(Re)visiting the (de)naturalisated mother: Searches and reunions between people adopted in Chile and their birth mothers

Abstract

This paper presents some results of a qualitative research that explores and analyzes the narratives of a group of adults who were adopted in Chile, and who have searched for their origins and made contact with their birth mothers. In their narratives, the people interviewed adhere to, strain, and/or challenge the principles and discourses that make up hegemonic adoption policies and practices, resignifying their experience of adoption in various ways, as they (re)build their identities and reorganize their kinship relationships. It discusses the tensions and ambivalences that play out in the search for origins and the challenges associated with it.