Practices of state‐mandated forced child removal in Australia have historically served to govern minority cultural groups. Despite an overarching imperative to prevent harm to children, contemporary systems of child welfare continue to impose forms of governance, particularly in regard to resettled refugees. This article focuses on the experiences of women who have been resettled in Australia as refugees from Africa, and who have, upon their resettlement, had their children forcibly removed from their care as a result of concerns over child protection. Examining how forms of governmentality are embedded within these interventions but legitimated by assumptions of benevolence, I show how the child welfare system can impose forms of pastoral power on resettled refugees, in which “care” for children is concentrated within institutions of government authority and, subsequently, oriented through state agendas. I argue that the state mandate of child protection combines governmentality and pastoral power to produce what I term benevolent cruelty, in which the imperative to protect children complicates and contradicts the refuge that is provided to resettled refugees.
