Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Adoptees Revisiting China, Kelly Hancox

Honors Projects

Since 1991, more than 80,000 children from China have been adopted to the United States. This thesis describes the circumstances that led to those adoptions and focuses on 17 Chinese adult adoptees’ return trip reculturation experiences. In doing so, this study reveals the impact of these trips on the transracial adoptees’ identities. Return trips significantly impacted adoptees with factors such as age during return trip, length of trip, linguistic fluency, and prior cultural knowledge greatly affecting trip experiences. Because of the ages of this cohort of adoptees, return trips may become more popular in the coming years as they enter …