Abstract
“Best interests of the child” is a key concept in international law, developed by and through institutions which maintain a stake in international solidarity. This article explores the quality of that solidarity, working to understand the modes of interrelationship between peoples and institutions which it instantiates, and which it could possibly be imagined to instantiate. Focusing on one context—the way that “best interests of the child” has developed within international politics and domestic Australian politics, through an examination of the discourses produced by policy-makers working within child refugee and asylum-seeker realms—this article examines the ways that this concept has relied on, and produced, racialized hierarchical ideas of what “best interests” entails. Looking through a history of Australian settler-colonial governmentality, this article explores the tensions between discourses of security and discourses of “best interests of the child,” historicizing the figure of the refugee child and reimagining the relationships of dependency and solidarity which could be produced.
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Notes
The closest is Section 4AA, article 1: In the Migration Act, section 4AA asserts the “principle that a minor shall only be detained as a measure of last resort.” See Migration Act 1958 (Cth) – Sect 4AA. Available at https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2019C00289.
As defined by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, “The Stolen Generations are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who, when they were children, were taken away from their families and communities as the result of past government policies. Children were removed by governments, churches, and welfare bodies to be brought up in institutions, fostered out or adopted by white families.” (See AIATSIS (2015)).
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank those who participated in the research interviews cited in this article for their time, generosity and insight. I am grateful for their willingness to be part of this project: my research would have been impossible without them. I also wish to thank Mary Tomsic for many conversations that helped me develop my thinking, and Jodie Boyd and Savitri Taylor for the invitation to participate in this special issue.
Funding
This research was funded by the Australian Research Council LF 140100049, “Child Refugees and Australian Internationalism: 1920 to the Present.”
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Silverstein, J. “Best Interests of the Child”, Australian Refugee Policy, and the (Im)possibilities of International Solidarity. Hum Rights Rev 22, 389–405 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-020-00588-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-020-00588-9