Paper short abstract:

Transnational adoption to Europe and the USA is increasingly controlled by international conventions. These are largely the product of contemporary Western values. Countries that send children abroad for adoption are sceptical of some of the principles and the practices they give rise to. The reactions of two donor countries, India and Ethiopia, are examined.

Paper long abstract:

Transnational adoption of abandoned infants from the poor South and Eastern Europe to the rich North is steadily growing as a practice. The practice is increasingly being controlled by the regulations of the UN Convetion on the Rights of the Child and The Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoption. These regulations are, by and large, the result of contmeporary Western values, derived from the ever increasing influence of expert knowledge. Many donor countries, however are skeptical to the prinicples upon which these values are founded, but are, to a varying degree, unable to counter-act the hegemonic power of the Western 'psycho-technocrats', NGOs, and governemetnal bodies. The regulations are composed in order to secure what is taken to be the best interest of the children, but these may not correspond to notions in the donor countries. This paper will look at some reactions to the regulations in two donor countries: India and Ethiopia and the way in which they are enforced by the receving countires, and argue that there is a sharp imbalance in the relationship. Not only do the (paternalistic) European and North American countries obtain what they desire - children for awaiting adoptive parents - but they also lay down down the rules for how the transaction is to be carried out.