Biopolitiques et Empire britannique

Abstract

At the end of the 1990s, Australia’s imperial past and legacy resurfaced through two investigations, into the forced migration of British children after the Second World War and into the kidnappings of Aboriginal children in Australia itself — which often led to the institutionalisation of both groups. These movements are here analysed as late examples of the biopolitics of the imperial State and of the private institutions to which some of its powers were delegated. At the other end of the ‘transaction’, the Australian State, as the extension of the British State and the beneficiary of these policies, was equally involved. Admittedly, these policies did not have the same influence on the two groups of children nor on the group they came from. Yet they had comparable effects on individuals and analysing the forced redistribution of population in the long term is essential to the understanding of imperial legacies.