Forms Of Child Labour Research Articles

Testing the human capital development model: the case of apprenticeships in Turkey

Human capital theory was developed to study how individual agents make rational choices or how they invest in human capital to maximize their welfare. One of the leading founders of this perspective, Becker, argues that schooling, on‐the‐job training, medical care, migration and searching for information about prices and incomes are different types of human capital as all these investments improve skills, knowledge or health, thereby increasing individual welfare. He states that education and training are the most important investments in human capital. Apprenticeship training is, thus, identified and treated as a type of investment in human capital. At first glance, it seems that apprentices who are being trained are acquiring skills in a specific vocation. One would suppose that the trainees are getting knowledge and skills and that they would become masters in their profession after a long training process. However, further enquiry is needed to see if this is the case in reality. The present small‐scale, exploratory study, based on 20 interviews – 10 with apprentices and 10 with their employers – aims to investigate the apprenticeship training system in Turkey. In doing so, it seeks to test the basic tenets of human capital theory against the facts discovered. The findings, if they could be generalized, suggest that the Turkish apprenticeship system is a form of child labour rather than a training process. Contrary to apprentice training being a human capital investment, the study finds that trainees do not rationally decide to enter an apprenticeship nor are they selected by a meritocratic system. All of them come from poor peasant families or low‐wage working families where the most pressing need is for the child to earn money.

Reading Lewis Hine's Photography of Child Street Labour, 1906–1918

Lewis Hine's child-labour photographs are among the best-known social-documentary photographs ever taken, yet historians have neglected his photography of children working on the streets of America's cities. This paper explores the disputed symbolism of Hine's street-labour photographs. Far from simply depicting another appalling form of child labour, Hine's child street labourers, and the newsboys he photographed in particular, represented a range of ideas from masculinity and entrepreneurial spirit to the dangers of the new urban life and the apparent ignorance of immigrant parents. The symbolic newsboy was often far removed from the reality of child street labour, but he became an important figure in discourse surrounding the nature of childhood and the organization of public space in the United States of the early twentieth century. In exploring these subjects, this article takes on a neglected part of American history, yet an important one. Studying child street labourers reveals much about children, their choices, and the urban environment in the United States during the Progressive Era.

Is child labor a barrier to school enrollment in low- and middle-income countries?

Achieving universal primary education is one of the Millennium Development Goals. In low- and middle-income developing countries (LMIC), child labor may be a barrier. Few multi-country, controlled studies of the relations between different kinds of child labor and schooling are available. This study employs 186,795 families with 7- to 14-year-old children in 30 LMIC to explore relations of children's work outside the home, family work, and household chores with school enrollment. Significant negative relations emerged between each form of child labor and school enrollment, but relations were more consistent for family work and household chores than work outside the home. All relations were moderated by country and sometimes by gender. These differentiated findings have nuanced policy implications.

La trata de personas en la modalidad de trabajo infantil

La trata de personas en la modalidad de trabajo infantil

Trade, Development and Child Labor: Regulation and Law in the Case of Child Labor in the Cocoa Industry

AbstractVoluntary private sector agreements are common as a tool to regulate industries including the enforcement of labor laws in domestic and overseas markets. Agreements cover many different industries, and they differ greatly in scope, implementation and monitoring. Challenging to enforce, they have often been criticized by consumer groups and have sometimes failed. This article examines one of the oldest and most prominent examples of a voluntary industry agreement in agriculture, the Harkin-Engel Protocol targeted at addressing the worst forms of child labor in the cocoa sectors of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. In 2006, the authors of this paper were first tasked by the U.S. Department of Labor to oversee the implementation of the Harkin-Engel Protocol on behalf of the U.S. Congress. They have since documented the Protocol’s implementation for more than eight years. This paper discusses the authors’ experience with private sector voluntary agreements for achieving social change in developing countries at the example of the Protocol. Special issues around the role of regulation and law within this process are our focus in this article.

Child Workers and Industrial Health in Britain, 1780–1850, by Peter Kirby

Child Workers and Industrial Health in Britain, 1780-1850, by Peter Kirby. People, Markets, Goods: Economies and Societies in History, Vol. 2. Woodbridge, Boydell Press, 2013. xii, 212 pp. 17.99 [pounds sterling] UK (paper). In this study Kirby seeks to dispel the myth that child workers in industrial occupations necessarily suffered worse health due to the nature of their work than did other child workers. He argues that this idea stemmed largely from the misleading and exaggerated claims of refonners in the 1830s factory debates and that it has not previously been the subject of rigorous research. As Kirby demonstrates, factory work was generally less intensive than other forms of child labour, such as agriculture, mining, and even domestic manufacture. This careful work revises a long-held stereotype. The book builds well on Kirby's other research on child labour. The author begins his study with an exploration of the wider environment of manufacturing, which was one characterized by massive population growth and rapid urbanization, with its associated problems of overcrowding, poor sanitation, poverty, and increased illness in and death of infants and children. Rising child dependency (with almost forty percent of the population aged under fifteen) was mirrored by increases in the supply of child labour and poorer children were put into work at early ages, particularly those who had lost a parent, a finding shared by other recent historians of child labour. The author then assesses the specific hazards of the factory system for child workers in terms of the risk of deformities, the effect of raw materials, industrial injuries, and ill-treatment. He then examines the relative impact of the wider manufacturing environment and the workplace setting upon the heights and strength of child workers, with Kirby giving greater weight to environment over occupational health. However, as Kirby expertly highlights, there are significant methodological problems in isolating occupational health from the wider epidemiological and environmental causes of sickness in this period, a relative dark age of information on morbidity and mortality, which is unfortunate given that this was a major period of occupational and epidemiological transitions. Kirby draws upon modern studies of occupational medicine and the health of child workers in developing economies in order to help him illuminate the difficult contemporary evidence. Stories of poor child health became integral to the Ten Hours Movement and white slavery. Most of the medical practitioners giving evidence to parliamentary select committees had little or no experience of the factory work they were commenting upon. The author concludes that the medical profession actually played no role in improving child industrial ill-health and may even have diverted attention away from it. …

Street hawking among in-school adolescents in a south-western town in Nigeria: pattern, determinants and effects on school performance

Street hawking is the commonest form of child labor in Nigeria. Although street hawking is very pervasive, there is the increasing need to fully understand its pattern and effects on those involved in hawking particularly adolescents who combine schooling with hawking. In Nigeria, data on the effects of street hawking on in-school adolescents are generally scanty. Therefore, the present study was undertaken in Ife Central Local Government Area (LGA) of Osun State, Nigeria to assess the pattern, determinants of street hawking among in-school adolescents and its effect on school performance. A cross-sectional study of 435 adolescents (aged 10-19) attending public secondary schools was done. Data were collected using facilitated self-administered questionnaires alongside a review of class records. Appropriate statistical analysis including multiple regression was done. Results showed mean age of respondents to be 14.6±2.1 years with prevalence of street hawking at 37.2%. Early adolescents (10-13 years) were more likely to engage in street hawking compared to their counterparts in late adolescence (aged 17-19). Female adolescents and students of trading mothers were significantly more likely to engage in street hawking. Respondents engaged in street hawking were significantly more likely to have failed the last academic term examination. The findings from this study will be useful for stakeholders as they develop policies and programmes to address the challenge of street hawking among adolescent school goers.

Reducing child labour in Panama: an impact evaluation

This article examines the impact of two specifically designed educational programmes aimed at reducing child labour among the indigenous population in Panama: a tutoring course (CEC) and an accelerated primary school/course (EPA). Based on a sample of 427 children belonging to 185 households, and using a post-intervention treatment and comparison group design, we find that the CEC programme decreased the probability of working (child labour) by 10.7 per cent and increased the probability of participating in an extracurricular activity by 23.5 per cent. Thus, the programme limited the possibility of CEC participants becoming involved in agricultural-related or other forms of child labour. Because results from the EPA programme are statistically insignificant, we are uncertain about the direct impact of EPAs on the overall goal of child labour reduction.

The social foundations of global production networks: towards a global political economy of child labour

The resilience of the problem of child labour in the global economy has been amply documented, but, we suggest, the reasons for this situation have not yet been fully captured in the associated debates. Our aim is to advance a way of thinking about those forms of child labour which occur in the context of global production networks (gpns), and to contend that greater attention must be paid to the organisation and functioning of gpns, and the social foundations on which they rest, if we are to grasp more fully the conditions and processes which facilitate the persistence and evolution of child labour. The way of thinking we propose is rooted in the concept of ‘adverse incorporation’ in the global economy, which we develop by drawing together currents in gpn analysis and poverty research to explore the commercial and social dynamics in gpns which give rise to these forms of labour exploitation. We illustrate our arguments with reference to the garments industry in New Delhi, India.

Bayer CropScience, India

The case is about Bayer, a multinational firm that finds itself facing stiff accusations in India and its home turf Germany when the acquisition of Indian seeds business leads it inadvertently to having the worst forms of child labour in its hybrid cotton seed production supply chain. A company with a strong brand identity and a clear human rights position that bans child labour in its own operations and does not tolerate it anywhere in its supply chain chooses to tackle the situation when exiting the business would have made a more convenient business decision. It designs a multifaceted programme the Bayer CropScience Child Care Programme with top level management commitment, a dedicated team and an independent budget. After striving for almost a decade with its implementation, the company achieves a practically zero child labour existent supply chain and a reputation of having turned around a difficult situation. The company now aspires to transform its successful Child Care Programme into a vehicle for delivering innovative solutions aimed at strengthening the rural economy and bringing about a socio-cultural change.

The Failure of the Minimum Age Convention to Eradicate Child Labour in Developing Countries, with Particular Reference to the Southern African Development Community

The Minimum Age Convention 138 of 1975 sets a general minimum employment age of 15 years. All work by children under this age is regarded as detrimental. Although developing countries may temporarily implement a lower age of 14 years (and 12 years for light work), many of these countries have adopted 15 years as the minimum age with no provision made for children to do light work, due to the complexity of the measures in Convention 138. In this article, the view is taken that the ILO's approach is not appropriate for developing countries. In terms of the culture of some of these countries, non-detrimental work by children is regarded as beneficial. Furthermore, children in these countries often have no choice but to work. However, the effect of the Minimum Age Convention is that child work below a certain age is not regulated and is even criminalized, with the effect that children are pushed into the worst forms of child labour. Although the worst forms of child labour should be eradicated with immediate effect, non-harmful work by children over the age of 12 years should be regulated rather than abolished. In spite of the fact that all countries in SADC have ratified the Minimum Age Convention, millions of children still work in the area, many of them involved in the worst forms of child labour. It is suggested that in order to protect children in SADC who have to work, a minimum age of 12 years for light work and a multilateral definition of light work should be adopted.

TRABALHO INFANTIL E ANÁLISE DO COMPORTAMENTO: UM ESTUDO DE CASO

O Grupo de Pesquisa sobre Trabalho Infantil (CERG) da Universidade de Paisley surgiu de uma revisão crítica de dois analistas do comportamento que notaram que, embora o trabalho infantil seja comum em todo o mundo, ele não tem sido objeto de muitos estudos psicológicos. Pesquisas do CERG demonstraram que a norma para jovens na Grã Bretanha é terem trabalho remunerado ainda em idade escolar. Foi também mostrado que trabalhar mais do que dez horas por semana está associado com desempenho escolar fraco. Membros do CERG argumentam que, embora seja compreensível a indignação moral por certas formas de trabalho infantil, esta pode ser contra produtiva se não for acompanhada por uma análise precisa dos problemas e das soluções propostas. CERG argumentou que a pesquisa sobre trabalho infantil pode ser melhor conduzida dentro do escopo de um Modelo Balanceado, que possibilita considerar lado a lado os custos e benefícios existentes.Palavras-chave: trabalho infantil, análise comportamental, crianças

Children's Work in Nigeria: Exploring the Implications of Gender, Urban–Rural Residence, and Household Socioeconomic Status

Child labor in developing countries continues to be a topic of policy and academic concern, particularly in Africa where there are more working children than in any other region. Scholarly attention has been drawn in part to gender, place of residence, and socioeconomic status as factors that shape the type of work that children perform and whether it impacts educational attainment. I explore these issues in the context of Nigeria through analysis of data from the 2004 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey EdData Survey. A series of logistic regression models of child labor confirm the existence of gender and, especially, socioeconomic disparities in children's work. The data also indicate that girls and rural children face a double risk of working if they belong to poor households. A policy implication is that poverty alleviation programs—such as Mexico's Oportunidades program (the erstwhile PRO-GRESA)—may help to reduce those forms of child labor that interfere with schooling. That this program has been found to more beneficial for girls suggests it may be particularly appropriate for Nigeria where gender disparities persist.

Conceptualizing child labour trafficking and exploitation: The case of Roma children in Montenegro

Trafficking of children for labour exploitation is a profit-oriented criminal activity by which children are recruited, transported, harboured or received for the purpose of labour exploitation irrespective of whether or not force, abduction, fraud or other means were used. This paper examines child labour trafficking in the context of human rights violations and as the worst form of child labour. In an attempt to situate the discourse of alleged labour exploitation and trafficking of Roma children in Montenegro, focusing in particular on instances of child begging, this paper offers an overview of the international legal framework as well as the Government of Montenegro?s policy framework relevant to this issue; an analysis of implicated historical, familial and cultural structures; and focuses on identifying root causes in terms of push-pull factors that are associated with enhancing children?s vulnerability and proneness to exploitation. Along with a set of recommendations, in closing, the paper calls for a more sophisticated analysis of child labour trafficking and, in the case of Roma children, a more nuanced understanding of historical and cultural pretexts against the backdrop of labour trafficking.

The Politics of Legitimacy: Humanitarianism vs. Materialist Interests in the Case of Child Labor Law in England

Although child labor has been nearly eradicated in rich countries, it remains pervasive in the developing world. Recent estimates indicate that 215 million children between the ages of 5 and 17 are working in some form of child labor. Of those children, 53% are engaged in work defined as hazardous, or “likely to harm [their] health, safety, and morals.” Given that children don’t vote or participate in politics, they have no political recourse to advocate for their own rights or interests. Aside from the obvious normative and welfare implications, child labor may have important consequences for economic development. Children who work sometimes do so at the expense of schooling. Given the proposed link between investment in human capital and economic growth and poverty alleviation, child work should be taken seriously as a potential bottleneck to development. To date, most academic work aimed at understanding child labor has been done by economists. Economists (unsurprisingly) attribute child labor patterns primarily to economic factors, and the link between child labor and poverty is fairly well-understood. However, comparatively little has been done to understand the politics of child labor. Activists and child welfare advocates frequently implicate the state, arguing that governments ought to do more to protect the interests of child workers. Without knowing more about the constraints and incentives of governments, however, it is difficult to understand the opportunities for and limitations of state action. Under what conditions do governments intervene on behalf of the rights of child workers? Child labor activists use ethical arguments about child welfare to advocate for state protection of child workers, but skeptics argue that these humanitarian ideas have little power in the face of economic interests in keeping cheap child labor available.The 1833 Factory Act is credited as the world’s first piece of child labor legislation with any enforcement clout. It was passed at the height of the Industrial Revolution, when child labor was cheap, readily available, and still being used widely in the textile industry, which was a major engine of growth in British economic development. Despite the fact that the legislation was bitterly opposed by the powerful industrial class, and despite the fact that members of the government had an economic interest in keeping their economy productive for the purpose of taxation and geopolitical competition, they nevertheless passed legislation that effectively imposed a tax on one of the industry’s key inputs, child labor. A simple model based on economic interests would not predict this outcome. What explains the introduction of laws against child labor at precisely a time when it made little economic sense to do so?This paper considers the following question: since the economic interests of powerful societal groups fail to account for the outcome of child labor law during the British Industrial Revolution, what explains it? Ultimately I consider the relative contribution of economic interests, political incentives, and ideational factors in the adoption of the 1833 Factory Act.The puzzle of child labor law has relevance for a larger theoretical question, of interest to those who study institutions as well as those with development or humanitarian goals: Under what conditions do humanitarian considerations (such as minority protection, human rights, or labor rights) get institutionalized into rules when they run contrary to materialist incentives of powerful societal groups? What is the power of ideas about rights in the face of materialist interests? Is discourse about humanitarianism merely rhetorical window-dressing for the unfolding of political and economic interests, or do ideational factors have real influence in protecting the rights of marginalized groups?This paper is a hypothesis-generating case study. It includes a detailed case history of the birth of child labor law in England. This paper does not make a systematic attempt to quantify its conclusions – I leave that to future work. The aim here is to present qualitative evidence from the first case of child labor law and situate it in political and historical context in order to elucidate why and how political elites legally restricted child labor during a period when the employment of children was contributing significantly to the productivity of a key British industry and was economically profitable to an increasingly powerful class of industrialists.

Child Labour in the Developed Countries

Without any doubt, the IPEC is considered as one of the most ambitious program of the ILO. The program’s main goal is to eliminate the worst forms of child labour at all until 2016. According to the public opinion child labour is deemed to be one of the Third World’s issues far away from the everyday life of developed countries. By contrast, this paper takes an attempt to show how the elimination of child labour is going on in the developed world.

Child Domestic Labor in Accra: Opportunity and Empowerment or Perpetuation of Gender Inequality?

GHANA STUDIES / Volume 14 ISSN 1536-5514 / E-ISSN 2333-7168© 2012 by the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System 163 CHILD DOMESTIC LABOR IN ACCRA: OPPORTUNITY AND EMPOWERMENT OR PERPETUATION OF GENDER INEQUALITY?1 PEACE MAMLE TETTEH Introduction Child labor is a relatively dynamic phenomenon, varying in its extent, nature , and effects in different countries or even within the same country over a period of time. As a result of this, the exact estimates, effects, and knowledge on measures to tackle child labor have proved rather elusive. One identified challenge in tackling of global child labor is the unavailability and/or paucity of current, comprehensive, and disaggregated data on the subject. This is not totally surprising because researching domestic labor is particularly challenging because of its “hidden,” “invisible,” and “inaccessible ” nature. The cultural notions of childhood and children’s work have produced attitudes and misconceptions that have acted as a hindrance to researching and tackling child (domestic) labor. A common attitude of recruiters, employers, and officials working on behalf of children is to deny that child domestic work is a form of child labor or employment at all; or to refuse to acknowledge that it is detrimental to the wellbeing of the children concerned. Thus, child domestic workers have become culturally accepted and are largely relied on in many households. Engaging children 1. I would like to thank the many child domestics I interviewed for this study and the anonymous reviewers and the editors of Ghana Studies for their comments. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the British Sociological Association (BSA) Youth Conference, University of Surrey, United Kingdom, in July 2010. 164 Ghana Studies • volume 14 • 2012 as domestics in a household is considered safe, indeed important for the child’s development and hence it is not stigmatized. This article on child domestic labor in Accra seeks to “(re)-search” the nature and realities of child domestic workers and contrast it with the notions and perceptions held about it. The article addresses four specific questions namely: Who are child domestic workers? What prospect does domestic work hold for children? What is the nexus between child domestic labor and gender inequality, discrimination, and female poverty? And, what policy measures are required to tackle the engagement of girls in domestic labor? Who Are Child Domestic Workers? The jury is still out on a specific definition of child labor and indeed of child domestic labor. What is considered domestic work varies from country to country. Whether children biologically or socially related to their employers can be considered domestic workers is still being debated. Thus, the definition given a child domestic worker reflects the way a household operates , considerations of a child’s role, and the way paid and unpaid work is defined (Hagemann et al. 2006). Definitions of who these children are have been made with regard to their age, relationship to their employers, the kinds of tasks they perform in the homes of their employers, and their remuneration (Hagemann et al. 2006). “Child labor” as used in this article refers to “all economic activities carried out by persons between the ages of five and seventeen which have the potential to interfere with their school work, i.e. depriving them of the opportunity to attend school, obliging them to leave school prematurely or requiring them to combine school attendance with excessively long hours of work (more than four hours a day) and heavy and strenuous workinjurious to their health or development” (Hilowitz et al. 2004: 16). The International Labor Organization considers “domestic labor” to be work done by children in the home of a third party or employer under Tetteh • Child Domestic Labor in Accra 165 exploitative conditions. Where exploitation is extreme, and the work is hazardous or conditions are akin to slavery, it is seen as the “worst” form of child labor. The position of children employed by third parties in non-­ exploitative conditions seems inconclusive. However, where a child “helps about the house” performing light tasks in his or her home, the work undertaken is not considered “labor” but viewed as part of the socialization process of children. In this regard, child domestic workers...

The Menace of Child Abuse in Nigeria: A Case Study of Street Hawking in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State

In Nigeria, children face the menace of abuse ranging from physical injuries, abandonment, sexual abuse to child labour. In fact, child abuse is becoming alarming in the country. Government's efforts to combat the problem have yielded little or no result. This study therefore, examines street hawking (a form of child labour) and its consequences on children in Uyo, a city in Nigeria. It also appraises recent intervention to the problem. The result showed that unemployment and poverty are the major causes of child hawking in the area. It recommended that punitive measures should be taken against children who engage in hawking as well as their parents.

Diagnosis of Severe Silicosis in Young Adults Working in Stone Polishing and Mining in Minas Gerais, Brazil

This study describes the occurrence of silicosis in a group of stone polishing and/or mining workers who began working under the age of 18, the minimum age in Brazil for working in hazardous or unhealthy conditions. The design is that of a case series with medical follow up via a surveillance program that included medical and occupational histories, chest radiography interpreted according to International Labour Organization (ILO) Classification, and spirometry. The findings call attention to the importance of the problem of silicosis, which persists in the region despite new production technologies, legal requirements, and initiatives to protect workers. Silicosis is a public health problem that must be addressed by the implementation of public policies to improve working conditions and ensure children and teenagers are kept away from hazardous work. While Brazil has started to be a part of the global effort to eliminate silicosis and the worst forms of child labor, there are still problems that must be addressed.

Les enfants dans les conflits armés : une analyse à l'aune des notions de vulnérabilité, de pauvreté et de “capabilités”

Cet article donne une vue d’ensemble des impacts des conflits armés sur les enfants, notamment en matière de recrutement et d'utilisation d'enfants dans les conflits. Face à l'ampleur du phénomène, différentes interventions sont actuellement apportées pour protéger ces enfants contre cette forme d’exploitation qualifiée par l’Organisation internationale du travail comme étant l’une des pires formes de travail des enfants. Ces interventions, qui font face à de nombreux défis, dans un monde où la nature des conflits change, portent sur les plans politique, juridique et judiciaire et sur le plan de la mise en place de programmes de réintégration.