The Commodification and Online Marketing of Children in Transnational Adoption

Abstract

The same global system that created inequalities in wealth among nations also created a globalized and systemic hierarchy of races by which the value of humans (including potential adoptees) are judged. Our concerns focus on the racialization and commodification of children made available for adoption between nations on opposite sides of the wealth/race divide. In particular, this chapter interrogates relations of power and race between persons in sending and receiving nations as they shape how the Internet is used to market children available for adoption. First, we briefly examine global racial and socioeconomic disparities between sending and receiving nations in the context of the racial politics of intercountry adoption.¹ Afterward, we define and analyze photolistings and web advertising, two ways that the Internet promotes prospective adoptions, and remark upon the racializing implications of each. Finally, we comment upon photo listings and web advertising in the context of the (economic, political and racialized) inequalities of power between sending and receiving nations.