FASS professor examines impact of international adoptions

Xiaobei Chen is researching the adoption of Chinese children by European-Canadian parents.

Chen, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology has combined her interviews with adoptive families, Canadian adoption facilitators, government officials and research trips to China to examine the social issues that are connected to such international adoptions.

Specifically, she is interested in the social, economic and political conditions that make adoptions of Chinese children – mostly girls, imaginable, practical and even desirable. To better understand international adoption as a social trend, Chen will examine the connections between these adoptions and conditions within Canada such as, the increasing need for children, local adoption politics, racism, and arising concerns with early childhood development.

Chen will also compare current adoptions of Chinese children with the relationship between Canadian Christian missionaries and Chinese children in missionary facilities in the earlier half of the 20th century. In both cases, broad conditions of race, gender, class and international hierarchy play significant roles in shaping practices and discussions about the relationship between white Canadian adults and Chinese children, though sometimes in different ways.

“The Canadian mission’s work with children in China in the first half of the last century and the Canadian adoptions of Chinese children in the last 20 years both involve disadvantaged children in China and well-educated, middle-class adults in Canada,” says Chen. “Both result in intimate connections between racialized Chinese children and European-Canadians, both encounters and their meanings are embedded with social relations of gender, race/ethnicity, class and ‘classes’ of nations.”

She anticipates that one issue that children adopted from China will face in Canadian society is that they will likely always be perceived to a certain extent as being “from China,” despite having lived in China for a maximum of 18 months of their lives in most cases.

“When thinking about what can be done for the wellbeing of children adopted from China,” said Chen. “The question we need to pose is not so much whether these children will have a healthy racial/ethnic identity but rather how we can help children to understand what it means to be Chinese Canadians in Canada and how we address racism in society.”

She hopes these children and their experiences will educate Canadian society as we continue to grapple with our understanding of race, culture and identity.
Xiaobei Chen received her B.A. from Guizhou University (China), Masters of Philosophy from the University of Hong Kong, and PhD from the University of Toronto.