Assisted child migration from Britain is a deeply controversial subject. “Rescue” societies sent over 100,000 children to the empire in less than a century in a movement riddled with class and racial assumptions. Migration to the Dominions supposedly solved labor problems in both Britain and the Dominions, and authorities hoped that “white” migrants to Africa would delay demands for independence (Langford, 2013). The effects of migration on the children, however, varied widely. Many left families behind; some societies allowed migrants to correspond with their kin, but others did all they could to sever family connections. Similarly, those who received migrants in Canada and Australia exhibited an array of behaviors; some exploited the children ruthlessly, while others adopted them as family. The issue of identity and power was also fraught, since the children's identities both supported and undermined hierarchies of empire. As “white” migrants, British children were part of the hegemonic racial structure, but they were also paupers and minors. In short, the complexities are seemingly endless (Bean and Melville, 1989; Parr, 1994; Sherington and Jeffery, 1998; Neff, 2000; Parker, 2010; Swain and Hillel, 2010; Boucher, 2014).

Unsurprisingly, historians have struggled to encompass the many ambiguities of youth migration. Early works (Bagnall, 1980; Bean and Melville, 1989; Humphreys, 1994; Parr, 1994; Gill, 1997) highlighted the harm done to the children, but later historians noted that reactions spread across a large spectrum. For instance, certain organizations were more diligent about after-care than others (Langfield, 2004, 2013). Individuals also sometimes experienced their migration as positive—gaining control over their own fates, achieving upward mobility, or finding personal happiness. Migration was part of a structure of dominance over the poor, yet it offered the opportunity to reconstitute identity, as part of the ruling race for example, or as independent workers (Howard and Leonard, 1999). Furthermore, recent works have shown gender and race distinctions. Boys, after all, were the most common migrants, since girls’ ability to have children made it dangerous to send them abroad (Chaudhuri, 1998; Diamond, 1999). Boys’ migration interacted both with the hope to build proper masculinity in male youths and a desire to support “whiteness” in the empire (Parker, 2010; Swain and Hillel, 2010; Boucher, 2014).