Paper short abstract:

This paper examines a colonial child migration scheme under which British impoverished boys and girls were sent to Southern Rhodesia to become permanent settlers. It focuses on how questions of class, race and education figure in the process of selecting suitable children who could be molded into ideal colonial citizens.

Paper long abstract:

The Rhodesia Fairbridge Memorial College was established in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1946 where it ran until 1962 as a boarding school for British child emigrants who were permanently resettled to Rhodesia. The aim of the College was to offer impoverished boys and girls of "solid British stock" a good education, and to increase "the strength and numerical superiority of the British element in Africa" as the Fairbridge Society's publicity brochure declares. What was crucial for the success of the scheme was choosing the right kind of a child migrant. In this paper I discuss the project of crafting an ideal colonial citizen by means of selecting suitable children to be brought up to strengthen and uphold the Empire. Whereas similar child emigration programs had previously been established in Australia and Canada, in Southern Rhodesia the requirements for the right kind of a child appear to have been much stricter. The children needed to have a reasonably solid family background and to be of sound physical and mental health in order to be suitable for training into managerial positions. Conversely, the wrong kind of a child would be susceptible to the close proximity and influence of the African majority and thus vulnerable to slippage when it came to upholding the racial boundaries of the colonial society. Through this case I will discuss and analyze how the questions of class, race and education within the British imperial endeavor are epitomized in the figure of the uprooted and re-placed child.