"The State of the 'Historic' Greek Adoptions: A Broken Story That Keeps on Breaking"

The purpose of this article is threefold. First, the article presents a “factsheet” on the postwar and Cold War adoptions of children from Greece, who were placed abroad in the 1950s through 1960s, mainly in the United States and in the Netherlands. It delves into the Greek-born adoptees’ demands, concentrated in a campaign that Mary Cardaras and I have dubbed “Nostos for Greek Adoptees.” It also engages with the legal underpinnings that must strengthen the adoptees’ requests. Here, the article views current challenges that adopted persons are facing through the lens of a commitment to human rights, which entails that a stable democracy, vested in human rights, ought to investigate, own up to problems, and make amends. Secondly, this article presents two activist adoptee voices: Mary Cardaras and Penny Zagarelou-Mackieson, who were born Greek, only to be adopted out abroad. Their adoptions played out in different contexts, time periods, and circumstances, but their identity needs and rights could not be more alike. Thirdly, the article is accompanied by a bibliographical section that lists the writings by the Greek-born adoptees themselves and the most important studies, opinion pieces, and other media features related to the topic.
There is, however, more at stake in this article than facts, challenges, and proposed solutions. This article, albeit brief, also points to methods to be derived from practice-led and reform-driven research: how to articulate one’s demands, how to keep them in the public eye, how to select ethical and professional partners, how to collaborate on policy change. In between the lines of this text lies the subtext of years of writing and publishing, of persistent networking and lobbying, and of sharply delineating moral, legal, and policy issues. All this campaigning has been necessary, and continues to be necessary, to ensure that the identity needs and rights of adopted persons born in Greece—as elsewhere—are properly respected. It also proves that adoption issues have maintained their cutting edge vis-à-vis conventional historical, economic, social, or demographic scholarship and that they have moved from the political to the moral plain.