On Finding a Voice and Decolonising Oneself. Practices of Transnational Adoption
摘要
SwedenSweden is the Western country in the world that has adopted most children from Europe’s former colonies per head since the 1950s. The hegemonic view of and discourse surrounding transnational adoptionAdoption in SwedenSweden has been highly celebratory and transnational adoptionAdoption has been widely seen by Swedes not only as a reproduction method but also as a way to combat racism and to reconcile colonialism by forging family ties across national, cultural, religious, linguistic and not the least racial boundaries. Since the end of the 1990s, adopteesAdoptees have themselves started to voice new perspectives on transnational adoptionAdoption. From the 2010s and even more so in the 2020s, a growing number of adopteesAdoptees in SwedenSweden have formulated and expressed a critical view on this forced child migration. This process is, in this chapter, framed as a decolonial, conscious rising and self-educating process whereby the adopteesAdoptees have supported one another to be able to unlearn the dominating celebratory discourse surrounding transnational adoptionAdoption in SwedenSweden and thereby together decolonise their minds with the aim of eventually decolonising the whole practice of transnational adoptionAdoption itself.