Abstract

This seminar explores the role of genetics in reuniting adoptees and biological families who cannot find their filiations via the official paper trail. I focus on the Spanish case, where these ancestry searches are compounded by numerous reports of infants having been given in adoption without the full, free consent of their biological families. Building on Star and Bowker’s concept of infrastructure, I follow the eugenic discourse that justified these adoption practices and show how it crystallised in a socio-technical assemblage that first contributed to political repression and later coerced single mothers. This infrastructure emerged during the dictatorship of General Franco and survived well into the establishment of democracy in Spain (late 1930s to early 2000s).

The Spanish democratic authorities have become increasingly sensitised to this problem and, since 2013, have established a central databank to which the now-adult children and biological families can submit their genetic profiles. Yet I argue that for their reunion to be meaningful, any potential match in their DNA sequences needs to be interpreted in the light of the socio-technical infrastructure within which the separations occurred. This is especially true with consent practices, since political and scientific authorities sometimes assume that, at the time of the adoptions, the agency of single mothers to decide over their offspring was equivalent to present-day standards.