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How Korean adoptees went from being adoptable orphans to deportable immigrants
Since the early 1950s, over 125,000 Korean children have been adopted in the United States, primarily by white families. Korean adoptees figure in twenty-five percent of US transnational adoptions and are the largest group of transracial adoptees currently in adulthood. Despite being legally adopted, Korean adoptees' position as family members did not automatically ensure legal, cultural, or social citizenship. Korean adoptees routinely experience refusals of belonging, whether by state agents, laws, and regulations, in everyday interactions, or even through media portrayals that render them invisible. In Out of Place, SunAh M Laybourn, herself a Korean American adoptee, examines this long-term journey, with a particular focus on the race-making process and the contradictions inherent to the model minority myth.
Drawing on in-depth interviews with Korean adoptee adults, online surveys, and participant observation at Korean adoptee events across the US and in Korea, Out of Place illustrates how Korean adoptees come to understand their racial positions, reconcile competing expectations of citizenship and racial and ethnic group membership, and actively work to redefine belonging both individually and collectively. In considering when and how Korean adoptees have been remade, rejected, and celebrated as exceptional citizens, Out of Place brings to the fore the features of the race-making process.
"Engagingly written and impeccably researched, Out of Place offers an innovative analysis of how Korean American adoptees challenge widespread beliefs about kinship, citizenship, and race in America."
"Laybourn’s pivotal work introduces readers to the idea of exceptional belonging—the granted but precarious inclusion experienced by many Korean individuals adopted into White families in the US. Her study provides a powerful framework with which to examine this type of belonging, outlining both the privileges and perils associated with White intimacies and describing how adoptees perpetuate, negotiate, and challenge such arrangements. A must read."
"Out of Place is magnificent. It is a meticulous study of Korean transnational, transracial adoptees’ particularities that unravels conflicting claims on identity and family while providing theoretical insight into the nature of belonging. Laybourn carefully chronicles a continuum of racialized national inclusion—from adoptable Korean orphans to easily deportable adults—whose citizenship remains contingent and revocable according to state whims."
"Out of Place illustrates how Korean adoptees come to understand their racial positions, reconcile competing expectations of citizenship and racial and ethnic group membership, and actively work to redefine belonging both individually and collectively."
"Laybourn explores the 'exceptional belonging' experienced by Korean adoptees and the impact it has on their identity construction...Through the lens of exceptional belonging, the author closely scrutinizes the unique place that Korean adoptees occupy in the American continuum of hierarchy, with whiteness as the apex."
— Alice Stephens
"This work will interest scholars and students in ethnic and Asian American studies as well as sociology. It may also be of particular interest to those who work with overseas adoptees and to the Korean adoptee community itself."
"Out of Place is comprehensive in how it captures a truly remarkable range of Korean adoptee voices and accounts. Laybourn’s clear and concise language and her adroit fusion of anecdote, media, law, and history make this a particularly engaging work for undergraduate study or as a textual introduction to the Korean adoptee community."