Care experience and deportation: Exploring interactions between child protection, criminal justice and migration control

This paper explores the interactions between three government systems of ‘care and control’ – child protection, criminal justice and border protection. Strikingly, these systems target racialised populations for interventions that are experienced as (mostly) punitive. Through qualitative case studies drawn from a sample of mandatory visa cancellation cases in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, I explore how non-citizens with experience of Out-of-Home Care (OOHC) withstand the convergence of criminal and immigration law, known as ‘crimmigration’. I argue that care experience contours crimmigration for those entangled within these systems in three significant ways. First, the ‘flow on’ effects of the criminalisation of those with care experience has unique consequences for non-citizens, bringing them into the purview of s501 of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth), and the possibility of discretionary or mandatory visa cancellation. Second, non-citizens in child protection who face insecure visa status are prevented from accessing certain health supports ordinarily available to citizens, which enhances their vulnerability. Third, government failures to act as a ‘parent’ to secure the visa status of non-citizens in child protection denies them protection from deportation. This article shows how non-citizens with care experience face heightened exposure to crimmigration and deportation.