Nation, culture, and identity in transnational child welfare practices: Reflection on history to understand the present

Abstract This paper examines two sets of transnational child welfare practices connecting Canada and China: Christian missionaries’ work with children in China and contemporary transnational adoptions, highlighting the problematizations of culture and identity in each situation. The purpose is to bring critical consciousness to issues related to transnational child welfare practices that have been obscured or taken as self-evident. I draw on historical research to discuss three ways in which ideas and practices related to culture and identity in contemporary transnational adoptions reveal the making of the Canadian nation and its racialized and Eurocentric order. Social work responding to transnational challenges and possibilities cannot be separated from hegemonic social and political projects of nation-building. However, we may be able to rework assumptions about the nation and its order, to repurpose its programs, and to contest its subjectivizing power.