Making Canadians: Foreign Adoption and Citizenship Acquisition

This paper explores the meaning of Canadian identity through the lens of the citizenship law governing foreign-born children adopted by Canadian parent(s). Canada’s birthright citizenship provisions are widely considered to be very generous by international standards, extending citizenship to virtually all children born on Canadian territory and to children born abroad to a Canadian parent. At first glance, this generosity seems to mirror Canada’s relative openness to immigration and its purported commitment to multiculturalism. It seems profoundly nonsensical to assert a unified Canadian ethnicity – at least if you are a member of Canadian mainstream culture. Yet as one explores the complicated judicial challenges to birthright citizenship and advocacy around citizenship and adoption, one uncovers rich articulations of Canadian belonging and identity, subtly and not so subtly entwined in race, gender and ethnicity. Drawing on parliamentary debates, committee hearings and legal cases concerning the citizenship status of children from foreign countries adopted by Canadians, this paper examines the arguments for designating adopted children as immigrants or ‘natural born’ Canadians, the presumption that foreign-born children (adopted or otherwise) may lack the requisite attachment to the country that birth in the territory provides, and what these lively debates about how to ‘conceive’ of foreign-born adopted children relative to Canada tells us about national citizenship and social belonging.