Injustice, relational violence, and the foster system

Abstract Political theorists have not paid sustained attention to the foster system or treated it as a political institution. Despite this, scholars and social movement advocates have identified the system as a site of social and political injustice. This paper develops an account of racial, class, and relational injustice in the contemporary US foster system and provides an ethical framework for evaluating moral harms to intimate relationships. I propose the novel ethical concept of relational violence, which I suggest occurs when an external force damages an intimate bond by substantially disrupting an intimate relationship. Relational violence is generally wrong, and we have moral reasons to avoid it. But in the foster system, poverty, housing insecurity, and racial prejudice can lead to unnecessary relational violence through child removals. The foster system, then, emerges as an unjust institution that can compound the existing harms of racial and economic inequality with painful relational injustices.