Fears of Child Protective Services in a Disadvantaged Migrant Group: Linking Stigma, the Interaction Order, and Structural Forces

Parents from stigmatized and disadvantaged migrant groups often fear losing their children to Child Protective Services (CPS). Based on ethnography with Norwegian Somalis, this paper examines how such fears arise. We work abductively from a specific puzzle, which is that the fear of losing children to CPS is widespread among Norwegian Somali parents despite the fact that their children are not disproportionately removed from their homes. In developing an explanatory model, we found that the fears connect intimately to stigma , both collective ethnoracial stigma (Goffman's “tribal stigma”), and a more individual (and intra‐group) stigma of failed parenthood (“blemishes of individual character”). Vis à vis the recent structural critiques of Goffman's Stigma , we show the value of zeroing in on interaction order processes . CPS fears arise through the following dynamic: Because of collective stigma and adversities, Somalis seek the own, where bonding social capital is helpful. For the same reason, children become a “totemic lifeline.” In tight‐knit social networks, child removal stories proliferate and yield pervasive CPS fears. These stories serve ritual purposes: deference, moral support, solidarity, and restoration of self. Child removal stories, and silence about “softer” forms of CPS engagement, also relate to management of the individual (intra‐group) stigma of failed parenthood. While these processes belong to the interaction order, the approach that we propose only temporarily brackets structure. Such a move, we argue, sets us in a better position to, in the next turn, theorize how institutional/structural forces influence local stigma processes.