In this article we bring the records of Liverpool‐based child emigration agencies into conversation with the archives of ‘Home’ children held at Libraries and Archives Canada, the Archives of Ontario (Toronto) and the Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto Archives. Our aim is to provide the first study to consider why the North West emerged as the British centre of child emigration during the period 1860–1930, and examine the shared emigration infrastructure between its institutions and agents with those in Canada, through which we hope to advance comparative transnational research into child separation as a feature of welfare systems since the late‐nineteenth century. Our key claims are the following: (1) that children and their families DID challenge, resist and question the system, though not always expressed through their limited ability to give consent to emigration; (2) that the purported welfarist impulses of child emigration schemes were frequently in tension with the everyday administrative and financial concerns that characterised exchanges over child migrants between state and institution, bespeaking a broader economy of child emigration schemes that has thus far been under‐examined in the scholarship.

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From the 1870's, children in the care of charities or state provided institutions, including workhouses and industrial schools, were subject to the practice of emigration to Canada, separating them from their parents and wider family. This was achieved ostensibly to secure the child's welfare, and provide opportunities in Canada beyond the poverty of the industrialising cities of the north of England. Using original archive material, this article examines the legal rights of parents of children identified for emigration, and how charities and state institutions obtained the authority to emigrate children. The lack of a clear basis for assessing child welfare led organisations to consider a broad range of moralistic considerations regarding the characterisation of parents and the child's circumstances in deciding whether a child should be emigrated. Despite these negative perceptions, it will be demonstrated that some parents exercised considerable agency in seeking to resist emigration of a child, and in attempting to maintain the familial relationship.

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Domestic violence remains a social problem across the EU Member States. Following the Treaty of Lisbon, the EU has adopted a series of measures which will affect women experiencing this form of intimate violence. This paper examines these measures to assess their potential benefits for women who experience domestic violence. Tackling domestic violence has been explicitly linked to the EU's mandate on gender equality, but measures have been adopted under a variety of competence bases and their impact may be limited by EU's supranational status and the private nature of domestic violence. However, the paper identifies opportunities for the EU in further enhancing the protection and support for women experiencing domestic violence, and contributing to the EU's wider aim of achieving gender equality.