The project analyses global policy trends concerning children without parental care. The focus is on the policy of childcare deinstitutionalization (DI), which aims to move children from residential institutional care to family-based environment. The project has two parts. In the first part, I will study which countries become early or late DI policy adopters. I will collect data on DI national policies for 193 countries during 1989-2019, and analyse the effect of different factors (such as economic development, political system, ties to international NGOs, etc) on the time of policy adoption. In the second part, I will study a contrasting trend – transnational support of orphanages by transnational faith-based organizations. I will collect global data about such NGOs, the geography and nature of their operations. I will then interview 30 of these NGOs, in order to better understand how they are related to each other, national governments, and international policy communities.

2021

2026