The negotiation of the diasporics of identity : transracial international adoptees in the Dutch discourse of belonging

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The negotiation of the diasporics of identity

Transracial International Adoptees in the Dutch

discourse of belonging

Master thesis MSc International Migration and Social Cohesion

By

Dewi Brinkhuis | 14202516 | dewibrinkhuis@hotmail.com

21st of May 2015

Supervisor

dr. A. Feldman | alice.feldman@ucd.ie | University College Dublin

Readers

dr. M.P.C. Janssen | M.P.C.Janssen@uva.nl | Universiteit van Amsterdam

dr. C. Maiztegui Oñate | cmaizte@deusto.es | Universidad de Deusto

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Declaration

I hereby declare that:

a) I am aware of, and understand, the MISOCO Consortium’s policy on plagiarism and certify that this thesis is my own work, except where indicated by referencing.

b) I have also been informed of the completion and assessment rules of the MISOCO Program.

21st of May 2015

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Preface

This thesis concludes an Erasmus Mundus Master program in International Migration and Social Cohesion, and marks a two-year process of reading, thinking, analysing, discussing and writing about "the silent migrants" transracial international adoptees and their ethnic/racial identity, an issue that is close to my heart.

Writing my magnum opus would not have been possible without the support and encouragement from many people, and without any modesty, the list of people I need to thank is endless.

Special mentioning goes to dr. Alice Feldman, my supervisor, thank you for your patience, and your "tough love" in order to get the best out of me. Thanks to my two readers, dr. Janssen and dr. Maiztegui Oñate. Thank you both for your support. I would also like to thank my informants for sharing their interesting and insightful stories.

Of course, to my fellow MISOCO students, it was an honour meeting all of you. A sincere "thank you" for sharing some valuable insights during class discussions, and sharing your personal stories with me.

Finally, there are no words that expresses the full extent of my gratitude to the numerous people that remained supportive throughout this entire process and provided me with the motivation, love and criticism at crucial times. Thank you for always believing in me when I needed it the most, so a big thank you to Wiem, Lee, Tamara, Anfine, Romina, Natalie & Monica, Gerrit & Jose, my uncle Jan & aunt Ali, Dorothée, Andrea, Monique, Jolijn, Emma, Kate, Zwaan, Mary, Enda Efraim, Jolien, Saar, Michael and last but not least, Arden. Honestly, I could not have done this without your help and support.

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PART I

Chapter 1 Introduction

1.1 Introduction: Personal Statement

Daniël Arends: Yes, but people are more careful with adopted children,

right?

Interviewer: Is that so?

Daniël Arends: You collect a child to offer it a better life in your own country, so obviously it has to succeed. And it is not, it is not yours. I have said this about my parents like them being more careful with me being an adopted child, like you are more careful with things that are not yours. You should be more careful with that..[…]

Interviewer: Do you find there to be some form of characteristic to be common amongst adopted children?

Daniël: […] I think the combination of being adopted and growing up in an environment where everyone is different from you, when you do not want it to. Yes, that seems to be the perfect formula for questioning whether I am good enough.

Interviewer: But can you answer that question now?

[…]

Daniël: And I hope that that eventually results in, (silence) that one day you are making jokes, not because you, (silence) not because you doubt whether I am good enough, but because you assume "I'm nice and I have something to offer". 1

Adopted in 1979 as a three month old baby from Indonesia, Dutch comedian Daniël Arends, explains to the host of the Dutch television program "24 hours with…" his troubles growing up in a predominantly white, high GDP Caucasian community. Being a transracial international adoptee (TRIA) he always felt different compared to his 2

This is a Dutch television program called '24 uur met…' (24 hours with…), presented by Theo Maassen,

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who spends 24 hours with a famous Dutch person. This episode was broadcasted on the 10th of January, 2014 VPRO. Retrieved on the 5th of May, 2015, from http://www.vpro.nl/speel.VPWON_1227416.html

People who were adopted both transracially and internationally adopted are referred to as transracial and

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international adoptees (TRIAs), therefore interracial families are defined by two parents without Non-Western foreign ancestry and an adoptive child or children with Non-Non-Western ancestry who are non-white (Baden et al., 2012)

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peers and sociocultural environment which in turn led, in his case, to severe performance anxiety, perfectionism and wondering whether or not he met expectations and an undefined ambiguous notion as to whether or not he “was good enough”. However, during the conversations the interviewer notices in several instances that Daniël has a tendency to shape his personal narrative for his personal history in such a way that it adds to a more positive and coherent sense of identity.

Being a TRIA myself, I was both affected and intrigued by his story. Affected because I recognised elements of his autobiography from what I had observed in my non-biological adopted brother’s life who I saw struggling throughout his youth, adolescence years and his early twenties with main similar issues. These ranged from performance anxiety, frequent in-school penalisation for his energetic behaviour during class, a general desire to be white just like our adoptive family, and eventually trying to exchange and fit into another ethnic minority (Moluccans) and diaspora for which he changed his own narrative, including his actual country of birth, which was Sri Lanka. He just wanted to feel less different; he just wanted to fit in.

Moreover, Daniël’s story also intrigued me as I have a number of friends whom are TRIAs, each of them rather successful in their own way, who do and did not seem to be troubled by the fact that they are adoptees. Therefore, I began wondering what types of active and passive strategies they, but in general, TRIAs use to give themselves a positive sense of identity and belonging within the Dutch discourse of belonging, race and ethnicity in contrast to other instances where such efforts seem to fail, as seemed to have been the case with my brother. Where does and did their agency differ, and to what extend did and do TRIAs truly have any agency within the dominant structures that shape identity? Which frameworks would be applicable in explaining how these

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narratives of ethnic/racial identity unfold, are shaped, developed and negotiated, how positive or negative agency, instrumentalisation even, is achieved and contributed to, and would still hold and remain valid if extrapolated to a generalised, homogenous group of TRIAs? Where there any generalised theorisations to be made, claims to be extrapolated to such a, hypothetical instance, a homogenous entity of TRIAs? It were these kinds of questions for which I did not have the answers yet, which motivated me to explore the definitions, conceptions and border zones of the existent theoretical approaches to and theorisations of the topic of TRIAs identity formation, politics and the validity and/or tenability of the dynamics of the maxims of these theories for the specific case of TRIAs adopted into Dutch society with its discursively and spatially embedded discourses of belonging, race and ethnicity within this thesis. Before turning towards the various theoretical approaches of TRIAs as a sociologically defined subjectivity, and the existent models attempting to account for the complexity of the computation of the extended negotiation and development of ethno-racial - i.e. ethnic/ racial - identity development, some of the primary and readily apparent complexities warranting such an inquiry are addressed - as well as the particularity and discursive singularity of the Dutch discourses of belonging, race and ethnicity - with regard to transracial international adoption, or as Selman (2002) considers it, “the quiet migration”.

1.2 "Quiet Migration": Blank Slates, or Assimilation Without Integration

The adoption of children is practiced in some form or another in all known societies across the world (Howell, 2009). Since 1956 more than 60.000 children have been adopted in the Netherlands, and more than two-third of these children have been

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adopted from overseas (Hoksbergen, 2006). However societally institutionalised the practice has become, its sociological paradox cannot be denied. The immediate complexity of the issue begins at the theoretical ambiguity of the conceptual and definitional border zone TRIAs are positioned within. TRIAs inhabit the interstitium of institutionalised and reigning sociologic definitions of migration, migrants, in essence, migrancy, and the associated processes of sociocultural socialisation, culturation, integration and assimilation. Since TRIAs are culturally and ethnically being defined as transracial, international culturally from a nation-state perspective, as the acronym denominating their sociological status shows, their adoption is in essence a process considered to be similar to integration by definition whilst in contrast to this theoretical reality, in a sense, TRIAs are blank slates, much like other non-adoptee, non-migrant children being born into a culturally and historically located society, a culture and a family. However, while both assimilation and integration seem to be practically, theoretically and terminologically unfeasible and untenable in framing their sociocultural and theoretical status, transracial international adoption is nonetheless defined as, and considered to be a specific form of transnational migration of children who migrate from non-Western countries to the West, where the majority will grow up within a transracial family (Baden et al., 2012) due to the composition of, not only, the adoptive family’s parents, but other TRIAs included in its racial and ethnic composition as well. This, as an example of the discursive reality into which they attain consciousness cannot be denied, since it embeds them, and forces them to adhere to, negotiate and narrate their ethnic/racial identities according to definitions that only hold true discursively in discourses of race, belonging and ethnicity, and that were not made to encompass the complexity of their status and situation.

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Scholars have tried to attest to the differentiation of the definitions and conceptualisation when used in describing TRIAs, and referred to this phenomenon as "quiet migration" (Selman, 2002). ‘Quiet’ because of the demographic invisibility of this form of migration, since adopted minors are not able to explain their "choice" for migration and hence the hypernymic definition of migration falters and has been altered to accommodate TRIAs by considering it distinct from "regular" migrants and migration in the following aspects (Baden, 2012; Manzi et al., 2014) which make the complexity 3

of ethnic/racial identity development of the TRIA consequential to these distinctions, and those theoretical framings and approaches to accurately and adequately describe its constitutive processes all the more tangible and evident;

1. The actual immigration history of TRIAs is different, because when these children are adopted, their processes of immigration, socialisation and subsequent acculturation are individual rather than social processes, regardless of the active or passive nature of these, - since they are not constituted in socioculturally similar diaspora or groups as can be the case of first generation minor immigrants, and is the case with second and/or 1.5 generation non- adopted, minors. Therefore,

2. In most cases the family composition of families including TRIAs is racially heterogeneous by default, including, besides the ethnic/racial identity of the adoptive parents and possibility of interraciality on that end, one or more other

All of these theoretical considerations will be elaborated upon more extensively in the theoretical

3

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TRIAs in contrast to a certain uniformity of racial and ethnic composition of both other minority groups and the possibility of the extended diaspora within the community as well as the dominant ethnic majority; and consequently,

3. TRIAs’ experiences resolving an absent birth culture and the sociocultural reality of their adopted culture contrasting an in that culture succinctly discursively constituted racialised body differs from the experiences of "regular" immigrants. Whereas first generation immigrants and second generation immigrants’ children encounter an active duality due to a dually lived sociocultural practice and space within the diasporic ethnicities as well as the dominant nation-state they live in - theoretically conjectured to stimulate if not contribute to “double” or “diasporic sensibility” and/or “consciousness” by Dayal, (Dayal, 1993) in second generation children of immigrants - as Baden et al. (2012) puts it, TRIAs encounter possible dissonance arising from no such existent duality, albeit from the discursively implied or even promised duality of the discourses constituting a racialisation of their bodies, while as TRIAs, their status as transracial, international adoptees would actually require a reification of the narratives of the nation-state, the ethnic and the racial herein disrupted, and not the other way around.

Adoptees thus, as only example of the consequences of the discursively embedded narrative of migrancy to the TRIA definition, find themselves in an effort to reconcile their physical appearance, the discursively embedded cultural body herein and their lived cultural practice and affiliation by being raised in the adoptive culture, in a way

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embodying both the Self and a discursively told ghost story about the Other simultaneously (Manzi et al., 2014), and therefore, on the one hand, confronting, retrospectively the difficult task of how to integrate without truly, albeit discursively and conceptually, being an immigrant, and on the other, their belonging to a new family and identifying with that adoptive family's culture versus the possible surviving biological family, without in most cases having equal access to both of their cultural communities.

As can be observed from what is only a small selection of the pivotal factors contributing to the complexity of identity formation of TRIAs adoption is a social practice that raises theoretical and analytical questions about, not only, national narratives surrounding ethno-racial identity but poses the supra-individual inquiry into ethnicity, racialisation and its discursivity. It is indeed the concept of the TRIA, which, despite its seeming contextual specificity, forms a conduit to inquire and reach a deeper understanding of not only the cultural and social integration of non-minor, non-TRIA immigrants, having developed through their formative years within another dominant culture, with an already predefined cultural and social body, and pre-set sense of identity, but actually from the micro-level investigation of TRIAs ethnic/racial identity, conceptually challenge, on a supra-level, macro and state-centrist narratives of migration, social and cultural integration and assimilation, as well as the Western ontopologically (Derrida, 1994: 71) dominant discourses that through these narratives 4

have been inhibiting proper discussion of the postcoloniality of multiculturalism and

! Ontopologics, taken from Dayall’s (1993) article Diaspora and Double Consciousness, quoting Derrida 4

(1994). Derrida, Jacques. Spectersof Marx: The State of the Debt, the Workof Mourningand the New International.Trans. Peggy Kamuf. New York: Routledge, 1994.

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transnationalism beyond state-centrist notions of host versus home country allegiance. Strides have been made herein in wide-raging efforts to theoretically appropriate and frame the development of ethnic/racial identity of not only TRIAs but non-TRIA minor immigrant and first generation and second generation children of immigrants, and as such, ethnic/racial identity and its development has been defined and studied using a wide range of theoretical approaches (Robinson, 2012; Mohanty, 2013; Manzi et al., 2014). This thesis considers a review of three dominant approaches, models and perspectives warranted - Phinney's ethnic identity development approach (1989), Berry's acculturation model (1997), and Baden et al.'s reculturation model (2012), which will be extensively and thoroughly elaborated upon - in an effort to scrutinise their capacity to be dynamically applied in framing the narratives of ethnic/racial identity development of six TRIAs as well as well as to review their tenability and inclusivity when considering other, discursively and non-discursively, contributing factors such as the spatiality of race when pertaining to the Dutch context.

1.3 Dutch Discourse on Belonging: Allochthony versus Autochthony

Even though there is a large body of literature within the fields of psychology, sociology and anthropology on these notions of adoption and identity from American, British, Swedish and Norwegian scholars (Baden et al., 2012; Butler-Sweet, 2011; Howell, 2009; Yngvesson, 2015), in contrast, until recent years adoptees and identity formation within the Netherlands had received little sustained theoretical focus from the scholars despite its substantial history of immigration. Moreover, the Dutch case of acculturation (Berry, 1997; 2005) differs in respect to the American - and other nations - case in which hyphenated identity forms of categorisation for immigrants, TRIAs and the first

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and second generation children of immigration are the norm and available for defining one’s ethnic/racial identity.

Instead, Dutch society uses a dichotomous notion for determining ethno-racial identity, a binary opposition of the terms allochtoon vs autochtoon or allochthony vs autochthony (Yanow & van der Haar, 2013), creating a rigid division based on ethnic lines dividing the population in two groups through the binary opposition of autochtoon - i.e. of Dutch birth and ancestry - and Western/non-Western, first and second generation, allochtoon (of foreign birth). Hereby the Dutch discourse of belonging, implicitly and explicitly, assumes an inherent legitimacy to be pivotal in claiming Dutch citizenship and moreover, Dutch ethnicity. Through its discursive embedding in Dutch society, these binary oppositions organise dominant ideas regarding ethnicity; an individual is either one or the other - i.e., Turkish Dutch will still be considered Turkish. Hence, in this dominant discourse there is no leeway for a multiple, double, hybrid or hyphenated identity (Wekker & Lutz, 2001) and an explicit focus on attributing ethnicity and culturality through racialisation; as an example, second generation children of immigrants of Moroccan descent will still be called Moroccans despite their dual citizenship, or perhaps even their solely Dutch nationality, both in official news outlets as well as by the government (i.e. loitering Moroccan-Dutch youths are called “Marokkaanse hangjeugd” - it has become an adjective carrying a prerogative meaning). Furthermore, through both formal and informal channels, dominant ideas and conceptualisations of Dutchness serve to simultaneously, continuously and inherently rationalise the urban space in ways that designate inclusion and exclusion of the

autochtonen and allochtonen (Secor, 2004), whereby space becomes ethnicised/

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example of these are “zwarte wijken” or “allochtone wijken”; the former translates to “black neighbourhoods”, implying they are actually primarily inhabited by allochtonen. Hence Dutch discourse of belonging has a social as well as a spatial dimension which needs to be taken into account when considering factors contributing to ethnic/racial identity development in Dutch TRIAs. For how does the TRIA conceive of ethnic/racial identity in the allochthony/autochthony dichotomy; how does he or she negotiate perceived allochthony without having the same predefined diaspora and its cultural background to fall back on, without the rich diasporic, sociocultural and historically located body as the Surinamese-Dutch or the Turkish-Dutch?

Indeed, which effect does this passive, discursive and different Dutch rendition of the discourses of belonging, race and ethnicity have on the viability, applicability, and validity of the theoretical approaches, framings and models that attempt to explain how transracial international adoptees’ ethno-racial (ethnic/racial) identities are constructed and negotiated? Do the stages of ethic/racial identity development and their constitutive processes differ for TRIAs adopted into Dutch culture and society, and perhaps more interesting, where do they break these theoretical narratives?

1.4 Previous Research TRIAs in the Netherlands

For although there have been empirical and qualitative research/studies performed upon TRIAs in Dutch society, it never truly focussed primarily on the effects of the racialisation of the Dutch social space through the conduit of the autochtoon and

allochtoon division, nor the TRIAs relation with regard to other minority groups

constituting the allochtoon population of the Netherlands, nor how TRIAs’ perspectives upon these groups, and the racialisation of the social space contributed to the

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negotiation, development if not reification of their own ethnic/racial identity. While both Hoksbergen (2000) and Juffer (1993) focussed on Dutch TRIAs in their respective studies, both predominantly focussed on behavioural problems and attachment disorder amongst this group of migrants, once again not specifically tackling the identity politics of TRIAs in the Dutch discourse on ethnic-racial identities and diaspora in relation to the allochthony and autochthony discourse, especially when it concerns allocation, in an ethnic and racial sense in relation to other minority groups. In her explorative research on TRIAs, Wekker (2007) analysed the ways in which TRIAs positioned themselves by looking at; (1) how the adopted family coped with their different colour and ethnic background, (2) what their experiences are with their social environment and (3) what strategies TRIAs use in order to deal with different discourses and what terminology they use (ibid.: 35). One of the conclusions she drew was that adoptees find it hard to appoint their ethnicity as identity, some considered their ethnicity as a part which was still unknown and undefined. The majority wanted to be seen as "just" Dutch and not as being different (ibid.: 57).

Racialisation of the social space, and its constitutive discourses, however, did lead to ethnic identity having an undefined meaning amongst TRIAs, which caused unclarity and ambiguity as to the interpretation and meaning they could, should or might attach to such notion. Adoptees, therefore, struggle to either resolve or reconcile their Dutch nationality and in a sense, being 'born', their insertion, into Dutch society early on in their cultural bodies, attained as TRIAs in a culture of the Other as well as the Self. It is, therefore, only in the unique situation of TRIAs in which the cultural body does not collide with another cultural body, as is the case with diasporic/migrant "double consciousness" (Vertovec, 2004). This once again brings this thesis to ask what

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cultural, social, circumstantial and/or personal factors indeed prove critical in determining, constructing and negotiating the outcomes of the "quiet migration" (Selman, 2002) for the identity of the TRIAs within the Netherlands but specifically focus on the so warranted Dutch discourse: which model would apply to the Dutch case?

1.5 Research Questions and Academic, Societal & Governmental Relevance

As seen in the brief overview a number of observations can be made about the field of adoption studies as it exists today; first and foremost TRIAs experience different difficulties in the formation of their identity due to an inclusion in ethno-racial discourses through discursive racialisation of their physical bodies without the Other/ Self’s cultural body of other immigrants, as well as first, second and 1.5 generation children of immigrants in which diasporic "double consciousness" is primarily an issue that comes to the fore. A second observation made is that sociological research on TRIAs within the Dutch discourses on race and ethnicity is quite limited, especially seeing how these discourses carry a significant specificity due to the allochthony-autochthony categorisation inherent to these discourses.

Therefore, this thesis considers it academically relevant to gain a more thorough understanding of how identity formation occurs amongst TRIAs who were adopted into Dutch adoptive families in order to contribute to the existing literature, as well as add to the knowledge on the extend of the general influence of cultural discourses on not only cultural bodies and their imprinting upon and embedding of the physical bodies of TRIAs as a subcategory of immigrants, but the politics of identity and the diasporics of

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the self embedded herein. Moreover, this thesis, hopes to contribute to a supra-individual perspective of the formation of cultural and ethno-racial identity determined by the larger discourses on race and ethnicity as well as the individuality of such a constitution by the circumstances of each of the interviewees. Herein lies the governmental and societal relevance as well, for in a sense TRIAs embody the epitome of cultural assimilation without integration, and could prove to be the ideal paragons of successful integration due to their cultural ‘blank slate’ nature, if the imprinted cultural body would not collide with the apparition of the cultural body of the Other - i.e. the birth-culture - brought to the fore by discourse, and even in this situation could provide an insight into the future of globalisation and the arising of a new fluid cultural individuality, superseding even such idealistic notions as the transcendental, diasporic "double consciousness" (Dayal, 1993; Vertovec, 2004, 2010).

Lastly, but most importantly, while my interest in undertaking this research on transracial international adoptees (TRIAs) stems from these contributions to be made, it is also funnelled by my being a TRIA myself too, resulting in a personal necessity to understand the dynamics of the identity politics and the sociocultural and discursive contexts that shape and influence the development of TRIAs’ ethno-racial identity within Dutch society and its discourses. In this way I hope to be able to argue how various life events, factors and triggers contribute to the formation, negotiation and reproduction of the identities of transracial international adoptees in the Netherlands in order further my own, as well as their, insight into the constitution of who and what I became, am, and will become.

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This thesis, as already discussed above, want to investigate how TRIAs form and negotiate and have formed and negotiated their ethnic-racial identity throughout their life. Furthermore, successful negotiation of one's racial/ethnic identity is crucial to the development of a functional self-concept and positive self-evaluations for TRIAs. Therefore the following research questions are posited:

RQ1: Which theoretical approach/model most accurately and adequately frames and

appropriates how transracial international adoptees’ ethno-racial (ethnic/racial) identities are constructed and negotiated within the Dutch context?

By answering the first question, it is supposed to find out TRIAs successfully achieved a positive ethno-racial identity. This brings forward the second research question:

RQ2: Which factors and strategies facilitate the development of a positive racial/ethnic

identity?

To answer these research questions, six case studies were conducted on six transracial international adoptees (TRIAs) and their adoptive families in the Netherlands, analysing if and how the three prominent models - Phinney's ethnic identity development approach (1989), Berry's acculturation model (1997), and Baden et al.'s reculturation model (2012) - and theorisations of ethnic/racial identity development of TRIAs can frame the negotiation and development of the narratives of ethno-racial identity, where they falter or do not include new findings, and which most accurately and adequately frames their stories, while simultaneously focussing on how the particularity of the

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Dutch discourse of belonging, race and ethnicity influences, contributes to or confounds these framings.

In order to show the theoretical framework, the second chapter begins by setting out relevant research which has been conducted among and upon the unique case of TRIAs already, followed by Phinney’s (1990), Berry’s (1997) and Baden et al.’s (2012) theories and models explaining and framing the ethnic/racial identity development of TRIAs, and the wider discourses of belonging within the Netherlands as well as elsewhere. In the third chapter the narrative inquiry method will be further espoused and explained in order to show why this specific research methodology was used for the data collection and subsequent analysis; the process of participant selection, data collection and data analysis shall also be discusses extensively here. In the fourth chapter, a number of key findings based on recurring themes and elements within all of the six interviews will be presented, and analysed using the respective models of Phinney, Berry and Baden, in an attempt to effectively frame the narratives in theorisations that can account for these as well as be extrapolated, herein testing the dynamic applicability and the inclusivity of each of the respective models. Subsequently, the analysis will focus on the circumstantial factors of each individual interviewed, as to properly determine in what kind of circumstances their identities are formed and/or have been transformed, and most importantly, if the ethnic/racial identity development and their constitutive processes differ for TRIAs adopted into Dutch culture and society, and perhaps more interesting, if these break the theoretical narratives through offering either micro (on the level of Dutch TRIAs) or macro-level - on the supra-individual level of the hypothetical homogenous group of TRIAs - insights into conceptualising ethnic-racial development.

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Chapter 2 Literature Review

2.1 Some Definitions: Identity, Ethnicity and Race

Identity

In order to successfully explain the theoretical models of Phinney (1990), Berry (1997) and Baden (2012) in relation to the research question, ethno-racial identity has to be defined in terms of existent theorisations of identity-making, formation, and transformation. However, due to the complexity of this topical notion, and the fact it only becomes an issue with all-encompassing ramifications, as Mercer (1990) states, “when something assumed to be coherent, fixed and stable is displaced by the feeling of doubt or uncertainty” (Mercer, 1990: 43), and hence is unavoidable when studying contemporary culture, no theorisation is able to delimit, delineate or demarcate it fully apart from using processual approaches of predominating factors in its constituency. It can either be accepted as being fluidly negotiated and undefinable or consciously delimited with regard some aspect of its constitution. Indeed, as Butler-Sweet argues, the term has become to incorporate a plurality of concepts due to it embodying many functions (Butler-Sweet, 2011), which is especially so with regard to what one could consider to be fundamentally constituting factors, aspects and contexts of identity, such as ethno-racial and other forms of historically and culturally located meaning. The fact that these simultaneously constitute, construe and are constituted discursively - especially with regard to race and ethnicity - only adds to the complexity of its webbed and embedded meaning (Alexander & Knowles, 2005; Knowles, 2004). As Brubaker

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and Cooper (2000:1) already correctly point out “identity tends to mean too much when understood in a strong sense, too little when understood in a weak sense, or nothing at all because of its sheer ambiguity”; it is indeed due the paradox of the academic necessity to positivistically approach the ambiguity of the concept and the simultaneously uttered challenge and deconstruction of any essentialist, universalising or fundamentalist notions of identity. Therefore, also because this thesis is faced with a necessity to resolve the complexity of the topical issue of identity within the limited scope of a thesis, the concept of identity is informed by the work of Vertovec (2004) who defines “(migrant) identity” as pertaining to and concerning “matters of membership, belonging, rights, loyalty, moral and political values, and borders” (2004: 984). Identity, therefore, is anchored, in fluid if not hybrid and utterly dynamic categories of race, ethnicity, nationality, class and gender. Due to the limitations of space due to the nature of a thesis, as stated, only the ethno-racial aspects of the identity of TRIAs will be explored and, as already seen, termed ethno-racial and ethnic/racial identity based upon the TRIA’s country of birth and the cultural body attached to it.

Race and Ethnicity: a Migrant Case of Definitions 5

As the operationalisation of the research question prerequisite a notion of ethno-racial identity, the identity politics of race and ethnicity need to be further delimited then as was described above. Herein it is pivotal to further elaborate upon concept of the

Racialisation occurs whenever ‘race’ is used to categorise individuals or explain behaviour. Since ‘race’

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is not a biologically defensible or definable phenomenon, racialisation always involves an ideological process, and is quintessentially, discursively invested ideology in which ‘race’ is - falsely - given a status as a stable, universally holding and tenable truth and connected to ethnicity, the cultural and finally, identity (Robinson, 2012:118). However, for the purposes of this thesis, it is necessary to how some way of lexically capturing the ethnic and racial aspect of identity in one word. In this vein, it is argued to tolerate the ideological loaded term, but use the adjective ethno-racial or ethnic/racial - used interchangeably - as a descriptor of the ethnical, cultural and racial aspects of identity.

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racial and its collocation with identity when it concerns the definitions of race and ethnicity in connotation with the case of the TRIA. Despite the seemingly differing semantics these concepts are closely related and often coincide, while concurrently each having their separate intellectual histories and spheres of application. Ethnicity refers to "a group characterised by common descent, common cultural tradition and a sense of identity which exists as a subgroup of a larger society" (Connor, 1978: 43). Consequently, this definition makes an ethnic group synonymous with any discernible minority group which is culturally distinguishable from the majority (Erikson, 2001). Ethnic behaviour, then, refers to the degree to which the individual keep elements of his/her culture and behave in accordance to his/her cultural customs (Berry, 2010). In both historically and contemporary cultural theory, race is considered to be grounded in the bodily and designates biological or physical differences based on phenological characteristics, such as skin colour, hair texture and facial features (Alexander & Knowles, 2005). As can already be seen, a conflict becomes readily apparent between the definitions of ethnicity and race by Connor and Erikson when applies to the situation of the TRIA. Approaching the TRIA from Connor’s institutionalised definition of ethnicity holds since the common denominator of a “common descent, common cultural tradition” (Connor, 1978: 43) holds true for the TRIA, who, in the case of this thesis, is ethnically Dutch. However, the “sense of identity which exists as a subgroup of a larger society” (ibid.) does not apply to the dynamics of the identity of the individual TRIA, having been raised in a shared cultural tradition whilst being denominated as culturally distinguishable due to the same discourses that constituted that presupposed sameness and shared-ness, colliding with the words “common descent”. It is here, “of common descent” (ibid.) that Erikson’s definition of race

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subsequently adds to this paradox, and connects, through the racialised body, the race and ethnicity discourses in which the TRIA is subjected to the ramifications of identity politics, since the apparition of the Other’s cultural body is presupposed due to the race argument, and subsequently warranted because of the physical body of the TRIA in its adoptive culture, despite globalisation. For, notwithstanding, the sustained critique within academia on this and existent biologisation of race, even deconstructionist tendencies have never truly managed to extinguish the corporeality of the racialised body and its appropriation in the discourses constituting them. On the contrary, the embodiment of racial discourse and the subjectivity of racialised individuals or groups is still very much alive (Knowles, 2004: 12) as will be seen to specifically be the case with regard to the Dutch discourse of belonging, race and ethnicity, as translated into the allochthony/autochthony division in the social space, as well as in the spatiality of the Dutch context.

Race, Space and Place - Marginalised Spaces, Marginalised People

For as seen in his arguing the making of race, Knowles (2004) states that, "Race is made in the ways people conduct themselves in everyday life, in moving about the world, in how they look, and what they wear and in their interactions with each other (ibid.: 49)". Furthermore, assumptions about sexuality, criminal behaviour, food habits or religion lies at the heart of processes of stereotyping and the representation and construction of racial differences which constitute aspects of racial discourse (Alexander & Knowles, 2005). This entails recognising that conditions and processes surrounding the making of race both produce, and are produced by a variety of differential power relations and modes of inequality. Racialised bodies are seen as objects/subjects of control, and are

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constructed and regulated through (micro)discourses of power, as can be seen by the discursive identification and reification of the culturally Dutch cultural body of the TRIA adopted into an Dutch adoptive family in the Netherlands, who, becomes reconstituted through the racialisation as the apparition of the cultural body of the cultural Other - i.e. the TRIA’s birth culture presupposed and projected Other self - while still remaining the cultural Self of the adoptive culture. While arbitrary from a relativist perspective, its discursive reality is anything but that, especially when confronted with the embedding of race in the spatiality of and the social space itself.

For Knowles (2004) continues by elaborating how race making is a spatial practice;, how space contains important information about the social practices to which race has given rise, and subsequently discursively reconstitute and reinforce it. In this sense the social and physical space function as an active archive of the social processes and social relationships composing racial orders and hierarchies, which, activated through human agency or the activities of groups, contributes to space's social agency, which once activated gives social meaning, texture and substance (Knowles, 2004: 81).

Explaining how social relationships and social practices, embodied performance and the architectural politics of the urban environment are interacting, dynamic sets of processes through which race making takes place, Knowles emphasises the multidimensional aspect of the spatial context of race (ibid.). First of all, embodied performance lies primarily in the daily routines and actions of bodies, their daily performativity, their style and clothing, their habits and predefined - by that same space - manner of moving through a space, of how the body walks and talks, herein being closely reminiscent and tangibly overlapping with body culture theory (ibid.). Secondly,

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as mentioned previously, space becomes ethnicised through the stories tied to "physical space or territory" (Knowles, 2004: 79), race and space therefore connect because "What makes sites of memory is that they connect the ghosts of untold stories, which have resonance with the racial politics of the present" (Knowles, 2004: 79). This ranges from the imagined social and ethnoracial geography, of who belongs or does not belong in a certain physical place or particular district, the architectural and urban planning politics reflected in these, their combined effects on residential, ethnic and sociocultural experiences and opportunities - especially for racialised minorities - to the point where an imagined black inner city district, such as Chapeltown, UK, can remain its imagined counterpart and continue alongside this spatially dictated ethnical, racial and social narrative, with no regard to a correspondence to a distribution of African-Caribbean, African and South Asian people in this neighborhood, since, as Sibbley (1998) states: "the imagined black inner city is fixed in space by the decisions and practices of banks, building societies, the city council and the social control agencies. To some extent, the real condition of the built environment then confirms the imagined condition of the inner city" (Sibbley, 1998: 124). Indeed, Clayton (2009) indicates:

An understanding of place emphasises that experiences between and within places differ in terms of how individuals are positioned through their racial and ethnic identities, their social class positions but also their geographic locations. These complex locations are vital in influencing the terms upon which negotiations of difference take place. The context of place is not merely a setting against which interethnic relations are played out, rather it is actively employed through articulations and practices of belonging to mark out differences and similarities and make sense of everyday circumstance. (Clayton, 2009: 488-489)

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Race therefore is embodied within the material and symbolic context of the racial - and by extent, the discursive - spatiality of the social space, and vice versa, constituting, being constituted discursively and active as such, as a discourse structure adding to the discourses of belonging, race and ethnicity. In the case of the TRIA, it is therefore not inconceivable that the priming of ethnic/racial identity development might initially be inherent to the physical and social space, and its associated racial spatialisation, in which the TRIA is originally adopted, much alike to how language acquisition transpires based on how one unconsciously wades into discourse as a child, through being surrounded, immersed, submerged and assimilating into the “representation, codes, conventions and habits of language” that come to dictate, represent and “produce specific fields of culturally and historically located meanings” (Brooker 1999: 78-79) for individuals as adults.

Drawing on such a premise, Yngvesson (2015) critically explores the ways in which different forms of migrant bodies - in particular refugees and adopted children - in Sweden are produced through the spatiality of race, and how the familiar logics of belonging that link a person to a geographic, sociocultural place, are transformed. "Swedishness", she concludes, is an ‘essence’ that is constantly in the making through immigration, adoption and social policies and practices that constitute a ‘Swedish’ interior and an ‘immigrant’ or ‘adopted’ exterior inside the Kingdom of Sweden, in many ways similar to Sibbley’s (1998) Chapeltown example. To address this, Yngvesson emphasises that the policies are informed by a logic of identity that is spatially organised and that racializes ‘the Swedish’ along two registers of difference: ‘the refugee’ is ghettoised in communities that ‘choose’ not to assimilate because of their presumably radically racial difference from a supposedly normative Swedish ‘way

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of life,’ while the TRIA is placed in a ‘Swedish family’, where he or she can be transformed into a fully Swedish person, even as his or her body sets him or her apart (ibid.: 2), showcasing a paradoxical attitude toward both the immigrant and the TRIA, as well as highlighting how social and ethno-racial imprinting of social and physical space can marginalise such spaces, and by extend marginalise the people inhabiting these. Rivas-Drake and Witherspoon' (2013) drew similar conclusions, when examining the relation between positive neighbourhood dynamics in early adolescence and racial identity in later adolescence and young adulthood of African American youth, their observations suggested that adolescents' neighbourhood may be an important context al factor for - albeit partially - understanding the content of young African Americans' racial identity as well as its processual shaping through the physical spaces they inhabited and ‘lived’ (Rivas-Drake and Witherspoon, 2013).

Regardless of the conflicting definitions and the ideologically loaded identity politics surrounding ethnic-racial identity, the complexity of the many - sometimes inconceivable - processual factors inherent to its constitution, the theoretical framework will now highlight ethno-racial identity development and formation in its appropriation in the existent literature. It will be further approached and elaborated upon in all the hybridity, fluidity and/or dynamics its processual nature prerequisites, through three cannological models: Phinney’s three stage model of ethnic identity formation (1990), Berry’s acculturation model (1997; 2005) and Baden’s reculturation model (2012), which focus on defining the fluidity of the ethno-racial identity by considering its formative, constituting processes: ethnic-identity formation through the processes of acculturation and reculturation. All of the stages each respective model considers to be pivotal in the successful or unsuccessful acquisition of a complete or incomplete

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ethno-racial identity will be elaborated upon to show how, in the analysis of the findings, all observations made in the narrative-inquiry interviews were cross-examined in an effort to most adequately and accurately frame the narratives of the development, negotiation and continuous (re-)appropriation of the ethnic/racial identity development of the 6 TRIAs interviewed for this thesis

2.2 Framing TRIA's Identity

The topic of racial/ethnic identity has been of genuine concern within the field of psychology and social work. Unresolved issues and dissonance with racial/ethnic identity have traditionally been known to cause low self-esteem, self-hatred, and a negative self-perception in first and second generation members of ethnic minorities, TRAs and TRIAs (Butler-Sweet, 2011; Gong, 2007; Mohanty, 2013; Robinson, 2012) to the point where these were considered traditional characteristics of these out-groups. These were some of the pivotal factors contributing to Phinney’s desire to theoretically compute a model describing ethnic identity formation, in an effort to adequately address these issues and how to prevent them.

Phinney’s (1989) Three-staged Model of Ethnic Identity Formation

Perhaps the best known and most widely researched model of ethnic identity formation is Phinney's (1989) model of ethnic identity formation (Robinson, 2012). Phinney's three-stage model of ethnic identity formation is based on the idea that an achieved identity occurs through stages and is a result of a crisis, an awakening, which in turn leads to period of exploration, and finally to the incorporation of one's ethnicity (Robinson, 2012: 120). In her multi-dimensional model, building both on the work of

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Erikson (1968) and Marcia (1991) Phinney's model differs from the others by reducing the number of stages contained in the model, in which she describes ethnic identity formation as consisting of three unique stages:

Stage 1. Unexamined ethnic identity is known as the first stage where the individual,

prior to adolescence, has no clear, self-informed idea of his/her ethnic identity apart from the identities cues and markers he or she derived from the immediate social surroundings (i.e., family, classmates, friends and social setting of the neighbourhood). This may be accompanied by two subtypes of status: diffusion and foreclosure. Diffusion refers to individuals who simply might not be interested in ethnic identity or are unaware whether or not, and to which extent, their ethnic identity differs other groups. Foreclosure holds that the individual is quite open and a certain kind of preference might be influenced by someone close, such as parents, other relatives or friends. Both the diffuse and foreclosed identity statuses are based on Marcia’s research (Marcia 1991). Knowledge regarding ethnic-racial identity is in this sense diffusely ‘absorbed’ or foreclosed due to the immediate social context of the youth’s life, and hence largely derived from socialisation.

Stage 2. Ethnic identity search, the second stage, marks the explorative phase of ones

own ethnic identity. Certain events that occur during these stages, i.e., discrimination, might force the individual to think about his/her ethnic identity, and comes to a deeper understanding of what it entails.

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Stage 3. The ideal outcome is the third stage, achieved ethnic identity; the individual

has a deeper understanding and appreciation of his/her ethnicity. In the area of ethnicity, identity achievement corresponds to acceptance and internalization of one’s ethnicity.

Moreover, Phinney (1989; Phinney and Ong, 2007) devised a scale, the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM), to measure ethnic identity in diverse ethnic groups. This scale has been used in studies measuring ethnic identity in transracial/ethnic adoptees (Manzi et al., 2014). Baden (Robinson, 2012) used a revised version of the MEIM in a study of TRAs and TRIAs in the US and found that racial and ethnic identity were highly correlated, which suggests that some transracial adoptees may consider the two concepts as the same (Baden, 2002).

Whilst it is necessary to offer Phinney’s account of ethnic identity due to it being part of the fundamental literature on the development of the ethnic identity it deviates from the preferred notion of describing and ascribing development of ethno-racial identity in this thesis, in that its modelling is focussed primarily on describing a limited set of end-stage forms of demarcated ethno-racial identity and therefore delimits possible deviations from its norm i.e. hyphenated and/or hybrid identities if not aspects of multiple cultural, social, ethnic and/or racial identities. In the case of the TRIA deviation is considered to be pivotal due to the open-ended, ambiguous nature of the collision of two cultural bodies, the appropriation herein, and the fluidity of diasporic, ethnic and racial consciousness as well as its adherence and allegiance by the TRIA. The other two theoretical frameworks, acculturation theory and reculturation theory, are similar to the model discussed in that both models emphasises a conflict model of

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cultural identity. Berry’s (1997) acculturation theory is more interpretative and allows for the negotiation of identity formation, transformation and continuous renegotiation of ethno-racial identity inherent to this tentative aspect of the case of the TRIA, whilst simultaneously offering a processual model which complements Phinney’s preliminary efforts (1989) and coincide with the more recent work of Baden et al. (2012).

Berry’s (1997) Acculturation Model

TRAs/TRIAs may feel torn between two cultural identities for several reasons, including pressures from within both their adoptive culture and their birth culture. Therefore they may face conflicting demands due to differences between the adoptive values and those of their birth culture. The issue they must resolve is the way to combine these competing identities; that is, the extent to which they identify with their birth culture and also with the larger adoptive society (Robinson, 2012). Berry's (1990) acculturation model is useful in understanding the ethnic identity development of TRIAs primarily due to its processual approach, allowing for a dynamicity which is reminiscent of the fluidity of a topical, fragmented and utterly hybrid notion such as ethno-racial identity.

Berry (2005) describes acculturation as the "dual process of cultural and psychological change that takes place as a result of contact between two or more cultural groups and their individual members" (Berry, 2005: 698). He considers cultural identity as being constituted by the ways in which individuals understand themselves in relation to cultural communities with regard to their own affective, cognitive and behavioural aspects as well as the cultural community one contrasts her or himself with

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(Berry, 2010: 194). Especially in plural societies, such as the Netherlands, this duality, of contrasting and cultural appropriation ”the strangeness of the familiar . . . ourselves-as-others, others-as-ourselves”(Interview 72;qtd.Gupta19) as Balibar (1972) considers it seems inherent, since both the dominant and the non-dominant cultural groups and the individuals they are composed of, have to deal with the issue of how to acculturate (Berry, 2005).

Two primary issues that are considered to be a prerequisite of acculturation are cultural maintenance and contact and participation. These two underlying issues where what Berry (1997) considered when he composed a conceptual framework which posits four primary strategies of acculturation.

I. Assimilation strategy: In the case that individuals do not want to maintain their

own, dominant cultural identity and seek daily interaction with other cultures, the assimilation strategy is applicable (ibid.: 9).

II. Separation strategy: In contrast to this, when an individual wants to hold onto

their culture of origin, and at the same time wishes or prefers to avoid interaction with others, Berry speaks of separation.

III. Integration strategy: The integration strategy is of concern when there is an

interest in both maintaining one’s culture of origin, while at the same time seeking to participate as an integral part of the larger social network.

IV. Marginalisation: Finally, marginalisation is defined as the situation in which and

when there is little possibility, interest or effort in cultural maintenance, and little to no initiative in building relations with others (ibid.).

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Attitudes towards these four alternatives, and actual behaviours exhibiting them, together constitute and comprise an individual’s acculturation strategy. Previous research on immigrant youths (Berry & Sabatier, 2010) concluded that those pursuing integration had more positive adaptations than those seeking to acculturate in other ways, whereas those who are marginalised by the process of acculturation are the least well adapted, and in between were those who preferred assimilation or separation (ibid.). The integration strategy is the most subservient to minority children and adults’ well-being. Robinson (2012) puts forward the view that TRIAs may choose to develop a bicultural or more fluid identity that allows them greater flexibility through the instrumentalisation of the integration strategy (ibid.: 121). Whereas Berry’s (2005) model allows for a theoretical and conceptual framework to describe the prerequisite strategies for both negative as well as positive strategies of dealing with the TRIAs negotiation, transformation and overall development of ethno-racial identity - Baden’s (Baden et al, 2012) model of reculturation proved to be the most inclusive in answering each developmental stage of ethno-racial identity among TRIAs possibly reached through Berry’s four strategies, while simultaneously encompassing a prerequisite critical, conceptual awareness of the hybridity, fluidity and/or dynamics any approach of identity, and especially ethno-racial identity requires, perhaps precisely because it was specifically tailored for research on TRIAs.

Baden et al.'s (2012) Reculturation Model

Believing that all TRIAs will, to varying degrees, seek to reclaim, readopt or adapt their birth culture, Baden et al (2012: 388) developed a new identity construct. For as TRIAs engage in the identity process, they may struggle with their cultural affiliations and the

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need to resolve if not reconcile the dissonance they experience between their physical appearance and their lived cultural practice and affiliation, as well as the appropriation, both discursive and racially, of their physical appearance by others conflicting with their - through adoption - adopted cultural bodies (ibid.: 387). Reculturation, therefore, is the active and passive process in and by which the TRIA acculturate to or reclaim a culture that is not the same as their adoptive parents’ culture nor is it dominant in their sociocultural environment. Reculturation activities are the behaviours, traditions, attitudes, or beliefs that promote adoptees’ attempts of acquisition, to regain cultural knowledge, awareness, skill, or experience . These can include education, language courses, heritage tours, study-abroad experiences, and interactions with birth culture or their ethnic communities (ibid.:390-394). The process of reculturation has 5 phases:

Phase 1 Enculturation Begins (ibid.: 391): by active/passive transmission of cultural

information (from birth children enculturate to their birth culture such as languages, values, behaviours and beliefs) enculturation is activated.

Phase 2 Relinquishment and Temporary Care (ibid.: 391): despite the fact that TRIAs

have been put up for adoption, they are primarily cared for by caregivers of their same ethnic and cultural group so that enculturation continues throughout these placements.

Phase 3 Adoption; Enculturation Stops, Assimilation Begins (ibid.: 391): the

enculturation of the newly adopted child ends and assimilation to the adoptive parents' cultures begins. Hence, newly adopted children who are adopted across national and cultural lines must assimilate to their adoptive parents' culture because of (a) their need

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for survival via communication, (b) the lack of exposure to their birth culture, (c) the lack of enculturation transmission from birth culture, and (d) the need for attachment and bonding to new parents.

Phase 4 Immigration (ibid.: 392): although international adoptees are, in fact,

immigrants, most are adopted in infancy and early childhood. When these children are adopted, their process of immigration and acculturation differs from that of non-adopted immigrants in significant ways, as was already described in the introduction.

Phase 5 Assimilation Continues (ibid.: 393): given the immigration experience, most

adopted children enter families and communities with few if any representatives (people) or (identity) markers of their birth culture. As a result, adopted children rapidly assimilate or fully accept and absorb the culture and cultural practices of their adoptive parents and relinquish their birth culture, so that they can communicate with, attach to, and survive within their new adoptive families as well as their newly acquired sociocultural environment.

Phase 6 Reculturation Process and Three Approaches to Reculturation (ibid.:

393-394): TRIAs continue to assimilate to their adoptive parents’ culture but also may begin to gain interest in being exposed to their birth cultures because of the changes that occur when TRIAs become adults and are no longer being protected by their honorary White status (Feagin, 2007) they acquired if they were adopted into Caucasian adoptive families. Reculturation occurs primarily through three main approaches; education (learning birth language, read about history birth country etc), experience (through

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interaction with member of their birth culture gain experience of their heritage) and

immersion (moving to their birth country, changing or reclaiming birth names, and

affiliating primarily with their ethno-racial group).

When adoptees move through the stages of reculturation, several outcomes may occur. Although adoptees may go through all of the aforementioned phases, they need not go through all of them, nor must the phases be linear in progression (ibid.:394):

Table 1: The Outcomes of Reculturation

2.2.1. Summarising the Approaches: Limitations and Applicability

These racial and ethnic identity models/theories elaborated upon previously are typical of the essentialist approach, building upon the notion that racialised communities

Adoptee culture Adoptees may feel that neither their birth nor adoptive culture fits them and instead identify primarily as an adoptee and associate primarily with adoptees.

Reclaimed culture Adoptees may fully immerse themselves within their birth culture. They have the ability to “pass” and authentically, competently, and proficiently perform within their birth culture.

Bicultural Adoptees identify with their adoptive White culture to which they assimilated and with their hyphenated-ethnic group. They can authentically relate to both communities, move between and among their communities, and not sever ties to either their ethnic group communities or their adoptive White culture.

Assimilated culture Adoptees may continue to assimilate to their lived, adoptive culture and may attempt to hold onto their honorary White status.

Combined culture Adoptees may have some combination of the previous outcomes.

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construct collective identities in relation to a dominant culture that attempts to discursively assimilate ethno-racial identities and out-groups by means of categorisation and stigmatising appropriation. This stands in sharp contrast to the fact that TRIAs, and any other ethnic-racial hybrid, fluid or dynamic sensibility might be more productively conceived of in the plural complexity of their ethno-racial identities - as any subjectivity, in an ideal, positivistic world without nation-states would be - considering such an individual’s identity as “the interstitiality of entering (or leaving) and destabilizing the border zones of cultures, as fracturings of the subject that resist falsely comforting identifications and reifications …” and having “a negative value in that it denies the subject's sovereignty and stresses the performativity of the subject” (Dayal, 1993: 48). Nevertheless, each of these models serve as a useful assessment tool, an operationalised conduit to achieve a greater understanding in interpreting the data regarding the many-facetted aspects of the ethno-racial identity of the TRIAs interviewed for this research. In similar vein, while, as already explained, Baden’s (2012) model of enculturation is the most adapted to the specific case of the TRIAs in this research, both Berry’s and Phinney’s model will be utilised in analysing and interpreting the data. This is even the case in the case of the eventuality that the above mentioned models do not apply fully, or are found lacking in their inclusivity, even when it pertains to merely one of its stages, or a particular aspectual factor of the racialised space in which the interviewed TRIAs are located. In the Dutch situation this might be because the specific Dutch discourse on belonging, based on the binary opposition of allochtoon versus autochtoon warrants a differentiated approach to not only the interactions with other immigrants, diasporic consciousnesses but the own

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fundament of ethno-racial identity of the TRIA itself, in relation to the racialised dichotomy.

2.3 Dutch Contextual Influence on Ethno/Racial Identity Development

The classification and counting of nationals and foreigners is regarded to be a lawful endeavour within all European states (Jacobs & Lea, 2009). When examining migration and international mobility, nationality is often regarded to be the most appropriate criterion for distinction. While counting and classifying individuals on the basis of their ethnic origin is a standard operating procedure in the US and Canada, it is to a far lesser degree seen to be acceptable in continental Europe, despite it discursive reality as part of day-to-day life and frames of sense-making (ibid.: 42).

The Netherlands has no explicit race discourse, however through its public policy and administrative practices, the state does categorise Dutch population along 'ethnic' lines, using birthplace of one's own or (grand-) parent's as the determining factor (Yanow & van der Haar, 2013). This everyday discourse is framed in terms of

allochtonen and autochtonen. Derived from the Greek auto, meaning same, and chthõn

meaning country, land, earth, autochtoon is seen as indigenous. Allochtoon derives 6

from the Greek allos, meaning other, and chthõn, (country, land, earth), meaning not indigenous; foreign (ibid.). The binary of autochtoon (of Dutch birth and ancestry) and Western/non-Western, first and second generation, allochtoon (of foreign birth) demarcates the population within the Netherlands. This taxonomy of the mutually exclusive categories of autochtoon and allochtoon separates the ‘us' from ‘them’ in an From now on, and previously, the Dutch terms ‘autochtoon’ and ‘allochtoon’ of the Dutch dichotomy of

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autochtoon vs allochtoon are translated to English as ‘autochthony’ and ‘allochthony’, in accordance with

The negotiation of the diasporics of identity : transracial international adoptees in the Dutch discourse of belonging