Multicultural families: Deracializing Transracial Adoption

Multicultural families: Deracializing Transracial Adoption

Critical Social Policy
Volume 34, Number 1 (February 2014)
pages 66-89
DOI: 10.1177/0261018313493160

Suki Ali, Senior Lecturer of Sociology
London School of Economics and Political Science

In 2010, the Coalition government announced its plans for adoption reform which included ‘removing barriers’ to transracial adoption. The government has blamed social workers’ looking for ‘perfect ethnic matches’ for denying black and minority ethnic children placements with ‘loving and stable families’. The paper draws upon qualitative research with professionals and parents, which shows that the government has failed to take into account the complex ways in which race and ethnicity matter within adoption. Their wish to deracialize transracial adoption fits with wider concerns about race mixing, families and national belonging in multicultural Britain. While they attempt to minimize the importance of race and ethnicity, they continue to place race at the heart of these debates.

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