An Autobiography of Child Work: a reflexive account1
Birendra Raj Giri
[email protected]
Key words: reflexive autobiography, child work, child labour, schooling, rural
Nepal, double-troubled children.
Introduction
Children are engaged in a wide range of work in a wide range of circumstances. The way
one understands what constitutes child labour/work, therefore, can vary significantly at
local, regional, national and international levels. For example, although it is recognised that
child labour persists in rich industrialised countries, it is understood and measured
differently from poor non-industrial countries because of the large differences in living
standards or purchasing power. In other words, ‘all children are working, but not under the
same conditions’ (Schlemmer, cited in Hanson and Vandaele, 2003: 79).
Most authors, and non-government organisations (NGOs) in particular, still refer to
global child labour statistics as 250 million (Woodhead, 2004: 321-22), but the most recent
report of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), published in May 2006, indicates that
‘in 2004 there were 218 million children trapped in child labour, of whom 126 million were
in hazardous work’ (ILO, 2006: xi). It further claims that the number of child labourers
globally fell by 11 per cent over the last four years, while that of children in hazardous work
decreased by 26 per cent (ibid., original emphasis). In its earlier reports, the ILO used to
warn that the figures ‘may be misleading, unless it is clear what definition of child labour
was used for measuring, when (what year) and where the measurement was made, what
group(s) are included as child labourers with what methods’ (Ennew et al., 2003: 20).
Many scholars are still sceptical about the ‘new’ statistics, however, and stress that
‘where numbers end, written words about and images of children take over to reinforce
repugnance of the exploitation2 of young workers’ (Invernizzi and Milne, 2002: 404). This is
because
1
I am thankful to Nigel Pigott for grammatical support and to the anonymous referees for their encouraging comments.
Like the definition of child labour/work, the term exploitation is also highly contested so its use here must be
taken as having a very general meaning (see later section).
2
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the nature and scope of the work that children perform, and its effects, cannot be
grasped without understanding that the ‘term’ [child labour] has various meanings,
each of which produces different descriptions of its nature and measures of its scope.
(Ennew et al., 2003: 2)
Unfortunately, there is no agreement even among academics when it comes to the terms,
definitions, statistics, and categorizations of child labour/work (White 1999).
Currently, the 1999 Convention on Worst Forms of Child Labour (No. 182) has become
a standard reference for most child labour/work advocates and scholars, who prefer the
use of the term ‘child workers’ instead of ‘labourers’ to cover the wide range of work
circumstances that affects children’s health and well-being (Boyden et al., 1998;
Woodhead, 1999). This Convention, following from the Convention 1973 on Minimum Age,
still excludes ‘agriculture, which is acknowledged to be the sector in which the majority of
working children are to be found. Others sectors are family enterprises, domestic service,
enterprises with less than 10 workers, apprentices, self-employment, home workers, and
temporary or casual workers’ (Ennew et al., 2003: 15). While the Convention No. 182 still
leaves out family-based work, which can have a tremendous impact on children’s mental,
physical or psychological well-being (White, 1999), it has tried to simplify the child
labour/work debate by distinguishing work which, by its nature or the circumstances in
which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children, from work
where children are in immediate grave danger such as children in armed conflict, forced
labour drug trafficking, debt bondage, prostitution, and trafficked children (Invernizzi and
Milne, 2002; Ennew et al., 2003; Hanson and Vandaele, 2003; Woodhead, 2004).
Some may argue that all
child labour is forced labour, because children in general have so much less power
than adults … [They] cannot take choices freely (or do not know what the choices
are), and cannot say “No” to adults who decide they should work or who exploit them.
(Ennew et al., 2003: 16)
Since this kind of argument will lead nowhere, ILO Convention No. 182 categorizes
‘conditional’ (Woodhead, 2004: 323) and ‘unconditional’ (Ennew et al., 2003: 14) forms of
work in order to offer leeway to initiate intervention programs. However, the Convention
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particularly urges ratifying countries to ‘take immediate and effective measures to secure
the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour as a matter or urgency’
(Noguchi, 2002: 355-56).
Although ‘anti-child labour’ activists around the world campaign for the abolition of child
labour, ‘there is a profound lack of agreement about just what is the practice to be
eliminated … and it is not solved by ILO Convention No. 182’ (Ennew et al., 2003: 3 & 13).
At the same time, however, ‘
pleas for more child centred approaches and for inclusion of children’s … voices in
the debate have been frequently made over the past few years by people
representing both eliminationist and so-called pro-child views. (Invernizzi and Milne,
2002: 426).
This paper does not report any new empirical research but rather offers an account of
my own childhood experiences from a remote village of Nepal where I worked full-time and
also attended school; by engaging in the adult world of work, I never had the so-called
‘normal childhood’ that child rights advocates so frequently talk about. It has been
consistently noted that the vast majority of child workers are found in household agriculture
(ILO 2006, Ennew et al., 2003), and many of them are, as I was, compelled to combine
full-time hard work with schooling. I describe child workers under such circumstances as
‘double-troubled’ children, whose life histories need to be explored in detail, especially by
someone like me, who has practical experience of such troubles. By offering a reflexive
autobiographical account of my childhood, I hope to encourage scholars to cover the child
labour/work issue beyond national and international legislation and although I fully
acknowledge the importance of researching child labour/work as advised by ILO
Convention No. 182, I also believe that my reflexive autobiography of ‘double-troubled’
childhood offers a new way of looking at the life-worlds of working children.
Autobiographical writing, which can give unique insights into the social and cultural
forces shaping the researcher’s own practice (Reed-Danahay, 1997), focuses on his/her
own life-history and involves writing in the narrative first person voice. Because scholars
have long been advised to maintain ‘detachment’ from their research subjects,
autobiographical accounts are rarely accepted as a research work (Okely and Callaway,
1992). I am therefore, indeed, hesitant to claim it to be a research article as it is a very
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personal account, albeit of a lived reality. At the same, however, I believe that writing
about myself as the main character offers something unique that academics rarely do.
Amongst the variety of literary forms (e.g. confessional, fictive, and impressionistic) used in
autobiographical writing (van Maanen, 1988), I have chosen to explain my childhood life
history in a confessional style.
My Childhood, Work, and Schooling
Childhood is the time for children to be in school and at play, to grow strong and
confident with the love and encouragement of their family and an extended
community of caring adults. It is a precious time in which children should live
free from fear, safe from violence and protected from abuse and exploitation
(UNICEF, 2004).
An ‘ideal’ childhood should be like the one described by UNICEF but as I will explain, for
the vast majority of the world’s children such a definition of childhood is a distant dream
(Maybin and Wood, 2003, Montgomery et al., 2003). Until I was about 8 years old, my
family was living in a joint household (i.e. with my aunt and uncle). I did not have to do
much work prior to that as I had older cousins. However, I soon had to carry out all kinds
of work activities when my parents built a new house and decided to live separately.
Excluding the rice-planting monsoon season, my father would be away working to earn
cash income for the family so my mother and I had to handle both agricultural and
domestic work.
Besides attending full-time day school, I was engaged in at least four broad categories
of work - domestic activities, agricultural labour, manual work and grass/firewood gathering
– all of which constitute child labour under various ILO legislation (White, 1999, ILO, 2006).
I would like emphasise that the intensity of household and agricultural activities in rural
Nepal vary according to seasons, household size, a family’s socioeconomic status, etc.
However, the vast majority of families are those of subsistence farmers, where children
have no choice other than to work from an early age (ILO-PRSP, 2002). By providing a
detailed autobiography of my own childhood, I hope to encourage researchers to look into
the issue of such ‘double-troubled’ children from a different angle.
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My Domestic Work
According to an ILO study, Nepal has some 55,000 domestic workers between the age of
five and 14, but this figure is unreliable as it excludes rural areas and the large number of
children who work within their own families (Sharma et al., 2001b). Although generalisation
is difficult and any term used is unlikely to be applicable in different geographical and
sociocultural contexts, a domestic worker (or servant) is often defined as someone who
engages in either paid or unpaid household tasks for an unspecified time period
(Blagbrough and Glynn, 1999). In domestic spheres, as researchers argue, children (some
90 percent of them are girls) work as babysitters, maids, gardeners or general household
keepers (ibid.), and that they are reportedly ‘massively exploited and subject to serious
physical, mental and sexual abuse’ (Boyden et al., 1998: 25). As noted earlier, it is difficult
to pinpoint how and where ‘abuse’ or ‘exploitation’ begins and ends, but it may be safe to
claim that most parents will be less likely to abuse or exploit their own children intentionally
than an employer. In my case, it was mainly the amount of work that I carried out in
combination with school that was both physical and mentally strenuous. I shall explain.
I would cook food for my family (for myself, my mother and young brother and some
years later my sister). As my mother would have to go off to the forest to collect fodder for
animals (buffaloes, cows, oxen, goats, etc.) or would be engaged in manual labour in the
steeply-terraced field, every morning I would take responsibility for feeding my siblings and
giving water and fodder to the animals, before leaving home at 8:30 am in the morning and
reaching the school in the next village just before 10 am. Ennew et al. (2003: 3) report that
‘in many countries schools serving the poor are so inferior and teach so little that children
who might otherwise be perfectly willing to study leave and go to work, because they think
their time is being wasted.’ Unfortunately, there was not even an inferior secondary school
in my village3 and in the late 1980s and early 1990s, only a few village children attended
school because education was a luxury, accessible only to relatively well-off families.
I would attend classes from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. without any lunch during the 45 minute
mid-day break. When my friends would buy some snacks during lunch break, I had to
avoid them intentionally since I would have no pocket money. This meant that I would
return home at around 6 pm surviving with the food eaten at 8 am in the morning – I did
this for at least 6 years. For many children in my village, household work like mine
‘combined with difficulties of access and the low quality of many rural schools’ has resulted
3
It is still true in some parts of remote Nepal where children may have to walk twice the distance that I did.
5
‘in a lifetime disadvantage’ (Ennew et al., 2003: 26). As elaborated elsewhere, these are
some of the major reasons that lead to a high drop-out rate from post-primary schools in
rural Nepal. Not even 10 percent of children of my generation managed to complete their
secondary education (though the figure now seems to have reached some 50 percent).
Meanwhile, my brother and sister and the animals would have to wait until 12 pm for
my mother to come back home and take care of them. In the late afternoon, she would go
back to the fields or forest again, so I would take a quick snack and start my evening job. I
would fetch water from the nearby well (15 minutes walk), take care of domestic animals,
and prepare the evening meal. In other words, my evening tasks would be quite similar to
those of the morning except that after finishing her outside work, my mother would take
care of the kitchen work. I could then start doing my homework from 8 to 10 pm but I would
be too tired to study any longer than this and, moreover, it was impossible to study long
hours at night because my parents were unable to afford enough kerosene for the lamp.
As household activities (e.g. cooking, washing clothes/dishes) are rarely carried out by
boys/men in Nepal’s ‘patriarchal’ or ‘seniority’ culture (Nieuwenhuys, 1994), my neighbours
would often tease me, using derogatory terms like ‘domestic girl.’ Instead of the work itself,
this kind of bullying used to give me a sense of inferiority complex vis-à-vis my friends.
My Agricultural Work
Nepal is an agricultural society, with around 80 percent of its population surviving as
subsistence farmers, and 1.58 million between the ages of five and 14 are involved in
agricultural work (ILO-PRSP, 2002). At the same time, children’s work participation rate is
52.3 percent in the mountain, 45.4 percent in the hills, and 36.3 percent in the Tarai – the
strip of plain along the Indian border (ILO-PRSP, 2002). Because of the extreme climatic
system, geographic terrain, and poor infrastructure, farm work in Nepal is not only hard,
but also quite dangerous, as I shall explain.
For subsistence families like my own, the period between December and April can be
relatively easygoing in terms of agricultural activities, although the combination of school
with other types of work would keep me quite busy. During the dry season (viz. MarchJune), I would plough barren rice and maize fields, work that in terraced fields is so hard
that one day of working 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. makes you feel as if you have been trekking on
the Himalayas for weeks. Where the field terraces are too high or too narrow and
ploughing was not feasible, I would dig the field manually, using a heavy iron-spade. As
6
soon as field was ploughed or dug, I would carry organic fertilizer (i.e. animal dung/waste)
to the field in a doko (a big bamboo basket). On average, I would be carrying 25 kilograms
of dung per doko on my back and walk for an equivalent of 40 kilometres per day. My
parents have small chunks of land scattered all around the village, and to reach some of
our land takes up to an hour on foot. Although my family mainly farmed rice and maize,
from late May onwards I would also help my mother to plant mustard, wheat, green
vegetables, etc., for domestic purposes on small chunks of ploughed and dung-fed field,
since subsistence farmers must produce all food items for household consumption
themselves.
As soon as the monsoon rains started in July, we had to harvest the maize and clear
the fields completely, for only then could we start planting rice seedlings. This meant that I
had to help my parents to transport maize cobs and stalks home through the slippery field
terraces. During the months of July and August all rural schools are closed because
children are expected to help their families to plant rice, millet, (soya) beans, etc., so there
was not a single day for relaxation. It has been noted that ‘agricultural tasks may take up
too much of children’s time and sap their strength, so that they cannot go to school or do
not have the energy to study and do homework’ (Ennew et al., 2003: 26). This was
certainly true in my case but, as I explain later, my dedication to my studies allowed me to
complete the end of year examinations successfully.
My Involvement in Manual Activities
According to the ILO, there are some 46,029 child porters in Nepal (KC et al., 2001), but
this does not include thousands of children like me who work in rural households (Lieten
2002b). In many ways, the tasks that I carried out amounted to those of a child porter; I
would miss many of the Friday classes (which are only half a day) because I would have to
take maize/millet/wheat to the watermill (approximately 5 kilometres away) to make flour,
which is the main source of food for poor people in Nepal. During the very dry periods
(December-May), when green grass/fodder was scarce, animals also have to be fed with
some flour to keep them healthy, so the frequency of going to the watermill would vary
between different seasons.
My mother would wake me up at around 4 a.m. after preparing some snacks. I would
eat quickly and carry sacks of maize/millet/wheat weighing around 20 kilograms on my
back (as I became older, the weight increased accordingly) and head for the treacherous
7
path to reach the watermill by 9 a.m. I would normally travel with other villagers, but
sometimes alone as well. The moon would be the only source of light while I crawled
through never-ending bushes, steep hills, noisy down-streams, and muddy and highly
terraced rice fields, which was a particularly frightening experience when I heard the
screaming sounds of wild animals like jackals, foxes, and often tigers. As there was no
alternative to completing my task, I had to pretend to be resilient. Despite my early start, I
was unlikely to avoid waiting in a queue because people living nearer to the watermill
would have arrived much earlier than me. There were only four watermills for several
thousand inhabitants of numerous villages but if I did not have to wait too long, I would
arrive home with flour at around 3 p.m., otherwise it might be as late as 7 p.m.
On other Fridays and Saturdays, including school holidays, I would also help my
neighbours with their agriculture because my parents needed extra workers during the
busy monsoon rice-planting season. Such a barter system is still widely practised in the
villages because they do not have much cash to pay wages and, in fact, few labourers
want to work for cash because they also have plant and harvest.
It is acknowledged that ‘the UN system includes collecting wood and water [also
grass/fodder] for family use as economic activities yet regards it as necessary family
chores in traditional rural settings’ (Ennew et al., 2003: 21). In rural areas like my village,
people are unaware of what the UN writes or what their own government advocates. In
poor families in particular, everyone, regardless of their age and gender, must contribute to
household maintenance. In my case, my parents would be occupied in the fields during
rice planting and/or harvesting seasons (July-August and October-November), so I was
the one who had to collect grass/fodder for domestic animals. As we did not have surplus
land to grow grass, I would have to go to the forest every day since good grass is found
mostly on steep hill slopes, where most people and animals cannot easily reach. Such
places are extremely dangerous due to loose/slippery earth caused by torrential monsoon
rain and I still remember that a number of people, including a young boy and girl, fell off
the cliffs and died. Such incidents do not deter the villagers, however, as they have no
alternative, so my concern was also to collect grass despite of the risks. Doing such hard
work in such a difficult environment was also, of course, a tremendous physical and
psychosocial strain in my adolescent life.
8
Since the village did (and still does) not have any electricity, firewood was the only
means of cooking anything. During the dry season, I would walk for an hour to reach the
forest to cut and collect dry tree branches. The sun would be so strong (around 35 Celsius
plus humidity) that many times I would feel dizzy, but firewood for the next 9 months had to
be collected and this was possible only in the dry weather. Going to the public forest was
not a problem as it was downhill, but carrying a huge load of firewood on my back uphill
would really crush my entire body. Above all, when I brought animals to the forest for
grazing, I was among the few children who would not only look after animals (for example,
saving goats from tigers) but also carry a load of fodder, grass or wood while going back
home in the evening. Grazing is important in the villages due to lack of land that offers
enough grass for domestic animals, and almost all shepherds are young children (between
6 to 12-years-old).
My Double Trouble of Work and Schooling
As described above, the amount of work I did was quite heavy, and combining it with
school made it much more difficult. However, the overall impact of the work on my
education was not visible except in demanding subjects like mathematics and English
language (the latter used to start from fourth grade, but now it is compulsory from the first
year). Even when I hardly had any time to pay close attention to my studies, I was able to
maintain ‘good’ grades for my other subjects. On the other hand, many of my friends were
failing at school, in spite of the fact they did not have to do much work at home, so I was
unable to object to the heavy work that I was engaged in, especially when I was fully
aware that my father was working as a carpenter in many villages simply to pay my school
bills (monthly fees in public schools, up to secondary level, were abolished only in the mid1990s). As an illiterate, who had to go through tremendous hardships during his childhood,
my father seemed to be obsessed with educating his children: from the age of 5, I was
forced to start reading and writing and I would not be allowed to go to bed before 10 p.m;
and in my first class/grade, students’ ages ranged from 8 to 16 years but I was the only 6
year old. As noted earlier, a rapid expansion of public schools and educational awareness
in the villages really started after the restoration of multi-party politics in the early 1990s,
so it is not surprising that there were many teenagers just starting to attend school with me.
While I loved attending school, teachers would be my worst nightmare because my
household work often would not allow me to complete the homework and I had to pay the
penalty for that. The common form of punishment at the school was beating from palm to
9
shoulder with a long skinny stick and asking students to straighten their arms or slapping
on their backs. The stick would have such an impact that not only the pain but also the
‘blue stripes’ on their hands or backs would last for days and a couple of times, I received
cuts on my palm and arm because the teacher was using a rough stick. The second kind
of punishment was hitting our bare legs with sisno-pani (wet stinging nettles) and many of
us would cry because of the burns. The third punishment used, which was extremely
humiliating, involved making students mimic chickens by bringing both hands crossed
through the back legs and pulling our right ear by the left hand and left ear by our right
hand and walking in front of the class.
There were numerous other forms of beating, including slapping students’ cheeks,
pulling ears/hair, hitting on the head with books, putting a pen between two fingers and
squeezing them, etc. In Nepali schools (especially the government ones), teachers are
encouraged to enforce discipline with punishments like these with impunity. Personally, I
would passively accept it if I was punished for a very good reason (e.g. being lazy and not
doing any homework). However, I felt the beatings were completely unfair because the
teachers were not prepared to listen to my side of the story: although I would arrive at
school bare-footed, wearing torn clothes and completely exhausted by working and
walking, the teachers would blame me for being indolent; if I told them the truth, they
would then accuse me of lying, in spite of the fact most of the teachers were aware of my
family circumstances.
Telling my parents was not useful because they would say, “look son, teachers are
good people, they want you to be good too; that’s why sometimes they punish you to teach
you good discipline.” In Nepal, teachers are considered as ‘gurus’ who cause no harm to
their pupils, but this is not always true, especially if you have to go through constant
beating like an animal. Moreover, my father had warned me that if I ever failed, he would
stop sending me to school. Thus, until I was about 15 years old (I left the village after I
completed 10th grade or secondary education), I had no other choice than to believe that
everyone was acting in my best interests – they had good intentions, wishing to make me
a good person, so I had to continue to carry out household and farm work alongside my
studies (Blanchet, 1996; Nieuwenhuys, 1994) - which meant that I was trapped between
heavy work at home and severe beating at school.
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In the light of such experiences, if those children who only engage in harsh work are
called ‘child labourers’, and those who do acceptable jobs are called ‘child workers’, while
those who neither work nor go to school are called ‘nowhere’ children, then children like
myself should indeed be called ‘double troubled’ children, because they are caught up
between heavy work and study, not to mention the severe punishments at school. My
childhood experiences therefore make me believe that rural children of Nepal are deprived
of education in multiple ways. Firstly, most village parents are extremely poor like my own,
and cannot afford to send their children to school. Secondly, there are often no schools
nearby and small children cannot walk for hours to reach the school. Thirdly, many
children are double-troubled with work and schooling, which often become incompatible.
Finally, the inferior quality of education quality and unfriendly student environment (viz.
physical punishments) seriously discourage children from attending school.
Considering these experiences, it is not surprising to find that there is such a high dropout rate from post-primary school education (around 60 percent in 2002) in rural Nepal
(ILO-PRSP 2002), since poor children are forced to endure physical injuries from work and
school beatings, as well as the psychological affects arising from all kinds of humiliations.
Eventually, except those resilient ones like me, many are compelled to give up either one
or the other (i.e. work or study). I must reiterate that my intention here is not to put the
blame on poor parents, who naturally expect their children to work for the family’s survival,
but to point out various constraints that rural working children like me have to face.
My Physical and Psychological Status
Besides having to sustain the beatings from school teachers, I would have numerous other
work-related injuries, especially from farming. When I rushed to the watermill to make flour,
I would often slip and twist my ankle, knee or neck and because of the long journey, my
muscles would ache so severely that I would not be able to sleep. Likewise, I would get
cuts in my fingers and many parts of the body while collecting grass and firewood. As one
of the most mountainous countries, the vast majority of the rural population of Nepal lives
on hill slopes and, quite apart from unfavourable geography, poor families cannot afford
health and safety equipment, including sandals, so sharp objects, especially thorns in the
forest would badly damage my bare feet. Moreover, village children like me were (and still
are) forced to overcome all kinds of phobias in our childhoods, which children from
relatively rich families would not have to face in their life times; so, from around the age of
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6, I encountered and got used to all kinds of wild animals ranging from killer wasps to
tigers.
During the rainy months (July-August), I would have countless cuts all over my body
from sharp maize stalks, ploughing tools, or simply falling off the slippery terraces and the
wounds would often get infected, but there was (and still is) not even a first-aid post in the
village, so they would often have to heal in their own time and I had to continue working.
For some badly infected wounds, this would take months (so if I received a cut in July, the
healing process may well go into September). Indeed, researchers have also noted that
agricultural work is one of the most dangerous activities. For instance, Ennew et al. stress
that
agriculture is responsible for more than half the fatal work place accidents every year
and agricultural workers are disproportionately represented in the injuries and
illnesses due to workplace hazards and exposures. (2003: 26)
However, in most parts of rural Nepal, there is no system to treat or keep track of any
kinds of injuries and accidents.
In my village, there were many children who did not attend school at all; however,
although they had to do all kinds of errands like me and their life was certainly very hard,
they did not have to suffer the same multiple pressures (i.e. from work, family, study, and
teachers). They would just be working whereas I was a full-time worker as well as student.
If they did not do a good job, their parents would scold them and tell them to do it better
next time. This would be their punishment and it would take place only at home, but I had
to manage both home and school and, as noted earlier, there is an unquestioned cultural
belief that anything teachers or elders do is good for students (Nieuwenhuys, 1994), so my
parents would take the sides of the teachers instead of mine. As for my part, I would have
other choices than simply analysing my difficult situation as having a bad karma, which is
prevalent in Nepali culture.
I have already noted that I was successful throughout my secondary schooling, which
my father paid for, whereas many of my friends, who rarely did household work, failed to
complete their School Leaving Certificate (SLC, or a nationwide entrance exam for high
school). In fact, when I passed the SLC, some relatively rich parents came to talk to my
12
father, asking whether he had bribed the examination controllers and whether they could
also do something like that. In Nepal, money and socio-political networks can often
influence the school result but my father, even had he wanted to, had neither the money
nor any connections to enable him to bribe anyone.
Some authors argue that ‘work of the right kind can in many circumstances be quite
beneficial to children … Work is the most powerful of all sources of self-esteem, human
capital development, cognitive sophistication and even overall “happiness” and
“contentment’’ ’(Ennew et al., 2003: 11-12). While work can indeed be a good thing for
children, this depends on their working conditions and the amount work they have to do. In
most cases, children like me may not be particularly proud of carrying out the heavy work
itself, but are proud of being able to fulfil their family duty ingrained in their culture. As a
child, and because of my lack of awareness, I would probably have told a researcher (if
s/he came to interview me) that I was happy with the heavy work that I had to do and,
moreover, my responsibility to defend my family would have been top priority to me.
As far as work was concerned, however, due to family circumstances, except for the
dry season and in some festivals, playing with other children was unthinkable. From the
age of 8, I would spend most of my time, except school hours, with adults. I would have to
understand their conversations, jokes, gossip, and their superiority to children. Naturally, I
was expected to work and behave like an adult,4 but still accept the position of innocent
child by not questioning any adult decisions that would (often negatively) affect my life
(Nieuwenhuys, 1994). In short, viewed from the prevailing perspectives on a ‘normal’
childhood vis-à-vis child work, it is difficult to claim that the work that I performed was
purely for my own development because the tasks were not child friendly. Now, I shall
reflect upon my interest in becoming a child-labour researcher.
Becoming a Child Labour Researcher
I was lucky to receive financial support to come to the Netherlands and join the
International School of Amsterdam. Almost all school members, including my counsellor,
thought that I was never going to make it. They were right in their initial judgement, but
underestimated my long-term potential. I came from an isolated village and spoke only
4
It may be worth noting that in Nepali culture marriage is often taken as a transition to adulthood. For
instance, a married 15 year old can talk at the same level as a 55 year old. Of course, children of rich
families do very little work, and almost all locals also treat them better. Having to work with adults and yet not
being able to receive the same kind of treatment as those children of higher socio-economic status also had
a big impact on my self-esteem; this is on top of the physical and psychological burdens described thus far.
13
Nepali, whereas English is the medium of instruction at the school, not to mention its world
standard education but in 1998, I proved everyone wrong by successfully obtaining a
bilingual International Baccalaureate diploma and in 2001, I received an honours
Bachelor’s degree in Social Sciences from the Utrecht University College.
On top of my English language deficiency, I found the high school and subsequently
degree-level study quite hard, but since there was no household or farm work to carry out,
as there had been in Nepal, I could put all efforts on my education. This did not mean
adjusting to a totally new (European) culture and lifestyle was easy and among many
things, I found it a bit strange that my classmates were not expected to contribute anything
to their families like I had (and still have) to do.
It was only when I was following Master’s courses on International Relations and
Developmental Studies at the University of Amsterdam that I came to realise that for some,
sweeping floors, cutting/collecting firewood, fetching water, cooking meals, scrubbing
aluminium dishes, washing clothes, supervision of siblings, cutting grass/fodder,
shepherding animals, and cleaning up animal dung/huts constitutes child labour/work. I
began performing these tasks, which are apparently regarded as child labour/work by
many academics, from a very young age; when I was six years old, I was taking care of
my baby brother and upon reaching my eighth birthday, I was fetching water, cutting/
collecting grass and firewood. In my village, these kinds of work are carried out by children
and are considered a normal part of growing up, so during my master’s studies, I started to
contemplate how I would have responded if a researcher described my work as child
labour/work by my parents.
In countries like Nepal, there are millions of children whose life histories run parallel to
my own and there are some groups (e.g. from children from haliya or ploughers and
kamaiya or agriculturalists families) working as (debt) bonded labourers who have much
more miserable lives than I did (Giri 2007, Robertson and Mishra, 1997; Sharma et al.,
2001). In my case, if I really could not or did not feel like working, I would be exempted
from it. If I fell seriously sick, my parents would do everything to treat me – first inviting
dozens of shamans home and then, if that did not work, rushing me to the nearest healthpost or hospital. Regardless of the hardships, I was allowed and in fact was encouraged to
attend school whenever there was less work at home. In constrast, children of haliya and
kamaiya families could never have had the same privileges as me (Rankin, 1999; Lowe et
14
al., 2001). As NGOs and rights activists argue, these children may not just be exploited
both physically and psychosocially, they may well also be enslaved by money lenders and
landlords (Rankin, 1999; Bales, 2004).
This form of work is ‘in no way justifiable’ for any society (Hanson and Vandaele, 2003:
87), which is exactly where ILO Convention No. 182 is putting its emphasis (Woodhead,
2004). It may be worth noting here that a general problem with ILO Conventions, including
the Convention No. 182, is that they take an abolitionist stand (Hanson and Vandaele,
2003: 132), whereas the vast majority of children are found working in hidden
environments, which are neither easy to identify nor possible to eliminate. This invisible
and inaccessible work arena is where I not only want to draw the attention of child
labour/work researchers but where I hope to carry out extensive research myself once I
have completed my doctoral study.
In studying child labour research journals, I have noted that even after the introduction
of ILO Convention No 182, which places strong emphasis on intolerable child labour and
aims to prohibit the most exploitative, hazardous, and abusive forms, only a few scholars
have included children’s perspectives in their study (Woodhead, 1999; Boyden and
Levison, 2000; Invernizzi and Milne, 2002; Ennew et al., 2003; Hanson and Vandaele,
2003; Woodhead, 2004). In Nepal, with some 2.6 million child labourers (ILO-PRSP, 2002),
as far as I am aware only a couple of surveys have been carried out and these are mainly
based on quantitative methods, almost completely neglecting the input of children in the
research process (Woodhead, 1999).
This situation leads me to me to doubt whether, if a researcher had come to my village
to conduct a study on working children, s/he would have been able to identify widespread
use of children in the domestic/farm without asking children directly. Even I would have
probably said, ‘I am not a child labourer/worker’ or, at best, if I was comfortable with the
researcher, I would have replied, ‘I have to do only a bit more work than many of my
friends’. This may sound like an argument for being careful of taking account of what
children say, but I am suggesting on the contrary – i.e. that researchers need to sensitive
towards local cultures/customs and use of language carefully, if valuable data/information
is to be collected from child workers. Quick studies like ‘rapid assessment’, that the ILO
introduced after the promulgation of the 1999 Convention on Worst Forms of Child Labour
(No. 182), are unlikely to illuminate on their own what children really make out of their
15
world of work. For instance, how could I figure out whether I was ‘exploited’ or whether
what I did was one of the worst forms of child labour if I have no clue about what
constitutes child labour/work in the first place? Until I started my master’s study, I was not
even aware of the word ‘exploitation’ that appears in almost all child labour debates.
Moreover, it would have been difficult for me to argue that my own parents misused their
children in a culture where collective maintenance of the family is much more important
than individual well-being.
When their very survival is at stake families may have to do anything, including forcing
their children to work, in order to maintain their living (Baker and Hinton, 2001; ILO-PRSP
Nepal, 2002). This dire circumstance can often lead to children engaging in both physically
and psychosocially strenuous work. According to Ennew et al.
Children are not necessarily sheltered from harm by their families. The damage
done by tasks that are too heavy for a child, or using tools made for adults, may
not be visible at the time or appreciated later. It is long term – lifelong in fact.
Parents who would not otherwise damage their children may simply be unaware
of their developmental needs. The answer to the frequent comment that ‘I did
this work when I was a child and it did not do me any harm’ may well be ‘Prove
it’. (2003: 26)
In terms of working tools and hours, I was working on a par with adults and therefore
many of the tasks were arduous. Sometimes my co-workers, who were relatives or close
neighbours, would say ‘at your age, stones would break when I walked [barefoot]’ in order
to challenge me to work like them. As far as my parents were concerned, however, there
was no way I could argue that they were being inconsiderate. For poor families, everyone,
regardless of their age, has to make the maximum contribution in order to sustain the
household (Nieuwenhuys, 1994) and that is what my parents expected of me. In this way, I
may not had have a ‘normal’ childhood but it was/is, for instance, nowhere close to the
situation of bonded labourers, whose hard labour barely secures daily survival – they have
absolutely no future to look forward to (Giri, 2007, Bales, 2004, Robertson and Mishra,
1997).
It appears to me, therefore, that the claims about child labour/work are largely based
on judgements of others, whereas the issue should be understood from children’s own
16
perspectives and, whenever possible, by those individuals like me, who have been through
such situations and are able to explore working-children’s experiences in-depth. Some
might argue that any researcher immersing themselves in local culture can explore
children’s viewpoints regarding their work. Whilst this may be feasible for children who
work for someone other then their own family, it would be unlikely for child workers to
truthfully reveal their life histories if this might harm their families’ reputation and likewise,
until recently, I kept my childhood story largely secret and would not have revealed much
to strangers if they had come to do research in my village.
Consequently, I argue that the issue of child labour needs to be studied in all affected
areas not with ‘quick-fix’ data collection methods (e.g. survey questionnaires), but through
active involvement of working children in the research process in order to illustrate how
they understand their work within or out of family and the context within which it takes
place (Boyden et al. 1998; Woodhead, 1999). This means researchers should show
greater flexibility because ‘mixing of apples and oranges’ together may sometimes be
more relevant in terms of understanding children’s hardships than locating oneself on one
side or other of the pendulum’s swing (Lieten, 2002; 2002a).
This is not to oppose research on child labour/work or international legislation when
such efforts are meant to benefit working children. Due to the very nature of child
labour/work, however, a choice has to be made and that choice should start with the worst
forms of ‘exploitation’ as enshrined in ILO Convention No. 182 (Lieten, 2002). For instance,
studying bonded child labourers, who are forced into life long ‘servitude’ (Bales, 2004),
could be much more appropriate and relatively easily assessable. Except for fearing their
employers’ ruthlessness, bonded child labourers have nothing really to lose and they might,
in fact, be quite cooperative. If they see that someone is interested in understanding their
‘appalling’ conditions (ibid.), and especially if the researcher is someone like me, who
shared similar socio-cultural traits or spent time building confidence and trust, then bonded
children are perhaps more likely to express their world-views regarding bondage in general,
and also their views about their daily lives and vulnerabilities, than are child workers living
within their own families Blagbrough and Glynn, 1999, Woodhead, 1999).
For now, I am also deliberately choosing to study debt-bonded children (though I
mentioned the difficulties that I had to go through as a full-time worker and student). This is
because labouring for those such as urban elites, moneylenders or landlords, who may not
17
create any space for debate about what children are able or unable to do, or who have
little consideration for their education, health and well-being, can never be the same as
work carried out within one’s family regardless of the intensity of such tasks. Therefore, the
urgent appeal of the ILO through its Convention No. 182 to eliminate the worst child labour
in its all forms is certainly welcome. At the same time, however, a greater understanding of
other forms of child labour, including ‘double-troubled’ children like myself, should be
sought in order to generate valuable knowledge and a wider perspective on the child
labour debate as a whole. This does, however, require that we understand children’s living
and working conditions and how they make sense of the environment that they (are forced
to) work in and only carefully devised research is likely to produce useful results regarding
the different sectors in which children are found working. In other words, researchers may
need to be aware of the difference between participating in a household economy and
performing work in export-oriented ventures for a wage, but it is impossible to ignore
household work which, as my childhood experiences make clear, can put tremendous
impact on children’s physical and psychological well-being.
Conclusion
My childhood autobiography is likely to give different understandings to different readers
since ‘the term “child labour” continues to thrive … in journalism and everyday speech’
(Ennew et al., 2003: 40). Today, however, because of the varied nature of working
children’s experiences from one place to another (Boyden et al., 1998; Montgomery et al.,
2003; Maybin and Woodhead, 2003), some consider child work as such a ‘source of
definitional confusion that it should be handled with a great caution’ (Ennew et al., 2003:
40), although others still use ‘labour’ and ‘work’ interchangeably when referring to
exploitative forms of children’s work (Lieten, 2002b, Boyden et al., 1998). This is because,
unless one makes a sharp focus like the ILO Convention No. 182, it is often hard to
distinguish the difference in the (negative) impact on children’s health and well-being of
work as opposed to labour. While
the extensive literature on work presents its various forms as running from the cruel
to the sublime … more kinds of work may harbour dangers than is commonly realised.
(Ennew et al. 2003: 10-12).
18
There is also still very limited knowledge about the lives of working children in invisible
sectors (e.g. domestic work, informal economy, double-troubled children), including those
who work within their own families.
My parents are completely illiterate and have had no other experiences than sheer
hardship and the constant struggle for survival, so they could only impose their own
experience of work on their children and since they could not know how much work their
child could perform without jeopardising his health and wellbeing, there was no other
alternative for them. I would therefore like to conclude this reflexive autobiography with two
questions: firstly, should a double-troubled child like me be considered as child
labourer/worker or just family helper, when there are millions of children worldwide who
might be in worse circumstances than I was during my childhood?; and secondly, when
families have to struggle for their daily survival, is it right that it should be labelled as
‘abusive’ or ‘exploitative’ if parents expect their children to perform adult tasks?
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