870582

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CHD0010.1177/0907568219870582ChildhoodJijon

Article

Childhood

The priceless child talks back:

2020, Vol. 27(1) 63­–77
© The Author(s) 2019
Article reuse guidelines:
How working children respond [Link]/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/0907568219870582
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to global norms against [Link]/home/chd

child labor

Isabel Jijon
Princeton University, USA

Abstract
This article examines how working children understand the morality of child labor. Drawing on
interviews with children in Bolivia and Ecuador, I find that children call child labor moral when it
helps them manage their social ties. Working children do not think of themselves as individuals
needing care (per international organizations like the International Labor Organization) or as a
cultural group needing recognition (per the “working children’s movements”). Rather, children
describe themselves as morally upright members of intimate networks. I conclude by introducing
the concept of relational dignity.

Keywords
Child labor, global south, morality, working children, working children’s movements

Introduction
On 18 December 2013, a group of working children and adolescents—street traders,
market vendors, domestic workers, and shoe shiners—marched through the streets of La
Paz, Bolivia. The children were protesting a law-entering debate in the Senate, a law that,
following international conventions, barred children from work before turning 14. The
marchers, however, wanted the government to eliminate all its minimum age restrictions.
They wanted Bolivia to grant them the “right to work” (NTN24, 2013).
The children were opposing a national law. They were also opposing international
legal and moral standards. For the past hundred years, the International Labor Organization
(ILO) has spread norms against child labor around the world (Lieten, 2009: 139). For the
past 20 years, activists and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have come together

Corresponding author:
Isabel Jijon, Department of Sociology, Princeton University, Wallace Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA.
Email: ijijon@[Link]
64 Childhood 27(1)

to promote a “global fight against child labor” (Dottridge, 2009: 146). They fight, as
Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi (2016) has said, to bring “safety, liberty, dignity and
education for all children of the world.”
And yet, the Bolivian children marched. What is more, these children are not alone.
The protesters were all part of UNATSBO, the Bolivian Union of Working Children and
Adolescents (Unión de Niños Niñas y Adolescentes Trabajadores de Bolivia in Spanish).
UNATSBO is, in turn, part of MOLACNATs, the Latin American and Caribbean
Movement of Working Children and Adolescents (Movimiento Latinoamericano y del
Caribe de Niños, Niñas y Adolescents). There are similar unions and social movements
in Africa and Asia and, while each has its own history and organizational structure, they
all share UNATSBO’s controversial aim: they all oppose the minimum age for employ-
ment (Myers, 2009). Movement spokespeople in fact claim that some forms of child
labor can be moral. Labor, they argue, can empower children and foster a sense of col-
lective dignity in economic hardship (Liebel, 2000).
In this article, I examine how working children themselves, the rank-and-file mem-
bers of these movements, navigate these conflicting interpretations. Given these two,
globally circulating scripts on child labor, how do working children respond? How do
they understand the morality of their economic practices?
Economic sociologists have shown that morality—inter-subjective, historically specific
ideas about right and wrong, fair and unfair, the sacred and the profane—shapes economic
life (Fourcade and Healy, 2007; Wherry, 2012). Child labor research, however, has largely
overlooked morality. Scholars study the causes and consequences of child labor (Webbink
et al., 2013), and more recently, children’s subjective experiences of work (Abebe and
Kjorholt, 2009; Invernizzi, 2003; Orellana, 2001). But while children often say they choose
to work (O’Kane et al., 2018; Song, 1996), scholars have not explored children’s underpin-
ning moral logics. We have yet to ask how children contend with different moral under-
standings of child labor, especially in light of global opposition to their practice.
To fill this gap, I interviewed 64 members of working children’s unions in Bolivia and
Ecuador. Building on Zelizer (2002) and Lanuza and Bandelj (2015), I find that child
labor is relational work: children work to maintain, negotiate, or honor their ties to friends,
employers, and especially parents. Moving beyond existing research, I show that children
construct a sense of dignity through relational work. Their self-worth depends on how
well they think they manage their meaningful relationships. While international organiza-
tions, like the ILO, center their discussion of dignity on the well-being of the individual
child, and the working children’s movements discuss the dignity and potential of working
children as a group, I argue that working children subscribe to a relational framing of
dignity. They do not talk of good children but of good sons and daughters, good friends,
and good members of their intimate networks. Working children, therefore, oppose inter-
national norms because they feel these norms deny them their sense of worth.

Literature review
Two moral views of child labor
For the ILO, not all child work is considered “child labor.”1 Child labor is any kind of
work done by children under the age of 142 or in activities that harm their “safety, health,
Jijon 65

and moral development” (ILO, 2013: 16). In this definition, legal and moral categories
overlap.3 Child labor is seen as work that is morally wrong, work that harms children or
deprives them of their childhood (International Program on the Elimination of Child
Labor [IPEC], 2004: 16).
But childhood is a social and cultural construction. Who is labeled a child, until what
age, and with what associated roles and responsibilities varies across space and over time
(Prout and James, 2015). In her seminal book, Pricing the Priceless Child, Zelizer (1985)
shows how ideas about childhood changed in the 19th and early 20th century in the
United States. People went from having a “useful” view of childhood—where children
were valued for contributing to family finances—to a “useless but priceless” view—
where each child became a sacred, sentimental object of care. In this new perspective, to
love a child was to safeguard her in the domestic world of education and play, away from
the profane world of labor.
At first, this new definition did not apply to all children. Many continued working,
especially in the global South (Pedraza-Gómez, 2007: 26). Over time, however, this
normative ideal has been institutionalized and spread around the world (Boli and Meyer,
1978; Gran, 2017). Today, international conventions promote the notion of an individual,
universal, vulnerable child (Boyle et al., 2007).
The first working children’s unions to oppose this view appeared in Peru in the 1970s
(Taft, 2017). Initially, the unions wanted to help working children develop a class con-
sciousness (p. 6), to help children engage with their “status as workers” (p. 11). By the
1990s, however, the unions shifted their focus from class struggle to children’s rights.
Now they discuss age-based inequalities and working children’s “status as children” (p.
11). Similar organizations developed throughout the global South in the 1990s and early
2000s (Roschanski, 2009). Like the unions in Peru, they do not talk about a universal
child but discuss the potential of working children as a group, their need for social and
political recognition.
In 1996, representatives from working children’s movements around the world met in
Kundapur, India. Drawing on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, they drafted
their own declaration, asking for: (1) recognition as a unique social group; (2) special-
ized public services, like health and education compatible with their labor; (3) special
participation rights, like “[being] consulted for any decision that affects us”; and (4) the
moral re-evaluation of child labor. “We are against the exploitation of our labor,” they
stated, “but we are in favor of a dignifying job” (Concerned for Working Children
[CWC], 2012). These child leaders, in other words, opposed the idea that all child labor
is, across the board, wrong.
It has been 23 years since the Kundapur Declaration, but the unions in Latin America
still make similar claims. In 2010, the Bolivian union UNATSBO, supported by the
European NGOs Terre des Hommes, and Save the Children, published a book called “Mi
fortaleza es mi trabajo,” or “My Strength is My Work.” Like the Kundapur Declaration,
the book argues that working children need recognition, specialized services, and politi-
cal inclusion (UNATSBO, 2010: 87–88). The book also opposes the individual, vulner-
able view of childhood (p. 68). Like other working children’s movements, UNATSBO
focuses on working children as a group. The movement is concerned with the well-being
of each individual member, but it more often speaks of working children, plural, focusing
on their potential, and “collective dignity” (Werner, 2014).
66 Childhood 27(1)

Union representatives agree with the ILO that some occupations are unacceptable for
children. Representatives oppose any work that is forced, isolating, physically harmful,
or that puts children in proximity to dangerous substances (UNATSBO, 2010: 118–120).
Unlike the ILO, however, representatives oppose a minimum age for employment. They
argue that minimum age norms hide child labor and put working children in danger
(p. 93). Working children’s movements, in short, ask for “dignified” labor that helps
rather than hinders working children.
Now, these movements do not speak for all working children. Most child laborers do
agricultural work, whereas organized working children usually work in the urban infor-
mal sector (Van den Berge, 2009: 327). Even in urban spaces, it is easier for street trad-
ers, with more freedom of movement, to organize than children in shops or factories
(Myers, 2009: 155). In addition, movements may be led by children but depend on adults
for material and technical support. While the movements argue that adult allies only
work to empower children, both children and adults live in societies where “adults speak
and children listen” (Taft, 2015: 461), so adult allies often monopolize discussions. We
do not know enough about the “rank-and-file” union members. We need to examine how
they talk about their practice and respond to global norms against child labor.

Methods
From June to December 2016, I interviewed 64 members of working children’s unions in
Bolivia and in Ecuador. Bolivia and Ecuador are both Andean nations with similar colo-
nial histories, influential indigenous traditions, and, at the time of the research, anti-
imperialistic, populist presidents who had been in power for the past decade. However,
the two nations differ in terms of child labor. In Ecuador, only 2.7% of children are
engaged in child labor, while in Bolivia 20.2% of children aged 7–14 work (United
States Department of Labor (USDOL), 2016). In addition, Ecuador’s government has
invested heavily in programs designed to eliminate child labor (El Telégrafo, 2014).
Bolivia, in contrast, has few official programs and, from 2014 to 2018, created legal
exceptions which lowered the minimum age for employment (Van Daalen and Mabillard,
2019).
The Bolivian Union of Working Children and Adolescents, UNATSBO, was formed
in 2003. It has chapters in seven of Bolivia’s nine departments, and has lobbied the gov-
ernment before. In contrast, ECUAVYFNATs, Ecuador Virtue and Strength of Working
Children and Adolescents (Ecuador Virtud y Fortaleza de Niños, Niñas y Adolescentes
Trabajadores in Spanish), started in 2013, only operates in Quito, Ecuador’s capital, and
has not attempted any civil disobedience. These organizations represent two approaches
within the variety of working children’s movements, making them a useful comparison
(Flyvbjerg, 2006).
I interviewed 38 children and adolescents in Bolivia and 26 in Ecuador. I used snow-
ball sampling within the unions to ensure children’s safety, as researchers have found
that approaching children in public can get them in trouble with their parents or the
police.4 Each union chapter has 40–100 members who meet at local NGOs or founda-
tions. There, children participate in movement activities and have art or music classes or
receive help with homework. For a related project, I also interviewed movement leaders
Jijon 67

and adult allies and coded books, manuals, reports, proclamations, and websites created
by local and regional unions. This article, however, focuses on the child members who
participate in the movements but do not represent them in protests, press statements, or
meetings with politicians.
To reduce the power imbalance between the children and me, I interviewed them in
groups of up to four peers, even though this might have led to less disagreement between
respondents (Corsaro, 2015: 50). We spoke in classrooms, workrooms, and once in the
teacher’s lounge. Our conversations were in Spanish and lasted between 30 and 90 min-
utes. I spoke with 33 girls and 31 boys, ages 7–18. The children and adolescents chose
their own pseudonyms, generally the names of friends, pop, and reggaetón singers, soc-
cer players, or fictional characters.
I asked children about their experiences, opinions, and stories, but how can we be sure
that these stories were not told for my benefit? Studies have shown that children tend to
tell adults what they think adults want to hear (Eder and Fingerson, 2001: 182). Even
though I introduced myself by name, many interviewees called me “profe,” short for
“profesora” or teacher. Although the working children often laughed and seemed relaxed
in our conversations, it is unlikely that they would share negative stories that might get
them in trouble. Still, even if their stories are idealized, this is how working children
want to appear to others. They could have assumed that I thought child labor was
immoral, like many strangers they meet, or they could have assumed that I saw child
labor as empowering, like the union leaders and adult allies. But, as we will see, their
stories do not fit either set of expectations.
Working children receive ideas about work and childhood from many sources. They
are influenced by parents, teachers, peers, employers, movement leaders, adult allies, and
popular culture (as evidenced in their choice of pseudonyms). This study cannot show
where children’s ideas come from. It can show how children want to be seen. I find that
child laborers want to be seen as good, responsible, socially connected children. They talk
about work as a way to sustain, protect, and repair their social ties. Working children,
therefore, reject global child labor standards because these standards do not recognize the
importance of their ties. Global norms do not match the children’s sense of dignity. For
international actors like the ILO, UNICEF, and many child protection organizations, each
child is a sacred object of care. For union leaders, working children are an empowered
social group. Working children, in contrast, see themselves as active agents within inti-
mate networks. They want not only to receive but also give care to their sacred parents.

Findings
Background: The practice of child labor
Most of the children began working at age 8 alongside a parent or older sibling. About
half still work with someone else—a friend or relative—while the rest began working
alone at 10 or 12. In Ecuador, the interviewees are almost exclusively street vendors,
while in Bolivia, they are also retail workers, workshop helpers, domestic workers, or
market traders. All the children started working before they reached their country’s mini-
mum age for employment.5
68 Childhood 27(1)

All children work out of economic need and almost all say they choose to work, with
or without parental encouragement. Violeta (18), for instance, tells me:

I started thinking things over so I told my dad, “Daddy, I want to work. I want to earn a living
somehow, because I want to help you at home, I don’t want to see you suffer.” And my dad told
me, “You’ve never made me suffer, I have to give you everything.” But I told him “No, I don’t
want to see you suffer anymore, it’s better if I start working.”

The only interviewees who do not choose to work are adolescent girls doing domestic
labor for a third-party. They are the only ones who dislike their work and who have inter-
rupted their formal education. The other children say they combine work and schooling,
working either before or after school hours.
Although I interviewed children recruited through working children’s unions, most have
only participated in these movements sporadically: C.J. (12) says “I haven’t been able to
come. I’ve been working and [the adult ally] changed the meeting time.” Elisa (7) says “we
have a class once a week.” This does not necessarily mean that children are not more involved,
they could be taking their participation for granted. Still, a few do not recognize the often-
used acronym “NATs” (“niños, niñas y adolescentes trabajadores,” or “child and adolescent
workers”) and are unfamiliar with their country’s child labor laws or with the ILO.
Still, working children know that child labor is illegal, that international actors,
broadly speaking, oppose this practice. For them, however, work is normal: their siblings
work, their friends work, and their parents worked when they were young. A few ask me
whether I worked as a child and are surprised I did not. What is more, for these children
work is good. They say work teaches them practical skills like mental math and public
speaking, as well as moral values like self-sufficiency, honesty, and thrift (Abebe and
Kjorholt, 2009; Invernizzi, 2003). Children also claim that work teaches them the value
of money: Shakira (12) says “I know where money comes from, how much work and
time it took.” And working children talk about the relationships they foster at work.
Child labor, for them, is a way of creating, maintaining, or repairing their social ties
(Lanuza and Bandelj, 2015; Zelizer, 2002).

Relationships at work
Working children manage many types of social ties through their labor. They develop
relationships with customers and employers, with other working children, with family
members and friends. Adolescents in retail, for instance, talk about their relationship
with their employers. While some share stories about abusive employers—Dayla (16)
casually tells me how her boss once beat her and pulled her hair after someone stole store
merchandise—they more often speak of employers affectionately—Dayla, a few min-
utes later, says: “My boss sometimes treats me like a daughter. She will say to me ‘Hija,
you should do this, you should do that, you should be careful,’ like a mother.” Child retail
workers stay or leave a job not because of issues with payment or hours but because they
have a good or bad relationship with their employer.
For street vendors, in contrast, work is an activity shared with friends. Ronaldinho
(11) remembers the time he yelled at his friend from one bus to another. Marisol (14)
Jijon 69

likes that she sells candy with her cousin. C.J. (13) explains that working with friends is
also a way to stay safe:

They almost killed me once! (laughs). I was with Alex. We were selling candy and I gave him
3 dollars because we had made 20, 23 dollars, so I gave him 3. Then some kids almost mugged
us, they were going to stab us! Luckily, I didn’t give them anything and they didn’t do anything.
I think Alex’s face scared them (laughs).

Street vendors also talk about relationships with customers. What Ovidio (12) likes most
about work is “that I meet new people.” Violeta (18) is upset that another girl “stole” one
of her regulars because “we talked and laughed and had so much fun, I really thought she
was my friend.”
Working children manage these relationships both to complete the transaction and to
be seen as good children. “I always say ‘Good morning’ or ‘Good afternoon’ when I get
on the bus,” explains Jefferson (13). Gokum (9) adds “I like to help people, like when
there’s a lady with a baby I ask people to give her their seat.” Younger vendors some-
times sing to boost their sales. Gohan (8) remembers: “I learned a sad song from the
radio so sometimes I just sing it and sometimes people cry. One day they recorded me
singing and they gave me two dollars.” These children make a point of being polite,
respectful, even cute. As children age, however, they have a harder time performing cute-
ness. Sara (11) tells me she used to sell candy with her brother, but now that he’s older
“he’s selling less because people started to get scared (laughs).” The working child may
be cute, but the working adolescent becomes threatening.
Children work to manage relationships even when confronted by rude customers.
Ovidio (12) tells me about “people who criticize you or call you out for working.” When
I ask how he responds, he shrugs:

I’d rather not say anything so they can’t say I’m a brat (“malcriado”). Because if you answer
these things they say you’re a bad kid and they assume that you don’t go to school, they
discriminate you. I prefer to stay quiet, I pretend not to hear.

When children are engaged in child labor, in short, they meet friends, employers, cus-
tomers, and strangers. In these interactions, they try to perform a good, hardworking,
innocent version of themselves. But working children also use work to manage a more
important relationship: their relationship with their parents.

Relationships with parents

Ovidio is 12. He sells candy on the street and in minibusses in La Paz and is also a part-
time clown. He started working at age 8 and explains his start this way:

In my family we are eleven. My mother worked here and there but there wasn’t enough
money. She even started to get sick because of work. So, with my brother, my two older
brothers, we started to say ‘Let’s help mom,’ so we looked for a job that we could do and we
started juggling and doing jumps. We discovered that you only earn a little money at that but
it still helped.
70 Childhood 27(1)

Dayla is 16. She sells jeans in a shop and, on weekends, sells fruit in a market in La Paz.
She wanted to help her mother since she was 6:

[I started] because of family troubles, because my dad and mom didn’t have the best connection
and always argued about money. I would listen and think, I should go to work, my mom is
suffering too much. There were four of us. It would be better if she took care of the other three
and I took care of myself.

Michael is 13. He sells candy on the streets and in buses in Quito. He also takes care of
his siblings when his mother travels for work. He explains:

I have an older brother who got married and now has a son and lives in Latacunga (a city south
of Quito). I have a sister too but she doesn’t live with us anymore. And my mother sometimes
gets sad. She thinks about how they grew up and don’t visit and sometimes she cries. But we
all support her and tell her that she has three other children and that the three of us will never
abandon her. We tell her that we’ll always take care of her.

Michael, Dayla, and Ovidio want to help their mothers. Work is their way of helping.
Almost all the interviewees have large families, with three to seven siblings. About two-
thirds of the child laborers live with both parents or a parent and step-parent. The other third,
like Michael, live only with their mother. Many parents are self-employed in the informal
sector—they too sell fruit, newspapers, or candy on the street, in markets or in public plazas.
Some mothers are domestic workers. Some fathers are construction workers, taxi drivers, or
security guards. Only a few parents own a store, and their children tend to work less. All
these families experience economic hardships that bring stress to one or both parents.
For working children, the mother is usually the object of concern. The children often
describe their mothers as “suffering.” They work to alleviate their mothers’ suffering and
worry about making this suffering worse. Benji (8) remembers:

My brother used to go off and sell by himself but one day he messed up. One day I got home
but he wasn’t there. My mom was so worried. She kept asking “Where’s your brother? Has he
come home?” At midnight he came home, or maybe ten, it was ten. My mom was so worried,
she even hit him. She was crying and worried. It was bad.

Only two other interviewees say their parents have yelled or beaten them. Others have
not had or choose not to share this experience. In Ecuador (but not Bolivia) children also
fear getting their parents in trouble with the police. Most children believe that if they are
stopped by the police, their parents will go to jail.
Several interviewees talk about the pride they feel when bringing money to their par-
ents. “My best day,” says Loretta (12), “was when I found some money and gave it all to
my mom. She was so happy.” Some children also say that they have impressed their
parents with their work. Justin (11) remembers: “I didn’t use to go out because I was shy.
But one time, when I was 7, I impressed my mom because I told her ‘Mom, I’m ready, I
can go out to sell.’”
Many children work in order to complete family projects, to pay for food, rent, utili-
ties, or family debts. Even when adolescents pay for their own things—usually clothes
Jijon 71

and cell phone service—they phrase it as a way of helping their parents. Kevin (16)
explains: “If I buy this for myself than I don’t have to ask my father for anything, he has
enough problems.”
In her study of child labor laws in the United States, Zelizer (1985) finds that “advo-
cates of child labor legislation were determined to regulate not only factory hours but
family feeling. They introduced a new cultural equation: If children were useful and
produced money they were not being properly loved” (p. 72). Child labor, therefore, was
incompatible with parental love. I find that working children in Bolivia and Ecuador
believe the reverse. For them to properly love a parent is to work. Work is an act of love.

Against child labor legislation

Therefore, what do working children think about global norms against child labor? Do
they think all children should be allowed to work? In any activity?
The short answer is no. Unlike union leaders, the rank-and-file members do believe
that there should be a minimum age for employment, although most do not think it
should be 14. Andrea Lynette (10) says children should work “since they’re 5, so that
they learn what it’s like little by little.” Juan (10) says “6 or 7 because then they are old
enough to reach things. Because they need to work to help their mother.” Most say that
children should work after turning 8 or 10.
The interviewees also think some occupations are unacceptable. Here they are more
aligned with union leaders. They name mining, construction work, drug trafficking, and
sex work as intolerable activities. They also say that children should not do heavy lifting.
Angel (14) says “I’ve seen a kid who is 10, 15 years old and does heavy work. That isn’t
good for his growth.” Child laborers also insist that children should not be forced to
work. “It should be a choice,” says Scarlet (17). “I know a neighbor that forces her son
to work and that’s not right.” Children, in other words, should have agency over their
lives, should decide for themselves whether they want to extend this form of care. When
I ask what types of child work should be legal, they mention occupations they have expe-
rience with: selling on the streets or on buses, shining shoes, helping at home, taking care
of small animals. The last two examples do not fall under the ILO’s definition of child
labor but of legally permissible “light work” (ILO, 2013: 45). Working children, in other
words, agree with the ILO more than they think.
Still, working children rarely think that international actors like the ILO have their
best interests at heart. Mostly, they believe that people who oppose child labor are not
listening. Justin (11) says: “They’ve never worked so they don’t understand.” Mexico
(11) says: “They’ve always had money and were raised differently.” In general, working
children do not talk about the “global fight against child labor.” They talk instead about
“the global fight against working children.”
Child laborers do not have a relationship with global anti-child labor activists, only
with rude strangers or figures of authority. C.J. (12) remembers: “A woman got up on
the bus and started yelling: Where is your mother? Why are you working? She started
yelling that I shouldn’t be here, it was horrible.” Ronaldinho (11) shares a similar story:
“A lady yelled at me on the street once. She yelled ‘child labor is illegal!’” Likewise,
Krili (11) says:
72 Childhood 27(1)

Once they took my cousin and they called her mother and said they would take her away if she
keeps working. So, I hide if I see a policeman, I get behind the trash cans or go into a store.

Working children, in other words, associate opponents of child labor with threats and
fear.
The working children share many stories of being humiliated for their labor, usually
as examples of their worst day at work. When I ask whether they or someone they know
has ever been in danger while working, some do mention getting lost or mugged. But
these stories rarely come up spontaneously, not like the stories of being yelled at. For
many, their worst day was when someone questioned whether they were “good children”
or whether they had “good parents.” Ariel (10) summarizes it this way: “They say what
we do is illegal, they treat us like criminals. But I’m not doing anything wrong. I just
need to work to help my family.” Child labor laws and policies, in their eyes, do not
allow them to help their families. These laws attack their sense of moral worth.

Discussion
Child labor as relational work
The ILO says child labor is bad for children because it “deprives children of their child-
hood” (IPEC, 2004: 16). For this organization, childhood is a time of innocence, and
adults should protect each individual child. The transnational working children’s move-
ments, in contrast, argue that children are more resilient; they oppose “the idea of a child-
hood that is tamed, obedient and exclusive” (Liebel, 2000: 211). Movement leaders
believe that certain types of child labor can be good and that adults should promote and
empower working children collectively.
The children I interviewed stand somewhere in the middle. Like the ILO, they argue
that children should learn, play, and live in the family. They often perform “priceless-
ness,” trying to appear innocent for their customers. Unlike the ILO, they believe that
work allows them to manage their relationships, especially the relationship with their
parents. Like union leaders, the children say they are resilient and safe in informal labor.
Unlike union leaders, they do not consider themselves political actors fighting for a col-
lective cause. The working children do not see themselves as activists or victims. Rather,
they measure their self-worth by how well they manage their social ties (Table 1 sum-
marizes these three views).
In her recent work, Zelizer (2012) argues that all economic activities are relational
work: “in all areas of economic life people are creating, maintaining, symbolizing, and
transforming meaningful social relations” (p. 149). People mark different relations
(through names, practices, and negotiated meanings) and “match” them with appropri-
ate economic transactions and media of exchange (like money, favors, time, or goods;
p. 151). As Zelizer explains, “If you are my casual girlfriend but not my wife, we don’t
share a checking account; if you are my patient but also my friend, I won’t charge you,
but you might give me a gift” (p. 152).
Working children in Bolivia and Ecuador also engage in relational work: as they work,
they sustain old and create new relationships. They judge a job as good or bad depending
Jijon 73

Table 1.  Three approaches to child labor.

International organizations Transnational working Working children in

children’s movement Bolivia and Ecuador
View of the Vulnerable, innocent Resilient, responsible Innocent, resilient,
child part of meaningful
relationships
Space for the Home, school School, streets, Home, school, streets
child politics
Role of the Protect and promote Promote and Care for children and
adult children’s rights empower children accept children’s care
View of child Harms children Can dignify children Is an act of love
labor
View of dignity Individual dignity Collective dignity Relational dignity

on their employers, customers, friends, and parents. Children are less powerful than
employers, customers, and parents and work often keeps them in positions of dependence.
Still, they value work because they value the relationships involved. Work is not only a
source of income but also of dignity and self-worth.
Sociologists studying dignity examine how people determine their own and each oth-
er’s worth (Lamont, 2000; Pugh, 2009). Lamont (2018) has recently called sociologists
to examine inequalities in dignity or what she calls “recognition gaps” (p. 422). These
gaps, she argues, can lead to stress, illness, apathy, isolation, poverty, addiction, and self-
harm, as well as the rise of populism, fundamentalism, and violence, and the increase in
material and political inequalities (p. 422). What this article adds to existing discussions
of dignity is a greater attention to social relationships. In the existing literature, dignity
is related to individuals and social groups; the concept highlights both individual agency
and social membership (Hitlin and Andersson, 2015). This article shows that dignity is
also found in the quality of people’s social ties. The working children I interviewed do
not think about their worth in the abstract or in the collective. Rather, they talk about
their roles in relation to specific friends, peers, authority figures, and parents. Borrowing
from Miller (2017), I call this “relational dignity,” since “absent relations with others, we
cannot be said to have dignity” (p. 119). However, I push her understanding further, not-
ing that relational dignity is not about relations with others in general but with intimate
others in particular. People experience a sense of self-worth depending on how well they
manage their social ties.
My research shows that working children in the global South oppose international
norms against child labor at least in part because these norms ignore the importance of
their social ties. By focusing on the well-being of the (individual) child, organizations
like the ILO erase children’s meaningful relationships. Working children’s unions recog-
nize some of these relationships, but focus more on children’s political recognition than
on their specific ties. The rank-and-file children, in contrast, think of work in terms of
specific people: parents, siblings, friends, strangers. Although I spoke to children in two
different countries and with a range of occupations and experiences, they all tend to talk
about child labor in similar ways. Even the largely unhappy adolescent girls doing
74 Childhood 27(1)

domestic work talk about this work in terms of meaningful relationships. This article, in
short, has shown how working children make sense of child labor. By showing their
meaning-making and moral justifications, we find new understandings of dignity and
recognition.

Conclusion
What ever happened with the Bolivian law?
When the Bolivian working children marched, the police blocked their path raising plas-
tic shields and metal barriers. The children tried to push past the barriers and the police
pushed back, throwing children to the ground, arresting adolescents, and covering the
crowd with tear gas. Members of civil society decried this use of force and demanded a
government response. A week later, President Evo Morales met with union representa-
tives (Pérez and Corz, 2013).
Morales, a former child worker himself, stopped the proposed law from entering into
force (Pérez and Corz, 2013). Over the next few months, lawmakers and UNATSBO
representatives came together to amend the proposed legislation. On 17 July 2014, the
government presented Code No. 548, which now stated that, under certain circumstances,
children could sign a contract from age 12 and could work independently from age 10
(Van Daalen and Mabillard, 2019). Bolivia became the first country in the world to
reduce the minimum age for employment.
The ILO and other child rights organizations condemned the new law (Van Daalen
and Mabillard, 2019). Within Bolivia, the Constitutional Court also opposed it. In 2017,
the court ruled Code 548 unconstitutional (p. 11). By 2018, government officials reverted
the minimum age to 14 (El Deber, 2018). And yet, for four years the child labor unions
“won.” They had their “right to work.”
Today, 152 million children are engaged in child labor, that is one in ten children
worldwide (ILO, 2017: 19). Policymakers, activists, and the working children’s move-
ment want what is best for these children. They propose policies and solutions based on
their underlying views of dignity. This article has shown how working children them-
selves make sense of dignity and child labor. This article allowed the “priceless child” to
talk back.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Philip Smith, Frederick Wherry, Tamara Kay, the participants of the
Yale Center for Cultural Sociology Workshop and the MIT-NYU Morals and Markets Workshop,
as well as the reviewers of Childhood, for their support and incisive feedback on this paper. She also
especially thanks Ana María López, who accompanied her through the research process.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship,
and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Jijon 75

ORCID iD
Isabel Jijon [Link]

Notes
1. Although the ILO distinguishes between “acceptable child work” and “unacceptable child
labor,” this distinction is often lost in translation. In Spanish, both “child labor” and “child
work” are translated into the same term, “trabajo infantil,” making it harder for actors discuss-
ing this issue to draw a clear moral line.
2. The ILO, children between ages 12 and 14 who do “light work,” meaning less than 14 hours
a week, are not involved in child labor (ILO, 2013: 45).
3. In this article, I use the term “child labor” only as a legal category, without positive or nega-
tive moral connotations. The point of the article is to examine how different actors give this
category different moral meanings.
4. From emails and conversations with social workers and scholars.
5. When less than 25% of interviewees share an experience or opinion, I use the term “few.”
When 26% to 50% of participants share an opinion, I say “some.” Between 51% and 75%,
I say “most,” and 75% to 99% I say “almost all.” Whenever I use the term “all,” I am referring
to 100% of the interviewees.

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