Constructing Transnational and Transracial Identity: Adoption and Belonging in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark

Sweden, Norway, and Denmark are home to more than ninety thousand transnational adoptees of Scandinavian parents raised in a predominantly white environment. Ben-Zion seeks to answer a variety of questions in this multi-sited ethnography, including: How do transcolor adoptees define their social boundaries and negotiate their social position in relation to ethnic Scandinavians and non-European immigrants? What are the different discourses and ideologies imposed on them by these social actors? She provides a unique perspective on how these transcolor adoptees conceptualize and construct their sense of identity along the intersections of racial, ethnic, class, family, and national lines. The book provides fertile ground for comparison by examining their cultural identity in a global context of cultural assimilation, integration, loyalty, membership, familial, ethnic and national belonging, and the experience of having a visible racial identity in a predominantly white environment.

Table of Contents:
1. The Subject, Method and Scope of this Inquiry 2. Stockholm Fieldwork: From St. Eriksplan to Rinkeby 3. "Living in the Twilight Zone." 4. "No One is More Swedish Than Me!" 5. "Love is Above Culture, Above Blood" 6. "It's Like Taking a Cat and Raising It Like a Dog" 7. "I Didn't Feel Norwegian Enough to Wear the National 8. "I Am Comfortable with the Feeling of Being White!" 9. "Going to the Whiteness" 10. They Can't Afford to Stop Imagining 11. The Construction of Imaginary Homelands 12. Conclusions

About the Author :
Sigalit Ben-Zion is an independent scholar based in Israel. She was a research fellow at the University of Bergen/IMER (International Migration and Ethnic Relations), Norway, and has been affiliated with the Social Anthropology Department at Stockholm University, Sweden. She is the author of A Roadmap to the Heavens: An Anthropological Study of Hegemony among Priests, Sages, and Laymen (2009).

Review :
"This uniquely crafted study far transcends its ethnographic objective of depicting the life worlds of Scandinavian transracial adoptees. The understated tension between the tranquil waters of integration, assimilation, and loyalty on the one hand and the turbulent undercurrents of a sense of belonging to visions of another culture on the other engenders an unexpected troubled identity. In a measured and unassuming manner, Ben-Zion unfolds that color-based predicament as she dismantles run-of-the mill categories such as kinship, embodiment, ethnicity, and nationality. The scholarly, civil, political, and cultural lessons that can be drawn from this finely tuned, sensitive sound box of these different voices of reluctant otherness are tellingly constructive as well as disturbing." - Haim Hazan, Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Tel Aviv University, Israel "Sigalit Ben-Zion takes the reader on a reflexive and thoughtful journey through the worlds, visions, and insights of transracial adoptees in Scandinavia. Outlining the complexities and ambiguities of belonging from the perspective of their voices, it is a timely book that takes the task of giving people a voice in social sciences more serious than many others. When I started reading, I could not stop until the end of the book - that does not happen often!" - Erdmute Alber, Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Bayreuth, Germany