Karen S. Rotabi-Casares

Karen S. Rotabi-Casares has conducted intercountry adoption research, particularly illicit practices, for 2 decades beginning with Guatemala as a country of interest. She has published widely on that country, as well as others, with an orientation to adoption fraud with particular consideration of social work practices and international policy, in general. She co-edited the 2012 collection entitled:  Intercountry Adoption: Policies, Practices and Outcomes and then co-authored the 2017 book: From Intercountry Adoption to Global Surrogacy: A Human Rights History and New Fertility Frontiers. She has consulted on intercountry adoption in Cambodia as well as Guatemala and other countries, including work on social work education from a child protection perspective. She has worked more generally in well over a dozen countries, including intensive consulting on launching social work education in Somalia and South Sudan and the coordinated the MSW Program at the United Arab Emirates University. Today, she is Professor of Social Work at California State University-Monterey Bay where she has served in leadership. She completed her PhD in Social Work at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and her Masters of Social Work and Masters of Public Health at the University of South Carolina.

Cheney, K. & Rotabi-Casares, K. S. (2025). So goes China: The end of intercountry      adoption as we know it? Journal of Human Rights and Social Work.

Rotabi-Casares, K. S., Fronek, P. F., & Lee, J. S. (2024). During the chaos of war: US adoptions and the risks for unaccompanied Ukrainian refugee children. International Social Work 6(3), Available from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00208728231225947

Fronek, P. F. & Rotabi-Casares, K. S. (2023). The taken children of Ukraine. International Social Work, 67(3), Available from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00208728231209474.

Mapp, S., & Rotabi-Casares, K. S. (2023). State-sponsored child separation as cultural genocide: Implications for children’s rights and child adoption. Families in Society.

Cheney, K. E. & Rotabi-Casares, K. S. (2023). Social work in a post-Dobb’s world: The ‘adoption fallacy’, decolonization, and reproductive justice. Affilia: Feminist Inquiry in Social Work.

Monico, C., Rotabi-Casares, K. S., & Bunkers, K. M. (2022). The national adoption system and child protection in Guatemala: Looking back and examining today. Adoption Quarterly. DOI: 10.1080/10926755.2022.2156641

Fronek, P. F., Rotabi-Casares, K. S., & Common*, R. (2021). Intercountry adoption swimming against the tide: Restitution in Samoa. Childhood, 28(4). Available from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09075682211063691

Fronek, P. F., & Rotabi, K. S. (2020). The impact of COVID-19 pandemic on intercountry country adoption and international commercial surrogacy. International Social Work, 63(5) 665-670. Available from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0020872820940008

Neville*, S. E., & Rotabi, K. S. (2020). Developments in U.S. intercountry adoption policy since its peak in 2004.Adoption Quarterly, 23(2), 1-21.

Monico, C., Rotabi, K. S., & Lee, J. S. (2019). Forced child-family separations in the southwestern U.S. border under the “zero tolerance” policy: Preventing human rights violations and child abduction into adoption (Part 1). Journal of Human Rights and Social Work. Available from https://rdcu.be/btchE

Rotabi, K. S., & McGinnis, H. (2019). Adoption: Intercountry. In C. Franklin (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Social Work Online. New York, NY: Oxford University.

Fronek, P. F., Common*, R., Rotabi, K. S., & Statham, J. (2019). Identifying and addressing risk in the implementation of alternative care policies in Cambodia. Journal of Human Rights and Social Work, 4(2), 140-144.

Bunkers, K. M., Bradford, N. E., & Rotabi, K. S. (2018). Lost in translation: Cultural interpretations of family in East Africa and implications for children’s care: Examples from Ethiopia and Uganda. Brown Journal of World Affairs, XXIV(11), 119-131. Available from http://bjwa.brown.edu/24-2/lost-in-translation-cultural-interpretations-of-family-in-east-africa-and-implications-on-childrens-care/

San Román, B., & Rotabi, K. S. (2017). Rescue, red tape, child abduction, illicit adoptions and discourse: Intercountry adoption attitudes in Spain. International Social Work, 62(1), 198-211.

Scherman, R., Misca, G., Rotabi, K. S., & Selman, P. F. (2016). Parallels between international adoption and global surrogacy: What the field of surrogacy can learn from adoption. Adoption & Fostering. 40(1), 20-35.

Rotabi, K. S. (2013). Adoption: Intercountry. In C. Franklin (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Social Work Online. New York, NY: Oxford University. doi: 10.1093/acrefore/ 9780199975839.013.870

Roby, J. L., Rotabi, K. S., & Bunkers, K. M. (2013). Social justice and intercountry adoptions: The role of the U.S. social work community. Social Work, 58(4), 295-303. doi: 10.1093/sw/swt033