Structural violence in intercountry adoption to the Netherlands: Dutch adoptees from Sri Lanka and their search for belonging

In recent years, there has been a reckoning about the narrative of rescue that long accompanied intercountry adoptions, most prominently in the Netherlands where the government acknowledged its role in widespread and endemic systemic abuse following an investigation and imposed a permanent ban on the practice. Against this backdrop, this research seeks to understand the lived experiences of Dutch adoptees from Sri Lanka, focusing on how they engage with the knowledge of abuse, the emotional and identity impacts of their search for origins, and their perceptions of justice. Through qualitative interviews, review of archival research, and a broad socio-historical analysis, this paper uses the lens of coloniality of power to argue that colonial legacies of racial hierarchies and unequal resource distribution are embedded in intercountry adoptions and the Dutch society which manifest as structural violence in the lives of adoptees. The research underscores the profound impact and limits placed on adoptees’ experiences of belonging and justice under such structures and raises questions about the difficulty of addressing such injustices in the face of colonial amnesia in Dutch society and its insistence on innocence.