International adoption and labor migration are largely conceptualized, and therefore studied, as two distinct phenomena involving distinct populations of people. In Adoptive Migration: Raising Latinos in Spain, anthropologist Jessaca Leinaweaver challenges this notion by forcing an analytic eye to the experiential similarities and differences between children who join new families in other nation states via adoption and those who join their “old” families in other nation states (or remain at home without their parent[s]) via labor migration. She focuses on the relationship between Spain and Peru as important receiving and sending countries, respectively, for both phenomena.

Adoptive Migration primarily focuses on Peruvian international adoptees into Spain, but also examines three other populations: the children of Peruvian labor migrants into Spain; the children resulting from “mixed marriages” between Peruvians (who may or may not be labor migrants) and Spaniards; and the children of Peruvian labor migrants in Spain who are subsequently adopted domestically by Spaniards. Leinaweaver is interested in the experiences of these different groups of children, not in isolation from each other, but rather in how they bear on one another. This is an ambitious project.

What do the experiences of labor migrants and their children tell us about the experiences of international adoptees and their new families? How do conceptualizations of migration and migrants shape the experiences of these varying sets of children? Leinaweaver answers these questions by focusing on how these populations of children construct places of belonging across physical, ideological, and imaginary borders between Spain and Peru. She contends that these children and their families create belonging—or are kept from doing so—by calling upon ideologies of what she calls “national substance” (kinship, race, citizenship, culture, etc.). Labor migrants, their children, and international adoptees are all conceptualized as “foreign bodies.” As Leinaweaver shows, the way the Peruvian “foreign bodies” of children are integrated into Spain varies depending upon their route into Spain, their families' status, and ideas about their “national substance” (their “Peruvianness”).

While both are immigrants, Peruvian adoptees occupy a relatively privileged position when compared to the Peruvian children of labor migrants. They are also unique since international adoption is a much smaller phenomenon in Spain than is labor migration. Though international adoptees are often phenotypically different from their new parents and therefore seemingly readily identifiable as “foreign,” they assume the privileged position (socially, economically, and interpersonally) of their Spanish citizen parents. In doing so, they are thought to lose some of their Peruvianness since they are expected to adapt to the ways of their new parents. The children of labor migrants, on the other hand, who number many more than international adoptees, are expected to retain their habits and practices—in other words, their culture—and their Peruvianness. However, the lived experiences of these children, both adoptees and labor migrants, is more complicated than this simple bifurcation indicates. International adoptees, for example, grow up in and go out into a rapidly multiculturalizing Spanish world (without their parents) where they are sometimes assumed to be “real” immigrants, not privileged adoptees, and they therefore confront negative images and stereotypes of Latin Americans. How both international adoptees and the children of labor migrants navigate their Peruvianness and their statuses as Latin American-origin people within a country that discriminates against immigrants provides for rich analysis and fascinating reading.

Based on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork (primarily semi-structured interviews with adoptive and migrant families) in Madrid conducted over the course of four years, Adoptive Migration builds on Leinaweaver's previous seven years of ethnographic work on adoption in Peru. Leinaweaver comes to this work, therefore, with a deep knowledge of Peruvian adoption and a network of contacts in the world of Peruvian adoption work and among Peruvian families who had embarked or were embarking on labor migration. The benefits of this background are clear in her astute understanding of the Peruvian experience in Spain and her ability to network and access the Peruvian population there.

Adoptive Migration raises important questions about not only adoption and migration but also belonging and identity generally. Accessibly written, with Leinaweaver's voice and experience in the field quite present, Adoptive Migration should be of interest to students of adoption, immigration, identity, and family studies.