‘Speaking Out’ About Child Labor: Normative Entrenchment in an Uncertain Regime

Abstract

Child labor is a highly contentious issue, especially in the Global South. It is not clear whether the best interests of children and young people are always protected by setting a minimum age for entry into the labor force. The EU and the ILO insist that a rights-based approach to the governance of child labor requires taking them out of work; but EU policies in support of its strong stand on this issue are undermined by a lack of leverage and by challenges from the Global South. These challenges include a reluctance to take ILO policies on child labor seriously in some middle income countries and, in others, a view that leadership of the campaign to eradicate child labor should come from within the Global South. This chapter considers EU responses in this uncertain climate and the significance of its normative entrenchment for EU leadership in the field of global human rights.