The endurance of coloniality and the embodiment of structural violence in intercountry adoption: Sri Lankan adoptees in The Netherlands search for belonging

In recent years, the long-standing narrative of rescue that justified transnational movement of children from the Global South to the Global North through intercountry adoptions has come under greater scholarly scrutiny. This reckoning is especially noted in Western Europe, where several countries have been made to acknowledge systemic abuse and state complicity. Using the Netherlands as a case study, this article examines how adoptees from Sri Lanka grapple with public debates, the emotional and identity-related impacts they have on their search for origins and perceptions and expectations of justice. Drawing on qualitative interviews, existing archival research, and socio-historical analysis, this study applies coloniality of power and structural violence to trace the roots of intercountry adoption to racial hierarchies, global inequalities, and structural violence of the racial-capitalist economic order. The main findings underscore how adoptees’ experiences of belonging and justice are constrained by enduring colonial amnesia and Dutch insistence on innocence.