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Inequality Near and Far: Adoption as Seen from the Brazilian Favelas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Claudia Fonseca
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Abstract

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Focusing on child circulation among the urban poor in Southern Brazil, this article considers the parallels and divergences between local practice, national legislation, and global policy involved in legal adoption. Following a brief ethnographic account of child circulation among working-class families in Porto Alegre, Brazil, the analysis focuses on adoção à brasileira (clandestine adoption) as one of the ways in which the Brazilian poor bypass legal bureaucratic procedures in order to adjust the State apparatus to their needs. Finally, the comparative analysis of Brazil and North America centers on the evolution of adoption law and policies. Our approach highlights the variant experiences of family and legal consciousness according to class and national identity, while at the same time considering the political inequality implied in the hierarchization of different cultural repertoires.

Type
Papers of General Interest
Information
Law & Society Review , Volume 36 , Issue 2: Special Issue on Nonbiological Parenting , 2002 , pp. 397 - 431
Copyright
Copyright © 2002 Law and Society Association.

Footnotes

I would like to thank Chantai Collard and Françoise-Romaine Ouellette for their thoughtful suggestions to this article, as well as the Anthropology Department of the Université de Montréal, which provided an amicable setting for my sabbatical year.

References

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Statutes

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