‘You have hands, make use of them!’ Child labour in Artisanal and Small‐scale Mining in Tanzania

Abstract

This paper examines child labour in artisanal mining through ethnographic research in Tanzania. The poverty hypothesis argues that households send children to work to bolster household income. The sociocultural approach suggests that child mining offers valuable vocational training. This paper builds on a growing literature that complicates these approaches' straightforward claims by illustrating how household fragmentation is generated through the encounter of traditional cultural practices with mining's culture of consumption. This encounter exacerbates household fragmentation, which in turn increases child poverty and labour. These findings suggest that policy interventions should also address these mediating factors rather than poverty per se. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

How do Climate Change and Environmental Degradation contribute to Violence against Children?

“…There is a vast body of literature on child labour in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) and quarries, highlighting how the negative impacts of mining and quarries on socioeconomic conditions outweigh any positive impact, in addition to the severe negative effects on the environment and climate (Gatsinzi & Hilson, 2022;Hilson, 2008Hilson, , 2009Landrigan et al, 2022;Potter & Lupilya, 2016;Sovacool, 2021). Research covering quarrying activities in Kenya found that apart from land degradation, vegetation loss and dust pollution, quarrying also led to an increase in child labour in the area, school dropout, and broader health problems in the population (Opondo et al, 2023).…”

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“…ASM has also been associated with a series of negative social impacts in the literature including crime (Hentschel et al, 2002;Hilson, 2002;Buxton, 2013;Zvarivadza & Nhleko, 2018), neglect of human rights (Hentschel et al, 2003), child labour (Potter & Lupilya, 2016;O'Driscoll, 2017) and gender discrimination (Armah et al, 2016;Blair et al, 2017).…”

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