Not-Quite-Friendship: exploring social relations between child domestic workers and the children of employing families

Are Child Domestic Workers Worse Off than Their Peers? Comparing Children in Domestic Work, Child Marriage, and Kinship Care with Biological Children of Household Heads: Evidence from Zimbabwe

“…While studies have examined differences between CDWs and neighbourhood controls [ 25 , 40 , 49 ], it is unclear whether CDWs and controls are in the same or different households. Quantitative analysis which compares conditions and outcomes of CDWs and biological children in the same household would enable an analysis of how CDWs and biological children are treated differently [ 21 ]. For other children, we do not know what proportion of non-relative close family friends are known to the child—therefore, we cannot be definitive in assertions that these children are in kinship care.…”

“…It is also unclear how differential treatment of children in households affects wellbeing outcomes. A rare example is a qualitative study in Tanzania that compared experiences and wellbeing of CDWs with employers’ children (i.e., directly related sons and daughters) [ 21 ]. CDWs experienced emotional and material benefits from good relations with biologically related employers’ children, which included resisting adult control over their mobility.…”

Children’s geographies I: Decoloniality

“…It is this notion to deem children’s transformational powers primarily within the picture of collective societal progress that markedly differentiates decolonial understandings of childhood from their Western counterparts. It is also one area where the current geographical literature can provide perhaps the widest range of empirical and conceptual examples, involving the contexts of schooling and learning (Jirata, 2022; Nxumalo and Cedillo, 2017), street livelihoods (Aufseeser, 2020; Beazley, 2016; Van Blerk et al, 2017), orphanage and care institutions (Miller and Beazley, 2022; Uptin and Hartung, 2023), domestic work (Blagbrough, 2023; Olayiwola, 2021), unaccompanied migration journeys (Adefehinti and Arts, 2019), peace-making (Woon, 2017), and family economies (Khan, 2022; Phiri, 2016). The range of examples listed here illustrates the children’s capacities to change their lives and worlds while highlighting the utmost relevance of collective presence and relationality for such transformations.…”