Details the possibilities and challenges of intergenerational activism and social movements Since 1976, the Peruvian movement of working children has fought to redefine age-based roles in society, including defending children’s right to work. In The Kids Are in Charge, Jessica K. Taft gives us an inside look at this groundbreaking, intergenerational social movement, showing that kids can—and should be—respected as equal partners in economic, social, and political life. Through participant observation, Taft explores how the movement has redefined relationships between kids and adults; how they put these ideas into practice within their organizations; and how they advocate for them in larger society. Ultimately, she encourages us to question the widely accepted beliefs that children should not work or participate in politics. The Kids Are in Charge is a provocative invitation to re-imagine childhood, power, and politics.
This book shows how children's work can take on widely differing forms; and how it can both harm and benefit children. Differing in approach from most other work in the field, it endeavours to understand working children from their own perspective.
Collecting the diverse perspectives of scholars, labor organizers, and human-rights advocates, Accountability across Borders is the first edited collection that connects studies of immigrant integration in host countries to accounts of transnational migrant advocacy efforts, including case studies from the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Covering the role of federal, state, and local governments in both countries of origin and destinations, as well as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), these essays range from reflections on labor solidarity among members of the United Food and Commercial Workers in Toronto to explorations of indigenous students from the Maya diaspora living in San Francisco. Case studies in Mexico also discuss the enforcement of the citizenship rights of Mexican American children and the struggle to affirm the human rights of Central American migrants in transit. As policies regarding immigration, citizenship, and enforcement are reaching a flashpoint in North America, this volume provides key insights into the new dynamics of migrant civil society as well as the scope and limitations of directives from governmental agencies.
Examining beggars' organized migration networks, as well as the degree to which children can express agency and fulfill personal ambitions through begging, Swanson argues that Calhuasí, Equador's beggars are capable of canny engagement with the forces of change.
What would a body of literature, focusing on Southern childhoods, look like when epistemologically driven by the demands (social, cultural, economic, political) of the localities in which they are shaped and produced? To answer this question, this book explores locally driven perspectives of childhoods in diverse contexts in the Global South to produce knowledge of Southern childhoods determined, not by Northern priorities and frameworks, but by local needs and contexts. Given the intensification of global processes and the extent to which the local and the global intersect in the everyday lives of children and their families, this edited volume demonstrates that a focus on the epistemological demands of localities necessarily grapples with global as well as local processes and concepts. Chapters in this collection include empirical research on child participation and activism, schooling/educational experiences, child work and street children. They use methodologies ranging from arts-based methods to participant observation, and engage with theories relating to child participation, agency and vulnerability to produce a key resource on Southern childhoods. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Third World Thematics.
This comprehensive study offers a thematic approach to Latin America, focusing on the dynamic connections between people, places, and environments rather than on pre-defined notions about the region. The book’s well-rounded and accessible analysis includes discussions of borders and migration; transnationalism and globalization; urbanization and the material, environmental and social landscapes of cities; and the connections between economic development and political change. The authors also explore social and cultural themes such as the illegal drug trade, tourism, children, and cinema. Offering a nuanced and clear perspective, this book will be a valuable resource for all those interested in the politics, economy, and society of a rapidly globalizing continent. Contributions by: Fernando J. Bosco, J. Christopher Brown, James Craine, Altha J. Cravey, Giorgio Hadi Curti, James Hayes, Edward L. Jackiewicz, Thomas Klak, Mirek Lipinski, Regan M. Maas, Araceli Masterson-Algar, Kent Mathewson, Sarah A. Moore, Linda Quiquivix, Zia Salim, Kate Swanson, and Benjamin Timms.
"The World of Child Labor" details both the current and historical state of child labor in each region of the world, focusing on its causes, consequences, and cures. Child labor remains a problem of immense social and economic proportions throughout the developing world, and there is a global movement underway to do away with it. Volume editor Hugh D. Hindman has assembled an international team of leading child labor scholars, researchers, policy-makers, and activists to provide a comprehensive reference with over 220 essays. This volume first provides a current global snapshot with overview essays on the dimensions of the problem and those institutions and organizations combating child labor. Thereafter the organization of the work is regional, covering developed, developing, and less developed regions of the world.The reference goes around the globe to document the contemporary and historical state of child labor within each major region (Africa, Latin and South America, North America, Europe, Middle East, Asia, and Oceania) including country-level accounts for nearly half of the world's nations. Country-level essays for more developed nations include historical material in addition to current issues in child labor. All country-level essays address specific facets of child labor problems, such as industries and occupations in which children commonly work, the national child welfare policy, occupational safety regulations, educational system, and laws, and often highlight significant initiatives against child labor.Current statistical data accompany most country-level essays that include ratifications to UN and ILO conventions, the Human Development Index, human capital indicators, economic indicators, and national child labor surveys conducted by the Statistical Information and Monitoring Program on Child Labor. "The World of Child Labor" is designed to be a self-contained, comprehensive reference for high school, college, and professional researchers. Maps, photos, figures, tables, references, and index are included.
Grounded in extensive interviews, longitudinal methods, historical analysis, and archival work, Mikaela Luttrell-Rowland shows how two distinct groups of working young people in Lima, Peru have become political protagonists, resisting and critiquing the daily inequality and injustice they face. She details the ways these young people interpret and address a range of issues affecting their lives—from environmental degradation to second-rate public facilities, gender-based violence to dangerous working conditions—and reveals a range of ways they make sense of their systematic marginalization and their own labor, and in doing so, how they navigate everyday state violence. By attending to the affect, longing, and desires that animate these young people's politics, Luttrell-Rowland conveys the meaning of their lives and work in an economy that invokes their subjectivity and rights while rendering them non-participatory subjects. Though the lives of young people are often imagined as far from politics, these "political children" expose the contradictions of public policy narratives in which the Peruvian state is cast as a neutral site for engagement and action. Through their criticism and activism, the young people in this book demonstrate that such narratives divorce state power from the very places in which it is experienced as structural violence.
