Rights and Wrongs of Children's Work

by Bourdillon, Michael; Levison, Deborah; Myers, William; White, Ben

• ISBN13: 9780813548890
• ISBN10: 0813548896
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-12-01
• Publisher: Rutgers Univ Pr

Summary

Rights and Wrongs of ChildrenÂ's Work, authored by an interdisciplinary team of experts, incorporates recent theoretical advances and experiences to explore the place of labor in childrenÂ's lives and development. This groundbreaking book considers international policies governing childrenÂ's work and the complexity of assessing the various effects of their work. The authors question current child labor policies and interventions, which, even though pursued with the best intentions, too often fail to protect children against harm or promote their access to education and other opportunities for decent futures. They argue for the need to re-think the assumptions that underlie current policies on the basis of empirical evidence, and they recommend new approaches to advance working childrenÂ's well-being and guarantee their human rights. Rights and Wrongs of ChildrenÂ's Workcondemns the exploitation and abuse of child workers and supports the right of all children to the best quality, free education that society can afford. At the same time, the authors recognize the value, and sometimes the necessity, of work in growing up, and the reality that a Â"worklessÂ" childhood, without responsibilities, is not good preparation for adult life in any environment.

Author Biography

Michael Bourdillon is a professor emeritus in the department of sociology at the University of Zimbabwe. He has studied working children regionally and internationally, and is the author and editor of several books including Earning a Life: Working Children in Zimbabwe. Deborah Levison, an economist and demographer, is a professor at the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. Much of her Research focuses on third world children's work and schooling in the context of the household. William Myers, an educator who addressed child work with UNICEF and the ILO, is an associate in the department of human and community development at the University of California, Davis. He is the coauthor of What Works for Working Children. Ben White is a professor of rural sociology at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, and a professor in social sciences at the University of Amsterdam. His books and edited volumes include Child Labour: Policy Options.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xvii
List of Figures and Tables	p. xix
List of Acronyms	p. xxi
Raising Questions, Questioning the Answers	p. 1
ôWhen I was fired, I cried for two weeksö: How Intervention Went Wrong in Morocco's Garment Industry	p. 1
Whose Interests?	p. 6
Ways of Thinking	p. 8
Children's Rights	p. 13
Knowledge, Understanding, and Information	p. 17
Work That Children Do	p. 22
What Is Children's Work?	p. 24
What Children Say about Why They Work	p. 35
Concluding Comment	p. 38
Children's Work in Historical and Comparative Perspective	p. 40
Child Labor and the Industrial Revolution in Britain around the Nineteenth Century	p. 40
Child Work, Education, and Interventions in Asia and Africa: Examples from Indonesia and Zimbabwe	p. 49
Children, Work, and Education in Communist Revolutions and Post-Communist Transitions	p. 55
International Standards and Trends in Interventions	p. 58
Child Work and Poverty: A Tangled Relationship	p. 66
What Is Poverty?	p. 67
Defining and Measuring Labor-Force Work	p. 68
Many Poor Children Do Not Work for Pay	p. 69
Labor Supply and Labor Demand	p. 69
General Patterns	p. 71
Children's Earnings: How Much, and Who Gets Them?	p. 78
Are Children Working Instead of Adults, or Undermining Adult Wages?	p. 80
Conditional Cash Transfers as Compensation for School Enrollment	p. 82
Is Child Work a Cultural Phenomenon Rather Than an Economic Necessity?	p. 83
The Effects of Child Work on Poverty Dynamics: How Learning Matters	p. 84
Does Poverty Cause Child Work?	p. 86
Work in Children's Development	p. 88
Framing the Issue	p. 90
The Idea of Human ôDevelopmentö in Social Science	p. 93
Concluding Observations	p. 105
Education, School, and Work	p. 108
ôEarn-and-Learnö: Tea Estates in Zimbabwe	p. 109
Children's Perceptions	p. 111
The Right to Education	p. 113
School as Work	p. 115
Problems with Schools	p. 116
Can School Mix with Work?	p. 118
Combining Labor-Force Work with School	p. 127
Learning through Work	p. 129
Conclusion	p. 132
Children Acting for Themselves	p. 133
Agency of Children	p. 134
Street Children	p. 135
Independent Migration	p. 138
Organizations of Working Children	p. 142
Child Participation in Making Decisions	p. 148
Assessing Harm against Benefits	p. 155
Child Domestic Work: Pros and Cons	p. 156
A Continuum of Harm and Benefit	p. 161
Intolerable Forms and Conditions of Work	p. 162
Assessing Hazardous Work	p. 167
Weighing Harm against Benefits	p. 174
A Note on Exploitation	p. 174
What Does This Mean in Practice?	p. 178
The Politics of International Intervention	p. 180
The Case of Child Garment Workers in Bangladesh: Tragedy or Scandal?	p. 181
Stitching Footballs in Sialkot	p. 190
What Should Be Learned from These Experiences?	p. 192
Promoting and Protecting the Interests of Children Who Work: A Case in Egypt	p. 194
Concluding Thoughts	p. 200
Policies and Interventions: What Should They Achieve, and How?	p. 203
Starting Points	p. 204
Principles	p. 208
Practice	p. 211
Notes	p. 219
References	p. 229
Index	p. 255
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