Paper short abstract:

The forced removal of children from Central African refugee women resettled in Australia through child protection interventions confronts them with an extra-ordinary circumstance of existential death.

Paper long abstract:

For Central African women who have endured years of protracted exile in refugee camps across Africa, resettlement to Australia is described by them as being akin to a miracle. Yet, even within the conditions of safety and security that resettlement to Australia brings, there are circumstances that can confront women with previously incomprehensible experiences of violence. The forced removal of children at the mandate of the Australian state due to interventions of child protection is one such circumstance. For the women I conducted fieldwork with who had their children removed from their care in Australia, this severing of maternal relatedness leaves them with an absent sense of existential purpose. The forcible rupturing of their existence as a mother leaves these women physically alive, but existentially 'dead'. Pushed to this unexpected and extra-ordinary threshold of existence, these women live a paradox through which the violences that have emerged in their contemporary life in Australia eclipse their previous experiences of insecurity as refugees in protracted exile.