TOWARDS A THEORY OF FICTIVE KIN WORK: China Adoptive Parents' Efforts to Connect their Children to Americans of Chinese Heritage

Extending fictive conceptualizations of ethno-cultural/ethno-racial kinship and research on the work of ethno-cultural/ethno-racial connection, this paper uses the new theoretical construct "fictive kin work" to understand American China adoptive parents' efforts to link their children to Americans of Chinese heritage. Drawing on data from ninety-one semi-structured in-depth interviews with American China adopters, it describes how (or where) adoptive parents labor to connect with Chinese-American "kin" and the interactional satisfactions and setbacks experienced in/through this labor. Recognizing structural, contextual, and processual variations in the extent to which parents engage in fictive kin work, the paper relies on intersectional analysis to both reveal the meaning of China adoptive parents' fictive kin work and augment our understanding of ethno-cultural/ethno-racial bonds and boundary crossings, more generally.