I. Julia Vich Bertran (GTD/CGD) was granted a Marie Curie Individual Fellowship for her project ‘Origin stories: Chinese heritage tours and adoptive origin stories’

This Marie Curie Global Fellowship has been awarded to Julia Vich Bertran and will be supervised by Valentina Mazzucato (Maastricht University, The Netherlands) and Jessaca Leinaweaver (Brown Universtity, U.S.A.). It will run from 1 September 2016 to 31 August 2019 and will be coordinated by Maastricht University (FASoS/FASoS-MACIMIDE, The Netherlands) and Brown University (the Population Studies and Training Centre, United States of America), including Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Cultural and Social Anthropology Department, GRAFO/Getp, Spain) as a partner.

The aim of this study is to investigate how American and Spanish parents who adopt children from China, the children themselves, as well as other stakeholders involved in international adoptions from (and in) China, re-define familial and national belonging, locally and across borders. In order to do so, PhD. Julia Vich Bertran will analyze the growing phenomenon of the “heritage tours” as an ideal case where transnational kinning practices are played out, different notions of ‘belonging’ and ‘origin culture’ intersect, and broader state and organizational interests meet.

The transnational nature of this project brings together recent literature on transnational families and transnational adoption and uses mixed methods from the social sciences and humanities to build a Transnational Adoptive Field approach intended to provide a comprehensive and cross- country comparative way to study transnational adoptive family-making processes.

This ethnographic research justifies the inclusion of participants from very diverse ages, socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, some of whom are in vulnerable situations. It also involves the collection of data and field research in three different countries (China, United States and Spain). Multiple methods will be used during the ethnographic research, including participant observation, unobtrusive direct observation, structured and unstructured interviews, focused discussions with individuals and community members, analysis of texts, and sporadically, audio-visual records.

In a wider sense, this inquiry is a case through which we may scrutinize the shifting meanings that re-define familial and national belonging in today’s globalizing world.

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II. Migrant Families Living Across National and Regional Borders

This SWOL and FASoS funded workshop brought together 15 international scholars who collected quantitative datasets on trans-local and transnational migrant families around the world. Its aim was to stimulate cross-national comparisons to foster a greater understanding of the driving forces behind the effects of migration on families. Such a cross-country comparative exercise on transnational families was the first of its kind.

The workshop started with sharing research ideas for collaborative research papers. Based on these ideas, 4 themes were identified on which teams of participants were working together. During the workshop, these teams discussed what, with the data available, they could specifically investigate and write a collaborative paper on. By the end of the workshop all the teams drafted an action plan, in which the outline of the paper was discussed, the data and methodologies to use was decided upon, a task division was drafted and particular deadlines were set. All the teams also received feedback from all the other participants and improved their action plans accordingly. Finally, an action plan was devised for the whole group of participants which includes an additional paper on debunking myths on migration and a special issue with our collaborative papers. Two follow-up activities were planned. The first, an academic workshop with academic participants to further our collaborative analyses. The second, a workshop for policy makers, in which we present and debunk migration myths.

Participants: Prof dr. Valentina Mazzucato, Dr. Karlijn Haagsman, Dr. Kim Caarls, Dr. Victor Cebotari, Dr. Bilisuma Dito, Dr. Qiaobing Wu, Dr. Jenna Nobles, Dr. Rachel Bennett, Dr. Lucy Jordan, Prof. Elspeth Graham, Prof. Katherine Donato, Dr. Sorana Toma, Dr. Amparo González Ferrer, Dr. Tatiana Eremenko, Dr. Elisabeth Kraus.