Adoption Discourse and Governmentality in Post-Adoption Support

Given the rise in the number of international adoptions in Denmark and the Scandinavian countries in the last decade, new research in post-adoption services (or adoption support) is desperately needed. Using mediated discourse analysis (MDA) combined with studies of governmentality the project draws upon a set of analytical tools to examine the practices and micropolitics of adoptive parents and families - especially those practices which precipitate a 'call for help'. The project also aims to follow the government of those practices by distant and present actors, such as social welfare provision or counselling services. MDA provides a
range of methods to study the mediated actions, nexus of practice and historical bodies (habitus) of actors in adoptive families. By analysing particular sites of engagement, we can better understand what triggers a
'call for help', how parents and families negotiate or resist 'help', and what discourses and actions are consequential in the everyday lives of adoptive families. The project investigates how adoptive parents are called upon to fashion themselves as particular kinds of care-givers as well as recipients of care. One way for parents to do this is for them to align their practices with those of institutional and professional agents; another way is for them to develop a parallel, indigenous nexus of professionalised practices. This research project is built on a separate study of the innovative development of post-adoption services and
counselling in Denmark.