How Does Law Prescribe Circulation of Children? Understanding Different Kinds of Movement Within the Adoption Law in India

Abstract

This article looks at how adoption law prescribes correct contexts for the legitimate movement of children. It is specifically an analysis of the Adoption Regulation of India, 2017, and the Juvenile Justice Act 2015, and the way in which they warrant three kinds of movement of children through adoption: ‘abandonment’/’surrender’, ‘return’ and ‘giving and taking’. By investigating the precise way in which law formulates definition of these terms, this article attempts to understand how legal terminology comes to affect the kind of sites that the biological family, the state and the adoptive family end up becoming.