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Rethinking Child Labor in an Age of Capitalist Restructuring

Child labor is hardly a new issue, but it is one that has grown in scale and infamy during the latest phase of international capitalist expansion. As corporate strategies for profit have shifted toward ever-cheaper sources of labor worldwide, only international conventions against slavery and labor/concentration camps stand in the path of the logical trajectory. The international scope of child labor is underscored by the cases at hand: unemployed teenagers in Papua New Guinea, vineyard workers in South Africa, street children activists in Haiti, rural migrant union activists in Thailand, and sex trade workers in the USA. In this setting, the expanded use of child labor is symptomatic of worldwide deterioration of workers' rights and immiserization of working class communities. Corporate immunity from local consequences of moving offshore, diminishing state intervention in ameliorating conditions of work, and dwindling compensation packages contribute to the displacement of adult workers. No one is arguing that child labor is desirable, although work-study arrangements have helped working class students in a range of contemporary welfare states complete their higher education. But debates in international agencies such as the United Nations center on outlawing child labor, not on the well-being of these children and their kin when access to work is removed. The rush among liberal politicians to ban child labor is suspect. Veterans of women's rights campaigns will understand that legal bans do not address social, economic, and political conditions creating the familial and community pressure placed on someone to work. Far more important would be regulations that ensure benefits (living wages, medical and pension rights, unionization) for workers in those industries regardless of age, or liabilities placed on mobile capital to enforce responsibility to abandoned working communities. The articles in this issue consider a range of issues in child labor. What sets of circumstances shape who becomes seen as a child? What changing configuration of social forces creates ‘acceptable’ levels and expectations of child labor? What dimensions of worker exploitation are unique to being defined as either categorically dependent or as categorically a child? Where does respect for children's own agency fit into workers' rights and human