Legal consciousness and experiences of minority parents with court cases on children in the Netherlands

Abstract Court cases on children can be particularly intense and sometimes intrusive encounters with the state for the families involved. This article focusses on the experiences of minority families with court cases on their children in the Netherlands. I analyse how parents from religious, cultural or ethnic minorities experience and understand court cases on their children, view their position vis-à-vis state actors and how the experiences of family members with state actors such as child protection workers inform their legal consciousness and (lack of) trust in the state. I show how parents and other family members can have different, sometimes even opposing views of the different state actors and institutions they interact with. This article contributes to current debates in studies of legal consciousness and anthropology of the state on the state as a collection of institutions rather than a single actor by demonstrating how the involvement of different state actors can create space for families to act strategically.