Child workers

This chapter summarizes what is known about children’s work in global history. It provides a critical history of interventions and policy debates on children’s work, starting with the ILO’s first child labour Convention of 1919. It considers working children as subjects, actors and citizens, with attention to organized movements of working children, aspects that are largely ignored in policy discourse. Economic development and universal compulsory education have put an end to full-time child employment in many countries, but they have not removed children from the world of work or from labour markets. In many modern capitalist societies the majority of children have had experience of regular involvement in labour markets before leaving school. The concluding section offers closing reflections, drawing out some paradoxical dimensions of the current global child labour régime that opposes working children’s campaigns, excludes them from policy deliberations, and does not recognize their rights as workers.