Not Ethnic Enough: The Cultural Identity Imperative in International Adoptions from C hina to C anada

Based on a qualitative research of adoptions from C hina to C anada, this article analyses changing attitudes and approaches to racial and ethnic differences in adoptive kinship in the last few decades. I argue that culture celebration labour over children adopted from C hina is shaped by the contemporary C anadian culturalist ethos, the O rientalist imagination, and the A sian model minority stereotype. The cultural identity imperative, a core component of multicultural governmentality, perceives culture as an object, demands non‐white C anadian subjects with rooted belongings, and operates in ways that sanctions and incorporates, as it depoliticises and subordinates.