“Best interests of the child” is a key concept in international law, developed by and through institutions which maintain a stake in international solidarity. This article explores the quality of that solidarity, working to understand the modes of interrelationship between peoples and institutions which it instantiates, and which it could possibly be imagined to instantiate. Focusing on one context—the way that “best interests of the child” has developed within international politics and domestic Australian politics, through an examination of the discourses produced by policy-makers working within child refugee and asylum-seeker realms—this article examines the ways that this concept has relied on, and produced, racialized hierarchical ideas of what “best interests” entails. Looking through a history of Australian settler-colonial governmentality, this article explores the tensions between discourses of security and discourses of “best interests of the child,” historicizing the figure of the refugee child and reimagining the relationships of dependency and solidarity which could be produced.

“儿童的最大利益”是国际法中的一个关键概念，由维护国际团结利益的机构制定并通过这些机构制定。本文探讨了这种团结的质量，努力了解它所实例化的以及可能被想象实例化的人民与机构之间的相互关系模式。关注一个背景——“儿童的最大利益”在国际政治和澳大利亚国内政治中的发展方式，通过对在儿童难民和寻求庇护者领域工作的政策制定者所产生的话语的考察——本文考察了这个概念依赖并产生了种族化的“最佳利益”所包含的等级观念的方式。纵观澳大利亚殖民统治的历史，