Autoethnography from ‘in-between’: an account of the cultural identity construction of a Korean-Australian adoptee

This paper uses an autoethnographic methodology to examine cultural identity formation from the perspective of an intercountry adoptee. The author, a communication scholar who was adopted from South Korea by an Anglo-Australian family in the 1980s, draws on documents and memories to examine her own identity construction through various intercultural and interpersonal communications. She identifies that interactions with Anglo-Celtic Australians and ‘native’ Koreans have destabilised her identity by causing her to question her ‘cultural authenticity’ as an Australian or Korean. However, participation in global online networks of intercountry adoptees has facilitated her self-identification as an ‘intercountry adoptee’ and enabled the emergence of a cultural identity characterised by hybridity and difference. It is argued that this identity is fundamentally intercultural, continually negotiated through interaction, and subversive and empowering in its hybridity.