Working the multiple economies: Children’s work and economic agency in a developed capitalist economy

Abstract

This thesis examines children’s work on the formal, informal and family based labour markets in a developed capitalist economy. Using a unique dataset of approximately 11,000 young people aged between 12 and 16 years, this thesis argues that structural factors are determinative of specific experiences of work, which reflect the nature of social relations within each labour market. This argument is a response to two prevailing themes in the child work literature. First that age based development has been the overarching ‘structure’ that determines experiences of work. Second, that the effect of structural position and the institutions of ‘work’ hinder children’s agency and ‘free will’. It is shown that these structural factors not only delimit children’s capacity to assert their agency, but enable action by providing the social environment that make possible certain types of activities to be understood as work. In so doing the thesis contributes to understanding children’s economic agency through an analysis of children’s work, and consequently children as economic agents. The data set provides a robust statistical outline of the fields of children’s work (formal, informal and family based) and an assessment of the quality of work children perform, applying ILO measures of decent work standards to evaluate children’s work conditions. The analytical framework adopted involves a synthesis of child work literature with aspects of economic sociology and the sociology of work that emphasise the embeddedness of social action and institutions within systems of social relations. These analytic tools assist identify the specific ‘fields’ or labour markets of children’s work (i.e. the formal, informal and family based labour markets) and sensitise us to what the relevant structural transformations in each field are. In so doing the thesis draws upon work used in understanding the ‘adult world of work’ to aid our understanding of children’s labour markets. The thesis finds that skill utilisation on the formal labour market, the strength and particularity of labour relations on the informal labour market, and whether work is oriented towards use or exchange value on the family based labour market are in large part determinative of the distribution of material and social rewards for children who work. Furthermore economic agency is embedded and expressed through the structural and relational factors specific to each labour market.