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This article attempts to initiate a critical dialogue on the politics of love and attachment by investigating the way in which the concept of attachment governs the field of transnational adoption. We take our starting point in an analysis of a collection of background articles, teaching materials, and interviews produced by child psychologists as well as instructions to and testimonies from adopters. Reading the material through Sara Ahmed's notion of affective orientation and Lauren Berlant's critical deconstruction of love, we argue that the texts popularize and instrumentalize John Bowlby's framework of attachment theory in ways that connect attachment to specific notions of love. Even though the aim seems to be the strengthening of intimate familial ties in adoptive families and ensuring feelings of kinship and security for the adoptee, the notion of attachment-as-love simultaneously organizes a narrative logic that positions the adoptee in a deadlock between pathologization and the demand for affective assimilation into the adoptive family. Our reading seeks to invite a more critical approach to notions of the attachment paradigm as an idealized route to affective belonging and psychological well-being for adoptees. ; publishedVersion

This special issue of NJMR contributes to the field of Nordic migration research by investigating the intersections between migration, affect and biopolitics. Affective biopolitics is a term that grapples with how the construction, policing and maintenance of borders increasingly occur through the structuring and production of emotion or 'affects'. The point is not that affect replaces racism as the caesura between life and death (Foucault 2003). Rather, affective biopolitics examines the connections between affect and racism (Ahmed 2000, 2004b, 2010) which allow for bio- and necropower (Mbembe 2003) to expose some populations to death while other populations are afforded mobility and access to rights and resources.

Through a close reading of media reporting from 2017 to 2018 on the case of the Chinese girl Liu Yiming, who was first denied then granted residency in Denmark due to public pressure, this article analyses how regulation of family reunification involving children is negotiated in the Danish public imaginary in the context of strong anti-immigration sentiments. This imaginary projects the white Danish public as eager to love Yiming and as affectively invested in reversing the injustice done to her and her family. The article suggests, however, that the outpouring of white love, which functions as an affective intervention imbued with the promises of reversing Yiming's deportation, is deeply embedded in exceptionalist notions of the 'integrated' migrant and that it works to restore an idealised image of a Danish nation defined by 'human decency' as a core value. Thus, the analysis raises critical questions to the politics of white love and its promise of securing social change for the 'integrated' migrant through collective acts of white feeling. ; publishedVersion

Through a close reading of media reporting from 2017 to 2018 on the case of the Chinese girl Liu Yiming, who was fi rst denied then granted residency in Denmark due to public pressure, this article analyses how regulation of family reunifi cation involving children is negotiated in the Danish public imaginary in the context of strong anti-immigration sentiments. This imaginary projects the white Danish public as eager to love Yiming and as aff ectively invested in reversing the injustice done to her and her family. The article suggests, however, that the outpouring of white love, which functions as an aff ective intervention imbued with the promises of reversing Yiming's deportation, is deeply embedded in exceptionalist notions of the 'integrated' migrant and that it works to restore an idealised image of a Danish nation defi ned by 'human decency' as a core value. Thus, the analysis raises critical questions to the politics of white love and its promise of securing social change for the 'integrated' migrant through collective acts of white feeling.

Transnational surrogacy and the reproductive practices it entails raise interesting questions about genetic relatedness, kinship formation, and the stratification of reproductive labor and rights. This article discusses two high-profile Norwegian cases involving the Crown Princess Mette-Marit and Øystein Mæland, who served as chief of the Norwegian police from 2011 to 2012. While surrogacy is illegal in Norway, the article demonstrates how newspaper debates on both cases discursively decentered the illegality of surrogacy practices and instead developed notions of "good" and "bad" practices, positioning surrogacy in California as ethically regulated, while surrogacy in India was framed as fraught with ethical issues and exploitative. The article concludes that the two cases point to how specific formations of gay surrogacy work to simultaneously produce legitimate citizens out of commissioning parents and children, as well as a superior and exceptional nation-state.

The field of gender studies is changing and solidifying at the same time. What kinds of developments can we trace in contemporary gender studies, and what is at stake for gender studies now? What are important questions for/in the field? How come gender studies in Norway (and the rest of Scandinavia) tend to shoulder or "house" adjacent fields that also deal with questions of power and difference, such as critical race studies for example? Why are we working in/with gender studies, and how do we contribute towards advancing gender and feminist studies in theory, teaching, politics and practice? In this roundtable, scholars in the Centre for Gender Studies at the University of Stavanger grapple with these questions through examples from our own research and teaching. The purpose for this roundtable is to continue our local discussions and thinking with the field of gender studies nationally and internationally.

Dette essay udspringer af vores erfaringer med at blive forvekslet med hinanden i konteksten af dansk akademia. At blive forvekslet er selvfølgelig ikke en erfaring, der er forbeholdtøstasiatiske kroppe som vores. Vores afsæt er den racialiserende forveksling, som produceres gennem et hvidt akademisk blik, der både udvisker forskellighed og bestemmer hvilke former for forskellighed, der skal tillægges vægt og betydning. Vi anvender dermed forvekslingerne som en indgang til at reflektere over, hvordan race og hvidhed fungerer som organiserende principper i akademia, og på hvilke måder forskellige former for racialiseringsprocesser gør sig gældende i vores arbejdsliv.