Moving Children through Private International Law: Institutions and the Enactment of Ethics

Abstract

This article examines how the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co‐operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (Hague Adoption Convention) plays a central role in justifying the institution of legal adoption. The Hague Adoption Convention has often been regarded as a response to the challenges that the “global situation” brings to adoption practice. Based on private international law, the agreement contains protocols and norms to ensure the protection of the child in intercountry adoption. In the article, I propose that the Hague Convention can be understood as a “transparency device”; a complex assemblage working in pursuit of global “good governance.” The device, however, also operates as justification within the institutional domain, allowing adoption agencies to make distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate adoptions. Idemonstrate how the logic of transparency disguises as much as it promises to reveal. While the doctrine's aim is to validate adoptability and combat trafficking, it also helps to mainstream Euro‐American adoption knowledge to other parts of the world.

Governança reprodutiva: um assunto de suma relevância política

“…No início da onda de adoções transnacionais, existiam poucas regulações sobre o processo. E mesmo quando surgiu, em 1993, a Convenção de Haia sobre a adoção transnacional, a legislação internacional parecia servir antes para azeitar do que para estancar os fluxos (Van Wichelen, 2019). Porém, aos poucos, os países mais visados (Brasil, Guatemala, China) passaram a impor restrições à adoção internacional, obrigando os pretendentes estrangeiros a procurar novos territórios.…”

O governo da gestação por substituição na era da biotecnologia: as biolegalidades cambiantes do parentesco

“…Essa instituição também foi responsável pela convenção sobre adoção internacional de 1993. Alguém poderia argumentar -como alguns estudiosos já o fizeram -que enquanto protegia crianças contra o tráfico e a comercialização delas, a Convenção de Adoção de Haia também permitiu uma expansão e normalização do mercado de adoção global (Bhabha, 2004;Smolin, 2006;Van Wichelen, 2019). Na melhor das hipóteses, a Convenção de Adoção de Haia permite mais transparência no processo de adoção internacional.…”

Conceiving Parents, Consolidating the State: Emphasis and Erasure in the Governance of Marginal Parenthoods in Brazil

“…The Argentine dictatorship's sequester of political prisoners' children likewise raised the alarm concerning the dangers of authoritarian governments and arbitrary decisions concerning a child's best interests. The various forms of legislation and official guidelines authored by international agencies, from the Declaration of the Rights of the Child to the successive editions of The Hague Adoption Convention, reflect efforts to protect victims (i.e., birth families and their children) against the aggressive advance of candidates to adoptive parenthood (Van Wichelen 2019). By shifting the focus, in this article, to processes of legalization and illegalization in domestic adoptions, I explore how a national state-in this case, Brazil-deals with political and economic inequalities "at home".…”

“…Such a tension-filled scenario, analysts suggest, may confer particular importance to seemingly neutral technical paraphernalia (Hoag 2011;Sharma 2013;Shore and Wright 1997;Van Wichelen 2019). The highly publicized enactment of expert knowledge through a sort of "transparency device" (e.g., an assemblage of people, laws, visual artifacts, data systems, etc.)…”