Wandering off the Road to the End of Child Labor

Abstract

In conventional development discourse, western concern for overworked children follows a root/branch mapping: the 'root cause' of child labor is seen as poverty, and child labor, in turn, becomes a cause of economic vulnerability and 'lost childhood'. Such analysis fails to consider the ways in which children's subjectivities and practical work have already been shaped by neoliberal discourses. This article contributes to an emerging critique of conventional western notions of childhood in relation to global capitalist development by re-visiting the category of child labor, through a Deleuzian lens. The analysis will employ images of working children and policy texts to explore the ways in which they territorialize the working child. In particular, the author draws upon the metaphor of the rhizome and notions of becoming, in an effort to open an alternative cartography of children's work, exploring what work the category of child labor does in international policy discourse and what's at stake in its unsettling.

Child poverty in rich contexts: The example of Sweden

“…Work is also portrayed as something undesirable to the child (cf. Miller, 2013), and possibly the result of parental wishes, as the narrative is set in a family context, in which the child is sacrificing himself for the good of the family. In capitalist societies, legally banning children from work and postponing children’s exchange-value as labourers were necessary to secure not only the prosperity of a family or company, but also the fate of the state, as well as the well-being of society as a whole.…”

“…The film shows a deserted, gravel football field and some high-rise apartment buildings in the background, and parental or adult involvement is not depicted in the film. In discourse, children generating an income are often viewed as ‘objects of pity’ and ‘an emotive depiction of childhood gone wrong’ (Miller, 2013: 339). The Western, middle-class fantasy is one of a ‘work-free childhood’, focusing on education in preparation for children’s future role as economically productive adults (Miller, 2013).…”

“…In discourse, children generating an income are often viewed as ‘objects of pity’ and ‘an emotive depiction of childhood gone wrong’ (Miller, 2013: 339). The Western, middle-class fantasy is one of a ‘work-free childhood’, focusing on education in preparation for children’s future role as economically productive adults (Miller, 2013). This childhood builds on a logic of human development, in which child labour, including collecting deposit cans, becomes a problem because it limits the child’s future productivity as an adult worker.…”

“…Liberal Western ideas of subjectivity privilege a subject that is a universally free, autonomous, rational and choice-making individual. Child labour therefore becomes a kind of social pathology, damaging the human capital, whereby the possibility that children might find hope and pleasure in working is overlooked (Miller, 2013). This means that children’s work is diminished, denied and criminalised (Nieuwenhuys, 2007).…”

“…Working children are understood to have lost their childhood, ceased to be child-like, and becoming deviants in need of saving. Child labour, and for that matter child poverty, can never be understood apart from the unequal power relations and skewed material distribution central to liberal capitalism (Miller, 2013). The ‘politics of pity’ locates the problem of child labour in children’s bodies rather than with the organisation of society (Miller, 2013), and the same can be said of child poverty.…”