Ethnographic Fictions: Immigration, Adoption and Sociolegal Knowledge

Susan Coutin
Criminology, Law, and Society
UC Irvine

Barbara Yngvesson
Social Sciences
Hampshire College

This UCHRI Short-term Collaborative Research Residency enabled Susan Coutin (UC Irvine) to collaborate with Barbara Yngvesson (Hampshire College) in order to advance work on their co-authored book manuscript, Ethnographic Fictions: Immigration, Adoption and Sociolegal Knowledge. Multidisciplinary in scope, Ethnographic Fictions draws on the coauthors’ research regarding immigration and transnational adoption to resituate ethnographic practices within the conditions of mobility, inequality, and violence in which research now often occurs. During a two-week residency at the UCHRI in Spring 2017, Coutin and Yngvesson (a) gave a public talk based on the draft manuscript, (b) met with key readers to obtain comments on this draft, (c) engaged in sustained reading and conversation, and (d) planned revisions to this draft. The key deliverable obtained through this research residency was a strengthened manuscript that can be submitted to presses for review.