Constructing Transnational and Transracial Identity, 2014 Adoption and Belonging in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark

Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are home to more than 90,000 transnational adoptees of Scandinavian parents raised in a predominantly white environment. This ethnography provides a unique perspective on how these transracial adoptees conceptualize and construct their sense of identity along the intersection of ethnicity, family, and national lines.

1. The Subject, Method and Scope of this Inquiry 2. Stockholm Fieldwork: From St. Eriksplan to Rinkeby 3. "Living in the Twilight Zone" 4. "No One is More Swedish Than Me!" 5. "Love is Above Culture, Above Blood" 6. "It's Like Taking a Cat and Raising It Like a Dog" 7. "I Didn't Feel Norwegian Enough to Wear the National Costume" 8. "I Am Comfortable with the Feeling of Being White!" 9. "Going to the Whiteness" 10. They Can't Afford to Stop Imagining 11. The Construction of Imaginary Homelands 12. Conclusions

Sigalit Ben-Zion is an independent scholar based in Israel. She is the author of A Roadmap to the Heavens: An Anthropological Study of Hegemony among Priests, Sages, and Laymen (2008).