Who am I... How is my identity constructed...

Sylvie Nguedam, intercountry adoption counsellor at the Secrétariat à l'adoption internationale du Québec (SAI) and associate researcher at Université Laval, talks about the cultural envelope in the identity configuration of adopted persons (1)

Identity is a multidimensional phenomenon

multidimensional phenomenon that is constructed and transformed throughout our lives, through interactions with our environment.

Why speak of a cultural envelope in the construction of identity in adopted persons? Intercountry adoption inevitably implies a double cultural belonging that can be real, symbolic and imaginary. Adoptees come from elsewhere and the first part of their life has taken place in another country, immersed in another culture. As a result, they carry a double culture (culture of birth and host culture) which may induce, in their identity construction, a double feeling of cultural belonging.

What is birth culture for an adopted person?

The notion of "birth culture" has generated much controversy in research. For some authors, to speak of birth culture in adoptees is to give culture a genetic substratum as if culture could be transmitted by biology (Harf et al., 2006)(2). For others, emphasising the culture of birth in the socialisation of the adopted child would be an impediment to his or her "mythical graft" into the new family (Neuburger, 2002)(3).

However, when we speak of birth culture, we very often refer to the cultural pool in which the adoptee has lived during the first years of his/her life.

the first years of their life. Thus, for very young adoptees, the culture of origin is more a symbolic referent than an element that really structures their ways of thinking and acting. On the other hand, for children adopted late, many elements of the culture of origin are already internalised at the time of adoption. Their family and social integration takes place at the border of the two poles of cultural identification.

How does a sense of cultural belonging develop?

The sense of cultural belonging is developed through socialisation, particularly in "primary socialisation", which begins in childhood within the family. This is the set of mechanisms by which the adopted child learns and assimilates the norms, values and beliefs of both cultures.

In primary socialisation, adoptive parents can be grouped into three categories, according to their representation of their child's bi-culturality (Harf et al., 2006).

- Parents who have no connection with the child's country of birth and who perceive the child as exclusively from the host country. The child's bi-culturality is not recognised; his or her ethno-cultural difference is not perceived as a possible problem.

- Parents who claim the child's bicultural identity and maintain an active link with the country of birth. They often travel there, and links with other adopters from the same country are maintained.

- Parents who adapt the links to the child's country of birth according to the child's questions. Travel to the country of birth is done at the request of the child.

And visible adoption in the cultural envelope...

n adoptees, the culture of the country of birth may be actualised or imposed by the gaze of the other. This is more common in interracial adoptions where there is a difference in physical appearance between the child and the adoptive parent. The social gaze may then attribute to them links or belonging to the culture of the country of birth, because of their visible difference. This imposed identity, as a kind of victim identity, may place adoptees in a sometimes painful contradiction, especially when they have only physiognomic characteristics such as skin colour in common with the country of birth. This is the case of adopted persons who are told about immigration or delinquency.

The issue of bi-culturality or discrimination that some adoptees may experience, especially in visible adoptions, should not be denied or minimised in socialisation logics that essentialise their integration in the host country.

Individualising cultural elements to better build one's identity

Identity is constructed in a process of individualisation, i.e. in a process where the individual develops by differentiating and emancipating himself from his inherited or acquired origins. Identity is therefore not inevitable; on this subject, Michel Foucault said: in order to exist, one must detach oneself... To detach oneself does not mean to cut oneself off. Detachment does not mean cutting ourselves off. Detachment means our capacity to re-elaborate and shape the links on which our childhood was built.

Bi-culturality as an original reality in adoptees is an inherited, acquired and not chosen determinant. In this context, individualisation can give a subjective dimension to identity in a logic that makes sense for oneself. For example, in the search for origins, there are many adoption cases where there are gaps or discontinuities in the history of origins. The individualisation of elements of the culture of the country of origin may then allow adopted persons to fill these gaps in order to situate themselves in an original continuity that reconnects with the first chapters of their history(4).

The feeling of belonging to the culture of the host country and the country of birth is a function of the type of representations that the adoptive parents have of the child's bi-culturality, but also of the way in which the adopted persons themselves appropriate the elements of the two cultures acquired during primary socialisation. In the construction of identity, the origin is not only a birth certificate, a biological mother or a biological father; it is also the culture of the country of origin. Bi-culturality can be a source of great richness, especially when the two cultural affiliations coexist to allow the deployment of the identity spectrum.

References:

(1) This article is an extract from Sylvie Nguedam's presentation at the International Seminar on Tracing Origins, organised in Montreal (27-29 May 2019) by SAI Quebec. For more information: contact sylvie.nguedam-deumeni@msss.gouv.qc.ca.

(2) Harf A., Taïeb O., Moro M.R. (2006). Psychopathology in adolescence and international adoptions: a new issue? La Psychiatrie de l'enfant, vol. 49, n° 2, pp. 543-572.

(3) Neuburger, R. (2002). Le mythe familial. ESF, Paris, 4th edition.

(4)Bertrand, S. L'adoption mise en scène: témoignage artistique d'une personne adoptée enquête de ses origines. See ISS/IRC Bulletin No. 01/2012.