Vinod Chandra

Vinod Chandra
Associate Professor, Ph.D
Lucknow University, Lucknow, India

Child Labour and Globalization: Global Economic Trends and Well being of Domestic Child Workers

Connection of the phenomenon of globalization with child labour has become a considerable emotive issue. For some sociologists and political scientists, the problem of child labour has been long standing and historically inherited and structurally rooted. However, some economists who have debated the economic globalization as a symbol of all hopes for future improvements believe that the globalization has translated greater general prosperity and reduced poverty and child poverty which is the major cause for the child labour. Yet some anti-globalization and anti-child labour activists tend to disregard this thesis and presume that globalization is the cause of all ills and social injustices. They argue that it not only accelerates the child labour phenomenon but also introduces new forms of child labour in fast-growing and competitive free-market based economies.

In the backdrop of possible linkages of globalization to child poverty and child labour, this paper discusses the recent trend of increase in child domestic workers in metropolitan cities in India which are mostly invisible in child labour debate. It explores the link between the rise of dual earner families and rural poor migrant families. The paper examines possible reasons of the rise in child domestic workers. It tries to find out whether the economic necessities of poor families is the major cause for supply of child domestic workers in the cities or the dual earner families demand such child workers to run their domestic economic and social order. Drawing on the data collected during 2009 and 2010 in Lucknow city in India, this paper talks about the reasons for migration of child workers’ families in the city, well being of these child workers, the nature and significance of children’s work in these families, etc.