Performing the Border of Child Labour: Roma Working Children

Summary

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The article explores the social, cultural and economical processes that lead Roma children into labour and their own interpretations of the value and risks of working. Based on qualitative research in several Roma communities in Romania the article analyses the different family strategies in coping with the economic difficulties of transition and the place of children in this process. The article is interested in the relationship between children and family, school and community and attempts to decipher what aspects in these relations encourage early entry into work. It argues that Roma children do occasional, poorly skilled, work that is relevant in their family economy, but invisible in and acceptable for broader society. Ultimately, the article argues that casting the situation of Roma working children in the framework of the child's right to work carries the risk of reproducing racial and class prejudices.

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Performing the Border of Child Labour: Roma Working Children

1. Conceptual puzzle

Child labour is notoriously difficult to define and (arguably) culturally bounded. It was discovered as a "social problem" in Victorian England and was regarded as an unquestionable matter of poverty or cultural backwardness, until recently, when children s relations with work became more significantly a matter of controversy.

There is, on the one hand, the legislative approach that tries to regulate children s involvement in work that is abusive, exploitative and potentially harmful for overall development and education. The International Labour Organization (ILO) formulated labour standards and conventions that stipulate the acceptable and unacceptable work according to children s age, workload, working hours and recreation time, (social and physical) environment, working rights, access to health and education.

ILO has developed categories to distinguish between different forms of work. Light work is defined as children's participation in economic activity that does not negatively affect their health, development or interfere with their education, and which can be positive. Child labour is defined as children below 12 years of age working in any economic sphere, those aged 12 to 14 who are engaged in harmful work, and all children engaged in the worst forms of child labour and the worst forms of child labour, which refers to children being enslaved, forcibly recruited, made to enter prostitution, trafficked, forced to do illegal activities and exposed to hazardous work (ILO 138/1973).

It is only recently that the more invisible, but no less damaging, situation of children (especially girls) undertaking domestic work, came to light. Several risks that have not previously been considered refer to physical and psychological burnout, accidents, (sexual) abuse and neglect of schooling. Children's work in agriculture also appears to be more hazardous than it used to be because of the increased exposure to chemicals and the global demand for cheap labour.

On the other hand, sociological and ethnographic research challenged the ILO position. The difference between work and labour, between harmful and non-harmful, between acceptable and unacceptable has become rather grey areas that attracted cultural dilemmas (White 1999; UNICEF 1997, cf. Liebel 2004: 195). It is argued that ILO policies were shaped by the Western model of childhood.

Whereas ILO generated a tendency to victimise working children, to protect, rescue and rehabilitate them from involvement in work that was criminalised, a new perspective has been given voice lately. First, an increasing number of children from the developing world ask for their right to work in decent conditions1 and challenge the ILO recommendations that appear to respond to a Western notion of childhood. Besides, many children from the developed world are also working: not for ensuring survival and without economic pressures (Liebel 2004; Morrow, cf. Mayall 1994). It is in these circumstances that children start entering the academic agenda as actors, able to understand and improve the conditions they are living in and to voice their own concerns.

In the final analysis, all the above approaches have their advantages and limitations. ILO classifications, although necessary in order to prioritise interventions, were charged for being too coarse and theoretically implausible (White 1996, 1999; James et al 1998; Liebel 2001, cf. Lieten 2004: 46). The agency-focused perspective, although put at its centre children's own views on work, may risk overlooking the harsh conditions and exploitatio...

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