Papering the Origins: Place-Making, Privacy, and Kinship in Spanish International Adoption

Abstract

This article examines place and privacy as two key resources for producing kinship through an analysis of exceptional legal practices in Spain that overdetermine international adoptees’ Spanishness. Per Spanish law, minors internationally adopted by a Spanish parent are “Spanish by origin” (españoles de origen). Over and above this, however, Spain’s Civil Registry Law was modified in 2005 to allow internationally adoptive parents to officially change their child’s place of birth in the formal record. I draw on legal material about this change, as well as online posts by adoptive parents discussing it, to make two claims. First, I identify the significance of place as a key resource for the production of kinship—belonging to a Spanish family and nation. Second, I note the persistence of an ideology of secrecy or privacy surrounding the family that is linked to a history of illicit child circulations during the Franco era. I further show that documents are a key nexus mediating the place–kinship and privacy–kinship relations, requiring further attention to both legal documentation and the proliferation of public personal narratives, such as blog posts, as evidence of family dynamics.

Adoption knowledge: a citizen-scientific use ofFamilySearchto understand Peruvian adoption

“…Through this project, Forrester has recognized the fallibility of the documents she and other adoptees avidly seek. For example, she discovered that the space for “birthplace” does not always get filled with a literal birth site, but rather with a place of legal origin (such as the city where a judge finalized an adoption), casting doubt on an element of personal biography that is important for many adoptees’ narratives (see Leinaweaver 2019 ). As Forrester explains, “As a researcher, I look at this data and think … actually, it’s in the right book, they are – the parents’ names are clear, everything is quite good, but I wonder if [the adoptees] were actually born there.…”

“…They are one of the few material objects that connect the adopted person to their earliest moments of personal history ( Kim 2019 ). However, laws in many countries prevent disclosure of adoptees’ original birth certificates, apparently motivated to protect the privacy of the birth mother, to exorcise potential stigmas relating to ideologies about legitimacy, and to strengthen the adoptive tie by excluding previous connections ( Yngvesson and Mahoney 2000 , 86, Leinaweaver 2019 , 8). In the absence of an original birth certificate, other scraps of information take on heightened importance in adoptees’ searches ( Yngvesson 2003 ; Mariner 2020 , 10).…”

“…National Registry of Identification and Civil Status; https://www.gob.pe/reniec ). RENIEC issued a press release in 2020 describing how it provides access to its archives ( https://www.gob.pe/institucion/reniec/noticias/340916-reniec-permite-acceso-a-sus-archivos , accessed 24 September 2021), but clarifies that, per Article 4 of the RENIEC executive order (cited above), certain information is restricted access, including divorce, recognition of paternity, adoption, and declaration of incompetency; see Leinaweaver (2019) on this issue in Spain. Forrester was able to use RENIEC’s archives to access the documents of her birth siblings, and in 2011, the death certificate of her mother.…”

Irregular adoptions and infrastructures of memory in Spain: remnant practices from the Franco Regime

“…Doing so allows us to shed light on infrastructures of memory and the interplay of secrecy, fear, remembering and forgetting. Social anthropologists, demographers and historians have analysed the process through which Spain became a world leader in international adoption (Briggs and Marre, 2009;Leinaweaver et al, 2017;Leinaweaver 2013Leinaweaver , 2019Leinaweaver and Marre, 2021;Marre, 2009Marre, , 2010Marre, , 2011. However, fewer researchers have analysed domestic adoptions in Spain (Palacios and Amorós, 2006) and even fewer researchers have studied irregular adoptions through enforced displacement and re-placement of children (Marre, 2014;Marre and Leinaweaver, 2022;Roig, 2018;Vinyes et al, 2002).…”