This book critically analyses the traditional, lingering socio-cultural bias against those with unknown, or unknowable, ancestries through law and literature. It traces the stigmatising, ‘othering’ effects chronologically across different historical eras until present. It focuses upon adoption and ‘orphanhood’ (both actual and fictive) within England and Wales and in later chapters looks also to other jurisdictions including Ireland, Europe, Canada, the US and Korea. It uses these  ‘testimonies’ as a better way to explore and achieve meaningful changes to socio-cultural attitudes. It seeks to deepen and challenge our understandings of why, when, and how socio-cultural, legal otherings  and otherness, become necessary within a given society. It also critically discusses reproductive technologies to argue that particularly harmful sociocultural exclusions can easily arise from the loss (or enforced lack) of biogenetic origin. This cross-disciplinary text speaks to researchers from the fields of Law, Literature, Social Work and Social Policy, Vulnerability and Critical Adoption Studies and to practitioners including psychotherapists. weiterlesen