Guest editorial
Article Type: Guest editorial From: International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Volume 29, Issue 3/4.
Whether a complementary or antagonistic relationship exists between childhood and work continues to provoke heated debate. This partly emanates from the increasing recognition that childhood is socially and culturally constructed. The recognition that childhood differs over time and place makes it difficult to formulate universal claims regarding what a typical childhood should entail. Yet contemporary dominant discourses around children's “right to a proper childhood”, apart from reflecting an ongoing ethnocentric bias, continue to position children as non-economic beings living childhoods characterised by play and separated from the world of work, which is regarded ideally as an exclusive adult domain. This view prevails despite a wealth of empirical evidence which demonstrates that work remains a fundamental part of childhood in societies located north and south of the equator. This special issue brings together eight wide-ranging articles that collectively demonstrate the fallacy of ignoring the ongoing importance of work in children's everyday lives. The varying positions adopted by the authors are quite heterogeneous reflecting contentious arguments around positive and negative aspects of children's working lives.
In the first paper, Bourdillon et al. set the scene by discussing the core international policy framework that continues to fuel debates regarding whether or not children should work. In particular, the authors discuss the relevance of the ILOs Convention 138 which continues to portray the work that children do, largely in a negative light. Part of the problem with this approach is the failure of the ILO to specify in sufficient detail how work is being defined. This ambiguity encourages a position whereby all work is labelled as potentially harmful and in the process its possible beneficial features are less acknowledged. The authors argue that Convention 182, which aims to identify and eradicate the most harmful forms of employment, appears on the surface as a major breakthrough but because of the ILOs overarching abolitionist goal, there is an ongoing failure to concede that work might be a positive and beneficial feature of children's daily lives. This is despite a wealth of historical,economic, anthropological, sociological and psychological evidence that calls into question the supposedly inherent harmful features of children's work activities broadly defined. Moreover, the authors highlight a number of problematic features associated with policies that revolve around blanket prohibitions. They suggest that in practice such policies are likely to drive child labour underground, making abuses more difficult to detect. The authors also call into question the legality of Convention 138 and suggest that it sits uncomfortably alongside the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights which advocates the individual's right to work without introducing conditions based on age.
On the other hand, the second article in the collection, by Gamlin and Pastor present a partial defence of Convention 138. Drawing on two case studies from Mexico and Brazil, the authors outline a number of local and national policy frameworks which they argue resulted in a decline in child labour in both countries. The authors offer, as a model to other countries, a number of recommendations put together by a Working Group on the Eradication of Child Labour which they chaired in March 2006. Interestingly, their first recommendation advocates incorporating Convention 138 along with Convention 182 into national policy. While the authors review a range of studies which critically question the extent to which child work is inherently harmful,nonetheless they acknowledge that because some forms undoubtedly are, long term strategies aimed at eradication remain necessary. In contrast to Bourdillon et al., Gamlin and Pastor suggest using a rights-based approach to implement the abolition of child work whereas Bourdillon et al., suggest that such an approach could itself constitute a serious violation of children's human rights.
The next two articles focus on the subjective experiences of working children themselves. Approaching children's work from a subject-orientated perspective repositions children as active actors capable of articulating what work means to them. For some readers, Montgomery's chapter may make uncomfortable reading. She provocatively asks whether the activities that children engage in as prostitutes can be considered as a form of work. More nuanced understandings of prostitution have led to the re-labelling of women's (and men's) activities in this sphere from the value-laden term prostitute to sex worker. Seeing the practice as a form of economic behaviour has enabled some women (and men) to campaign for workers' rights and improve their bargaining position within this sphere. While various exploitative features remain, this perspective recognises that for some,engagement employs a voluntary element. However, can such an analysis be extended to children? Is prostitution for children a form of work or a form of abuse? Given children's additional dependent location with respect to adults in most societies, can participation ever be considered voluntary or as Montgomery puts it, can or should the concept of agency be applied to children who work in this area? Montgomery suggests that even the term “child prostitute” is inadequate for some commentators as it implies a sense of even limited decision making on the part of the child,hence often the term “prostituted children” is used instead. How do children who sell sex see the practice? Montgomery's case study located in a small slum community in Thailand sets out to illuminate answers to this question. The children's perceptions of their involvement in selling sex were contradictory. On the one hand, they refused to see the activity as a form of work, yet in their discussions located the practice in relation to the limited opportunities open to them to earn income and in some cases highlighted selling sex as preferable to other types of income generating activities such as begging, street selling, scavenging and working in factories. Children repositioned their involvement in sex work as a way of fulfilling family obligations and hence demonstrating their roles as dutiful children meeting filial responsibilities. The men they performed services for, became reclassified as “friends” rather than clients and the children's attempts to apply community values based on reciprocal obligations enabled them to achieve a level of moral satisfaction in an activity often considered as immoral. Yet, in illuminating children's views on this topic, Montgomery recognises that she could be regarded as coming uncomfortably close to excusing the practice, a position she detaches herself from. Rather, her aim is to pose difficult questions about how to deal with this issue. She supports the inclusion of prostitution in the ILOs classification as an example of the Worst Forms of Child Labour but questions the practicalities of implementing an outright ban. Unless alternative forms of income generating activities are provided for children and unless the ILO engages more with local realities,Montgomery implies that its efforts to eradicate this form of activity are likely to be piecemeal.
The need to include children's explanations of their work activities is further developed by Berlan who brings together media accounts of child labour and official research reports and asks to what extent are children's voices heard in this literature. Her empirical research calls into question UK-based media accounts of child workers in the cocoa industry in Ghana which portray such work as akin to slave labour. She focuses on two core stories which indicate that much media based reporting was based on “desk research”in London rather than on rigorous empirical research with child workers. Official reports fared little better and Berlan outlines the somewhat ludicrous methodology employed by international agencies to find out about the incidence of child labour in four countries, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, Ghana and Nigeria. The “top-down” agenda imposed by these agencies along with their failure to acknowledge the fallacy of simply lumping “developing”countries together as if they can be considered as one homogeneous mass,resulted in the almost total exclusion of actual working children and as a result their voices were largely silenced by the methodological framework used. By contrast, Berlan presents a rich account of child workers own perceptions and experiences of working in the Cocoa industry. Her qualitative research focus challenges the taken-for-granted assumptions embedded in the rationale put forward to justify the ILO's Convention No. 138 on Minimum Age and Convention No. 182 on Worse Forms of Child Labour. She points out the problems associated with employing a simplistic age-related definition and using this to justify a subsequent ban by showing that in the village in Ghana, where her research was based, many children had no form of birth registration and as a result, only 31 per cent knew their actual ages. She challenges the dominant presentation of child work as interfering with education by incorporating children's voices into this dichotomy. 77 per cent of children preferred combining school and work rather than being restricted to one or other sphere. Unlike other areas, for the most part, the parents of the children in this specific setting did not depend on the economic value of child labour but saw their children's participation in terms of instilling values positively endorsed by the wider community, such as being productive and hard-working. Hence, child labour was seen as a socialising mechanism encouraging behaviour that would be beneficial to children in their adult lives within the community. As a result, many children were proud of their work and showed off their work skills. While children admitted that the work at times was hard, for the most part they did not perceive themselves as victims but instead viewed their work activities as demonstrating that they were not lazy, a quality widely endorsed by the wider community.
DeGraff et al.'s article further demonstrates the fallacy of treating children as individuals rather than as members of households/families. The authors argue that most existing quantitative analyses of children's work activities fail to adequately explore how children's and parents' work activities might be related. They argue that while qualitative accounts of children's work have produced nuanced understandings of the depth and complexities of children's work in a variety of social settings, policy makers remain overwhelmingly influenced by large scale quantitative research. Yet the capacity of quantitative data to highlight potential relationships between children's work and that of their parents remains under-developed. To address this neglect the authors draw on large scale survey data from Brazil in order to examine the extent to which children's work might be part of an overall family strategy rather than an individual pursuit. Their analysis revealed a positive relationship between children's employment status and mothers' employment status. The more women are employed outside the household, the more likely it is that their children are working outside the household as well. This relationship was particularly strong for younger compared to older children, for girls compared to boys and for rural rather than urban children. Their in-depth analysis produced a number of other positive associations relating to number of hours worked; employment status and location of employment. In each case,mothers' and children's work patterns were strongly interlinked. This suggests that policy responses to the prevalence of child labour which extract children from their households and treat them as independent units are unlikely to deal adequately with the overall issue.
The final three chapters turn the attention to Europe and North America and remind us that in richer “northern” countries, many children also work albeit often for different reasons and under different circumstances. This is reflected in the article by Cunnien et al. who remind us of the need to place work in its cultural context. They suggest that the “western”and one could argue in particular, the “American” concept of self places a high value on personal self-efficacy. Their paper subsequently evaluates the extent to which work during high school influences adolescents'self-image. Since adolescence is considered as a crucial stage for the formation of a stable identity, the authors argue that positive work experiences may play a beneficial role in other aspects of their everyday lives. Using the notion of“spill-over”, they suggest that positive experiences of work have a knock-on effect in other non-economic domains including the family, community participation and personal health. Two particularly beneficial work experiences are highlighted, namely, having a steady job and experiencing helpful supervisory support. Supervisors emerged as significant role models,exemplifying positive qualities of confidence in their ability to successfully complete work related tasks and influencing young workers' perceptions of their own work related abilities. Adolescents in steady employment had higher feelings of self-confidence than occasional or sporadic workers. By focusing on the“spill-over” effects of adolescent employment, the authors move the debate in this area beyond narrow perceptions of the impact of work on schooling to one which explores the impact of work on other domains of young workers'lives.
Hobbs et al. turn the focus to child workers in Britain and present a more negative view of working children by addressing the extent to which working children experience accidents at work. They use a three-fold methodology employing questionnaires, interviews and a Job Risk Card Sort in order to move beyond documenting the number of children experiencing accidents to providing a detailed examination of their perception of risk in the workplace. These varying methodologies provided different results. For example, children tended to under-report accidents in questionnaire surveys compared to interviews. The authors explain this discrepancy by discussing how children perceive the term“accident” and suggest that where children see themselves as partly responsible, they are less likely to report the incident in terms of experiencing an accident. Their research also found a statistically significant relationship between those children who held a low perception of risk and the possibility of subsequently experiencing an accident at work. The authors conclude that for the most part children remain ignorant about their working rights and about employers' obligations to provide a safe working environment including providing effective training that raises awareness of potential risks and how to deal with them. The authors advocate training aimed at school-aged workers. However, it remains unclear where this training would be carried out. Since the authors outline the tendency for children to be an invisible work force and indeed suggest that the majority of children work without necessary work permits, then work based training is unlikely to reach its audience. The authors remind us of the need to acknowledge the presence of working children in the first place. Enhancing their visibility in the workplace and recognising that many children combine work with schooling is a first step towards formulating policies which help challenge and dilute the potential negative aspects associated with children's participation in the labour market.
Finally, Liebel's paper presents an interesting angle on the debate concerning the compatibility between school and work. Work and education are commonly presented as mutually exclusive spheres and dominant discourses position children engaging in one activity to the detriment of the other,usually articulated around the notion that work prevents children from attending school. Yet, as in many other European countries, many German school children work outside school hours. While their participation is viewed with varying levels of disapproval, Liebel places these debates alongside the efforts of the German educational system to bring the world of employment and associated capitalist values to school. This is achieved through the creation of pupils'firms or mini-companies which aim to inculcate entrepreneurship among participating pupils through creating school based businesses. The first strategy from an educationalist/human capital position is rather instrumental and argues for the need for more relevant education. The second lies with children's apparent dissatisfaction with schooling and cites their participation in work outside school as evidence for their need for more than what the education system is able to offer. This need is not just one related to earning income but to gaining appropriate work related skills. Yet the experience provided by pupils' firms is far removed from the everyday reality of the tough,cut-throat business world. Pupils' firms ignore how the wider distribution of power in society provides avenues into business and ensures success in business. Rather the notion of entrepreneurship as an individually acquired trait is propagated. Moreover, pupils' firms are largely supervised by adults and there is an inherent mistrust of pupils' ability to independently acquire business related skills. This coupled with the ongoing neglect of pupils' actual work experiences outside school prohibits the capacity of pupils' firms to actively bridge the ongoing disjuncture between the world of school and the world of work. Perhaps a greater recognition of the work that children actually do outside school and the skills that children accumulate through working would enable the educational system to reinforce the skills learned at work and make links between education and work more meaningful.
Collectively, the papers reflect the diversity of working children's lives and call into question many taken-for-granted assumptions regarding the work that children do. They highlight on-going problems with terminology around defining what types of activities count as work. The authors suggest that many of the assumptions about childhood which underlie international conventions such as the ILOs Convention 138 and 182 and the UNCRC need to be deconstructed. Incorporating children's own perceptions of the work they do, adds a further layer of complexity to the debate, as children may attach meanings to their economic activities in ways that so far, do not reflect common adult-instigated positions. Taken as a whole, the authors raise more questions than provide answers. Their analyses imply that we still do not have sufficient understanding of how many children work, why they work; their experiences of work and how they perceive the varying aspects of what they do, including the moral obligations many children hold towards their families and communities. This is not just a question of obtaining children's views on their working lives but of feeding their evaluations of concepts and issues into the international arena so that better policies are formulated, based on children's informed understandings of the issues at stake, along with ongoing recognition of the wider structural factors which impact on children's decisions. It is hoped that this special collection will fuel further exploration of this heated topic by highlighting some of the core themes that remain insufficiently addressed.
Madeline LeonardGuest Editor
