This book focuses on the question of how the Swiss state administered and governed families, parents, and their children through the measure of child placement. It reconstructs child placement processes that occurred between 1960 and 1980 in the cantons of Bern and Ticino. Based on a qualitative analysis of 170 placement processes, the nuances, and ambivalences of state intervention in families are explored. The multi-perspective study combines archival research with insights from interviews with persons who were placed in a home or foster family during their childhood and adolescence. The triangulation of these different methods and data reveals how complex and multi-layered placement processes were.

This book is included in DOAB.