Empire's Children

Boucher, Ellen

doi:10.1017/cbo9781139649582

Cited by 46 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…2 The exact number of child migrants is difficult to ascertain. Boucher (2014) and Harper and Constantine (2010: 248) estimate that from 1869 until the late 1960s roughly 95 000 children were permanently relocated in the settler dominions and colonies. A higher number, 130 000, is often quoted in newspaper articles, which is also the estimate the Child Migrants Trust, a registered charity addressing the effects of British child migration, refers to.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…5 The research thus explores how the migrants' experiences of their past are formed and recounted in relation to official or institutional historical narratives-or rather, the lack thereof. While similar schemes had previously been established in Australia and Canada (Boucher 2014;Harper and Constantine 2010), the Rhodesian project differed significantly from those projects. The white-ruled Rhodesian government pursued to battle what they considered a 'demographic imbalance' and a source of racial vulnerability by strongly encouraging the immigration of the 'right kind' of white migrants.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Revising and Re-voicing a Silenced Past

Uusihakala¹

2019

Suomen Antropologi

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Focusing on Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s apology to British child migrants in 2010, this article proposes that public apology, as a moral and political act, is a compelling site for examining attempts to redefine and redress previously silenced pasts. Postwar child migration has been something of a silenced chapter in British history. In my research I examine one such child migration scheme, namely a project which sent select British children (aged 4 to 13) to colonial Southern Rhodesia—today’s Zimbabwe—between 1946 and 1962. Through this case, I discuss two intertwined aspects of the transformative intentions of apologizing. First, the apology aims at amending the relationship between the apologizer and the victims and at remodeling the recipients’ political subjectivities. Second, the apology discloses distinct, but contradictory, understandings about the relationship between past, present, and future. It emphasizes the continuous effects the past has in the present, but simultaneously purports to create a temporal break with the past, marked by a moral transformation of the state. However, although the apology aspires and has potential to give voice to those previously silenced and to re-articulate a more legitimate version of the past, its framing eliminates the broader historical context of the Empire. Thus, while partially overcoming silences, the article suggests, the apology also reproduces and reinforces others.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Revising and Re-voicing a Silenced Past

Uusihakala¹

2019

Suomen Antropologi

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“…A third aspect of the culture underpinning this work was a trans-national Catholic imaginary in which different Catholic bodies were experienced by their members as broadly sharing a collective identity and mission. Whilst British child migration schemes have often been understood in terms of policies of Empire and Commonwealth settlement, 86 the Irish-diasporan leadership of many Catholic organisations in Australia had little sympathy with the project of building up a greater Britain. 87 Catholic child migration operated as a system of managing the human and material resources of the transnational body of Christ, just as the British Government had originally understood child migration to Australia in terms of the management of the human and material resources of the Empire.…”

Section: The Religious Legitimation Of Catholic Child Migrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Catholic Child Migration Schemes from the United Kingdom to Australia: Systemic Failures and Religious Legitimation

Lynch¹

2020

Journal of Religious History

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Between 1938 and 1956, an estimated 1,147 children were sent from the United Kingdom to Australia through child migration initiatives delivered by Catholic organisations. Whilst experiences of child migrants varied, there has been a growing public recognition over the past thirty years of the trauma experienced by many. Although the suffering of child migrants occurred in the context of wider policy failures, this article argues that there was a particular pattern of systemic failures characteristic of these Catholic schemes. After providing an overview of the complex organisational structure through which Catholic child migration operated, the article identifies six systemic failures in this work relating both to organisational processes and the institutional conditions to which child migrants were sent. It goes on to argue that these occurred in a framework of religious legitimation which emphasised the unique role of the church as a mediator of salvation, the need to safeguard children's faith, the child as a member of a corporate body more than as an individual and the relative moral authority of the church over secular institutions. Within this framework, these systemic failures were either unrecognised or seen as tolerable in the context of wider organisational and theological priorities.

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“…For some parents, placement of a child in an institution with the prospect of emigration was of potential value in providing for a child that could not otherwise be maintained. 65 However, the usually permanent breach in familial relationships made emigration an important form of disposal for charities where the parental influence was regarded as detrimental to the child. Moral authority was eventually reinforced by the legal authority to retain children from their parents' control, and was asserted over the child's welfare when the child was deemed an orphan, neglected or deserted by their parents.…”

Section: Undermining Poor Parental Influencementioning

confidence: 99%

Who Cares? Welfare and Consent to Child Emigration from England to Canada, 1870–1918

2019

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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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Empire's Children

Cited by 46 publications

References 5 publications

Revising and Re-voicing a Silenced Past

Revising and Re-voicing a Silenced Past

Catholic Child Migration Schemes from the United Kingdom to Australia: Systemic Failures and Religious Legitimation

Who Cares? Welfare and Consent to Child Emigration from England to Canada, 1870–1918

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