book provides insight into both the social workers and political realms of adoption from a multinational perspective." -Farnad J. Darnell,Project Muse

From the Publisher

‘Dubinsky's research is excellent… Her contribution to this sub-field in the burgeoning field of childhood studies is a fine one and this book is a must read for all serious scholars of childhood and adoption.’

British Journal of Canadian Studies: vol 24:02:2011 - James Onusko