ABSTRACT
Intercountry adoption and open adoption are both highly topical, complex, and contentious forms of adoption. Both types of adoptive practice have ever-growing bodies of empirical research and literature, as well as multiple discourses that drive their respective debates. Yet, despite both being focal and long-standing research areas in the broad field of adoption, and being key features of current adoption policy and practice in most Western countries, they are rarely considered in tandem. In other words, can an intercountry adoption be open? Can openness be achieved in intercountry adoptions? To better consider this issue, let us first look at the different ways that we can describe and conceptualize adoptive relationships.
