Working Children’s Movements
In the late 1970s, children working in Latin America united for the first time to form social movements. Since the 1990s, associations of working children and youth have emerged in Africa and parts of Asia. Together they fight for better working conditions, respect and participation. Since their first international meeting in Kundapur (India) in 1996, working children and youth from Africa, Asia and Latin America have networked several times as a worldwide movement to gain more influence on international policies too often promoting a blanket ban on child labour. Instead, the movement demands a right for children and youth to work in dignity.
How do they organise themselves, where do they network and what have they achieved so far? The following publications offer a critical insight into the history and present of the movements of working children and youth as well as their embeddedness in social, political and societal structures.
This list is compiled by ProNATs, a non-profit organisation that promotes the rights of children, in particular working children, worldwide. We maintain an informative website in German, English, Spanish and French on working children and their movements: https://pronats.org
Resources
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The Stakes of Children’s Participation in Africa. The African Movement of Working Children and Youth (2007)
Coly, Hamidou. & Fabrizio Terenzio, in B. Hungerland, M. Liebel & B. Milne (Eds.). Working to Be Someone. Child Focused Research with Working Children. London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley, pp. 179-185, 2007.
Presentation of the process of the African movement and the importance of participatory pedagogy and involved adults.
Full book available as paperback from the publishers.
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Paradigma del Protagonismo (2010)
Cussiánovich, Alejandro, Lima: INFANT, 2010.
The basic elements of ‘protagonismo infantil’ explained in their historical context.
Available in Spanish online (open access).
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Working Children’s Movements
Van Daalen, Edward, in The SAGE Encyclopedia on Children and Childhood Studies. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, pp. 1676-1679, 2020.
Short presentation of the most important goals and working methods of the movements of working children in the Global South.
Available via institutional access or from the publishers.
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‘Children’s Free Association and the Collective Exercise of Their Rights (2017)
Kimiagar, Bjan & Roger Hart, in M. D. Ruck, M. Peterson-Badali & M. Freeman (Eds.). Handbook of Children’s Rights. New York & London: Routledge, pp. 498-514, 2017.
Continuation of the participation model developed by Hart 1992 in its significance for children's self-organisation including concrete examples.
Available via institutional access or from the publishers.
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The Fluctuations of Child Worker Support: A Study of Female Domestic Workers in Senegal (2011)
Lavan, Daniel & Richard Maclure, In M. Denov, R. Maclure & K. Campbell (Eds.). Children’s Rights and International Development. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.241-267, 2011.
Critical analysis of contradictions between the self-organisation of working children and youth and their dependence on NGOs.
Available via institutional access or from the publishers.
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La Otra Infancia. Niñez Trabajadora y Acción Social (2000)
Liebel, Manfred, Lima: Ifejant, 2000.
Essays on the history of action of the movements of working children and its pedagogical implications (in Spanish).
Available online (open access).
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Working children as social subjects: The contribution of working children's organizations to social transformation (2003)
Liebel, Manfred, in Childhood, 10(3), pp. 265-85, 2003.
Reflections on the political impact history of the organizations of working children in the Global South.
Available via institutional access or from the publishers.
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A Will of Their Own. Cross-cultural perspectives on working children (2004)
Liebel, Manfred, London & New York: Zed Books, 2004.
Examining the work of children in different regions of the world with a subject-oriented and intercultural analytical perspective.
Available via institutional access or from the publishers.
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Child-led Organizations and the Advocacy of Adults. Experiences from Bangladesh and Nicaragua (2012)
Liebel, Manfred, in M. Freeman (Ed.). Law and Childhood Studies: Current Legal Issues 2011, Volume 14. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 92-103, 2012.
Comparative study on the relationship between self-organisation of working and street children and advocacy interventions by adults or NGOs in Bangladesh and Nicaragua.
Available via institutional access or from the publishers.
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Children’s Work, Education and Agency: The African Movement of Working Children and Youth (AMWCY) (2012)
Liebel, Manfred, in G. Spittler & M. Bourdillon (Eds.). African Children at Work: Working and Learning in Growing Up for Life. Zurich & Berlin: LIT, pp. 303-331, 2012.
Study of the history of the African Movement with a special focus on the aspects and alternatives of education, work and forms of action.
Full book available as paperback from the publishers.
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The Movements of Working Children and the International Labour Organization: A Lesson on Enforced Silence (2018)
Liebel, Manfred & Antonella Invernizzi, in Children & Society, 33(2), pp. 142-153, 2018.
Historical reconstruction and evaluation of the relationship between the movements of working children and the International Labour Organisation since the 1980s.
Available: open access.
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Kindheit und Arbeit. Wege zum besseren Verständnis arbeitender Kinder
Liebel, Manfred, Vollständig überarbeitete und aktualisierte 2. Auflage. Opladen, Berlin & Toronto: Barbara Budrich, 2020.
Examining the work of children in different regions of the world with a subject-oriented and intercultural perspective, incorporating new research findings.
Available in German from the publishers.
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Niñez en Movimiento. Del Adultocentrismo a la Emancipación (2019)
Morales, Santiago & Gabriela Magistris (Eds., Buenos. Aires: Editorial El Colectivo, 2019.
Essays on the importance of the social movements of children in the popular sectors for the critique of adult centrism.
Available in Spanish online (open access).
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From child labour to working children’s movements (2009)
Nieuwenhuys, Olga, in J. Qvortrup, W.A. Corsaro & M.-S. Honig (Eds.). The Palgrave Handbook of Childhood Studies (pp. 289-300). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Study on the beginnings of the movements of working children and their international networking.
Available via institutional access or from the publishers.
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The International Movement of Working Children (2013)
Reddy, Nandana, Bangalore: The Concerned for Working Children, 2013.
Historical reconstruction of the emergence of the worldwide networking of the movements of working children from different continents.
Available online as full-text-PDF (open access).
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Children in Social Movements (2020)
Rodgers, Diane, New York & London: Routledge, 2020.
Investigation into different forms of children’s participation in social movements in history and the present.
Available via institutional access or from the publishers.
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Working Children Get Organised: An introduction to working children´s organisations (1999)
Swift, Anthony, London: Save the Children, 1999.
Study on the emergence of working children's movements with a special focus on Asia.
Available online as full-text (open access).
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The Kids are in Charge: Activism and Power in Peru’s Movement of Working Children (2019)
Taft, Jessica K., New York: New York University Press, 2019.
Empirical study of the forms of action of the working children's movement in Peru with a special focus on the power relations between children and adults.
Available via institutional access or from the publishers.