A “Kinship for Oneself"?
Based on a survey conducted in France on the relationship to origins of abandoned and/or adopted persons, this article shows how their quest, the object of negotiations within the adoptive family, can be interpreted as a form of emancipation marking the entry into adulthood. It then initiates the constitution of a “kinship for oneself” with uncertain contours, woven from non-instituted relationships, subject to will, time, and election, and sometimes leading to the implementation of family solidarities. Once their existence has been established, it seems just as difficult to get rid of these potential links entirely as to make them exist. Distant, dormant, they remain suspended at the margins of the kinship of the adopted persons, while revealing the importance of their capacity to act and to choose: from their position as children and descendants, they construct singular relational constellations, affirming the plurality of their belonging.