Despite decades of academic, social and political emphasis on the agency of children, childhood itself continues to be constructed as an apolitical space. Children are encouraged to flex their social agency but still considered unable to wield political agency. Yet globally we find children within politically contested arenas such as environmentalism and gun control. Locally we see children affecting change in their neighbourhoods and calling for change across a variety of diverse issues. This chapter explores the experiences of children at the centre of a socially and politically contested family construct, one formed by intercountry and transracial adoption. Using empirical data I explore how girls adopted from China by English families face ongoing questioning about their familial status, their birth country and family. The lack of biological and racial belonging to their adoptive families makes their ‘belonging otherness’ visible. When very young it is the adoptive parents who respond to the recurring curiosity which emerges from the social gaze. As the girls get older, however, they are increasingly required to address the challenges made to their adoptive belonging and to defend their presence in both family and country. It is these girls who confront and contest the discursive narratives which continue to position them as othered and where their right to belong remains open to recurring scrutiny. In the chapter I argue that these adoptive girls demonstrate political agency as they respond to such questions which carry discursive undercurrents of racism, immigration and biological privilege.