Uri Nara, Our Country: Korean American Adoptees in the Global Age

Abstract

This chapter is an analysis of ethnographic materials, including personal stories and immigration experiences of Korean adoptees who were child migrants to the USA and return migrants to South Korea. Park Nelson makes connections between transnational adoptee immigration policy, American race relations, and Asian American experiences. Korean American adoptees who have returned to live and work in the nation of their birth are in a sense “global citizens” who possess both the American economic and cultural capital to live as expatriates and the Korean ethnic connections to gain a foothold in South Korea. But despite these apparent advantages, adoptees face exclusion as foreigners in both countries—through racial discrimination in the USA and because of their lack of linguistic and cultural fluency in South Korea.

This chapter excerpts heavily from Chapter 6 of my book, Invisible Asians: Korean American Adoptees, Asian American Experiences, and Racial Exceptionalism (2016).