Child labour in the global South: A review and critical commentary

This paper analyzes some of the current debates on child labour in the context of the global South. It explores the ways in which ideologies of childhood – how society constructs what children should do in terms of work and how childhood ought to be – sharpen the debates over what I identify as three approaches of child labour: a) discourses on work-free childhoods; b) socio-cultural perspectives on work; and c) the political economy of child labour. By highlighting aspects of children’s work that are underrepresented in the academic literature, as well as international policy circles, the paper suggests a ‘holistic’ approach to child labour. In doing so, it draws analytical attention to shifting forms and relations of children’s work, children’s differentiated perspectives about their working lives, and the importance of grounding their work in complex material social practices of interconnected histories and geographies in which children’s livelihoods continue to unfold.