Child labour implications for adults: experiences and childhood

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze child labour implications for adults who experienced that process when they were children or adolescents. To this end, we used as tool the Historical-Cultural Psychology approach. Five adults who were child labourers participated of this research. Their children were enrolled or egressed to the Program for the Eradication of Child Labour -PETI, and access to these participants occurred by means of the Reference Center for Social Support -CRAS. The saturation criterion (Minayo, 2008) was applied to delimit the number of participants. Open-interviews with life story elements were used as instruments. Data analysis was carried out through the trees of association of ideas (Spink, 2004). As a result, participants reported that early labour broughtmplications for schooling and health, in addition to losing childhood, and also brought difficulties to obtain employment in the current life.Keywords: early labour; child labour; implications; experiences. RESUMOO objetivo deste artigo é analisar as implicações do trabalho precoce para adultos que vivenciaram essa experiência quando crianças e adolescentes. Para tal, utilizou-se como ferramenta a perspectiva da Psicologia histórico-cultural. Participaram desta pesquisa cinco adultos que foram trabalhadores precoces, cujos filhos estavam inseridos ou eram egressos do Programa de Erradicação do Trabalho Infantil -PETI -, e o acesso aos participantes ocorreu a partir do Centro de Referência da Assistência Social -CRAS. Utilizou-se do critério de saturação (Minayo, 2008) para delimitar o número de participantes. Como instrumento, utilizou-se da entrevista aberta com elementos da história de vida. A análise dos dados foi realizada através das árvores de associação de ideias (Spink, 2004). Como resultados, os participantes apresentaram em seu discurso que o trabalho precoce trouxe implicações para a escolaridade e saúde, além da perda da infância, e trouxe dificuldades para a obtenção de emprego na vida atual. Palavras-chave: trabalho precoce; trabalho infantil; implicações; vivências.The purpose of this paper is to analyze child labour implications for adults who experienced that process when they were children or adolescents. To this end, we will make use of the participants' discourse about this topic by means of elements derived from a Master's dissertation research.The literature has pointed out that early labour results in a number of implications for children and adolescents. Due to family economic needs, many children and adolescents are supposed to abandon school in order to work or even take care of housework so adults get free to work outside the home (Paone, 2007;Tabatabai, 2007;Tavares, 2002).Although in Brazil the school-grade/age distortion is generalized, overall, children and adolescents labourers are found to present higher distortion rates than those that do not work (Haas, 2003; Kassouf, 2004Kassouf, , 2007Schwartzman, 2004). Studies based on the National System for Assessing Basic Education (SAEB) concluded tha...