Vulnerability has been a guiding narrative to state interventions towards children and their families in New Zealand. This article shows how this progressive notion has been systematically managed to fit pre-established political and policy priorities. These processes have emphasised: (i) categorisations of risk to those who demonstrate vulnerabilities; (ii) pre-emptive, multi-agency involvement in the lives of those deemed potentially ‘vulnerable’; and (iii) a responsibilising expectation that children and families will avoid vulnerable situations and comply with interventions. This individualising logic of vulnerability has solidified policy interventions towards Māori, and re-emphasised colonial practices of viewing Māori children and young people as deficit-laden risks to be managed. With a late 2017 change in government, the political dalliance with vulnerability appears to be in decline. A new progressive policy discourse – of child ‘well-being’ and ‘best interests’ – is being engaged. Yet, the emphasis on risk, and its corresponding elements of pre-emption and responsibility, persist. These discursive and institutional arrangements will ensure that Māori remain perilously entrenched in welfare and justice systems.

The number of victims from environmental harm far exceeds that from everyday property and interpersonal crime, yet little is known about the experience of environmental victimisation. This paper makes a case for a narrative green victimology to advance scholarship about environmental victims, drawing on data from interviews with persons affected by a waterborne outbreak of campylobacter in the small town of Havelock North, New Zealand, in August 2016. Findings demonstrate that understandings of environmental harm are developed in narratives, with narratives. In particular, participants’ stories of harm and victimisation revealed fragments of larger, cultural narratives about sacrifice, nation-building, motherhood, and environmental purity, each of which affected their understanding of the impact of the outbreak on their autonomy as agentive persons. It is proposed that a narrative green victimology offers environmental victimology a platform upon which it can foot its frameworks.

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