Child Mobility as Household Risk Management

Abstract

This article argues that child mobility plays an important role in the risk management strategies of poor households in West Africa. Applying a framework for social risk management developed by Holzmann and Jorgensen in 2000, the article classifies different types of child mobility into three groups: prevention strategies, mitigation strategies, and strategies to cope with risks and shocks. Within each category, child mobility responds to particular types of risks and shocks. Framing child mobility as social risk management has three main purposes. First, the framework can be helpful in communicating African realities to an audience accustomed to a Western-style public welfare system. Second, by communicating children's issues to influential international agents in a language they can relate to. Third, focusing on the social risk management/social protection functions of child mobility suggests changing the focus of policy interventions away from the legal and even poverty-reduction approach, and towards a compensatory public social protection policy that may help replace the currently strategic role of child mobility in the social risk management schemes of vulnerable households.