Between Abandonment and Captation. « Mixed Bank » Adoption in Quebec Nowadays, child welfare state authorities can organize the adoption of children in foster care who are in need of more stability. However, a child cannot be declared free for adoption without being first re-defined by clinicians as being an abandoned child. In Quebec, the pre-adoptive Mixt Bank program has created a liminal time-space where this reconfiguration is accomplished. It extends the sovereignty of the State over the traditional legal barriers protecting the permanency of legal kinship ties. What is at stake here is the capacity to strategically merge adoption planning with the basic child welfare mission of family preservation. Without the merging of these two divergent aims, Mixed Bank interventions could simply function as a capture device enabling the child welfare system to free children for adoption.