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This review surveys sociological literature on intercountry adoption from 1997 to 2010. The analysis finds a preponderance of literature from the United States, reflecting its place as a major receiving country, and a focus on adoption experience organised by reference to the adoption triad: adoptive parents, adoptees, birth families. Reflecting the power imbalances in intercountry adoption, the voices and views of adoptive parents dominate the literature. There is an emerging literature generated by researchers who are intercountry adoptees, while birth families remain almost invisible in this literature. A further gap identified by this review is work which examines intercountry adoption as a global social practice and work which critically examines policy.

AbstractThis paper brings historical perspectives to bear on the ambivalent and contradictory position of adoption in Australian public policy. It examines the divergent histories of Australian domestic and intercountry adoption (ICA) since the mid‐1970s and the impact of these histories on adoption policy in Australia. It identifies tendencies in contemporary ICA to repeat elements of pre‐reform era domestic adoption. In particular, it is argued that the resistance of ICA to the move to openness in local adoption has been an unacknowledged driver of ICA for many Australian families. We offer corrective readings of the rise of ICA in relation to domestic adoption and conclude by offering alternatives for adoption policy which better align the two kinds of adoption, focusing on the needs of children, as distinct from the desires of adults.

This article seeks to understand, in historical and international perspective, recent governmental initiatives that aim to reinstate adoption as a viable policy option for the care and placement of children in Australia, with reference to two recent reports of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Human and Family Services, Overseas Adoption in Australia: Report of the Inquiry into Adoption of Children from Overseas (2005), and The Winnable War on Drugs: The Impact of Illicit Drug Use on Families (2007) which raises adoption as a policy option for children of drug‐addicted parents. These reports appear to signal a discursive shift away from the anti‐adoption attitudes that have characterised the post‐1970s period in response to the Stolen Generations and other past adoption practices. It is argued that this change can be understood as having been pushed to the fore by the conservative family policy of the Howard era and further fostered by international trends in adoption policy.

Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- About the author -- Romanisation of Chinese terms -- Lunar and solar calendars -- Abbreviations -- Preface and acknowledgements -- Chapter 1: Social identity, diaspora, and the writing of Chinese-Australian history -- Chapter 2: Coming to the city, late 1880s - 1892 -- Chapter 3: Shaping a modern Chinese community, 1894-1901 -- Chapter 4: Sydney's Chinese urban elite and leadership transformation, 1901-1905 -- Chapter 5: Becoming international, 1905-1908 -- Chapter 6: In the shadow of the Chinese urban elite -- Chapter 7: National subjects in history and revolutionary mobilisation, 1909-1912 -- Chapter 8: Making Chinese Australia, 1892-1912: urban elites, newspapers and nationalism -- Bibliography -- Index

Our objective was to explore the ways in which displaced Karen mothers expressed emotions in narrative accounts of motherhood and displacement. We contextualized and analyzed interview data from an ethnographic study of birth and emotions among 15 displaced Karen mothers in Australia. We found that women shared a common symbolic language to describe emotions centered on the heart, which was also associated with heart "problems." This, along with hypertension, collapsing, or a feeling of surrender were associated responses to extremely adverse events experienced as displaced peoples. A metaphoric schema of emotional terms centered on the heart was connected to embodied expressions of emotion related to illness of the heart. This and other embodied responses were reactions to overwhelming difficulties and fear women endured due to their exposure to political conflict and global inequity.

Our objective was to explore the ways in which displaced Karen mothers expressed emotions in narrative accounts of motherhood and displacement. We contextualized and analyzed interview data from an ethnographic study of birth and emotions among 15 displaced Karen mothers in Australia. We found that women shared a common symbolic language to describe emotions centered on the heart, which was also associated with heart "problems." This, along with hypertension, collapsing, or a feeling of surrender were associated responses to extremely adverse events experienced as displaced peoples. A metaphoric schema of emotional terms centered on the heart was connected to embodied expressions of emotion related to illness of the heart. This and other embodied responses were reactions to overwhelming difficulties and fear women endured due to their exposure to political conflict and global inequity.