Drawing on empirical research completed in Belgium, this article presents a comparative analysis of the care regimes for two categories of children: transnational adoptees and unaccompanied minors. Although state immigration policies consider the two groups of minors as humanitarian exceptions that require preferential treatment, the kind of humanitarian help and social investment they are believed to deserve differs dramatically. Ideologies of relational exclusivity and fixed belonging differently structure the investment of care that the two groups are believed to need, dependent on their ability to be read as freestanding, cultureless individuals, assimilable to the host nation.