Common solutions to the ‘problem’ of child labour pursue narrow, punitive policies. They either boycott products made by children, or remove children from work that is considered exploitative or that interferes with schooling. The International Labour Organisation, even though it once supported efforts to regulate children’s work, now encourages these sorts of strategies. It is firmly in favour of the complete abolition of child work and is currently spearheading a global initiative to eliminate all forms of child labour by 2025.
Yet abolition policy, which is based on an idealised conception of childhood as exclusively a time of play and learning, misses out on societal contexts and the structural reasons why children work. It is wilfully blind to how work can improve children’s lives, and thus struggles to resonate in the local contexts where child labour-related interventions usually take place.
I would argue that, rather than seeking to impose an ideal by force on far from ideal circumstances, international efforts to improve working children’s lives should instead focus on the political-economic forces and structural inequalities that produce childhood poverty. I give some strategies on how to do this below. Decision makers would stand a chance of enhancing working children’s wellbeing if they chose to follow them, but if they insist on continuing their present course they are likely to accomplish little more than punishing the people they’re claiming to protect.
