Through the 2004 Child and Youth Studies
Institute, African researchers are being invited
to contribute to a better understanding of the sources,
dynamics and consequences of the
exploitation of the labour power of children and the youth in
contemporary Africa. Some of the
earliest evidence of the exploitation to which children and the
youth are being subjected was brought
to light by the phenomenon of street urchins and alienated urban
youth who came in different categories but were all
uniformly vulnerable to abuse and
exploitation by adults, including as beggars in organised
syndicates, manual labourers, casual
workers, apprentices, sexual objects, and street hawkers.
Subsequently, evidence was collected
which indicated that the systematic recruitment and use of
children and young persons in
"sweatshops" which was once thought to be a phenomenon limited
to the export-oriented countries of
East Asia and Latin America was very much present in
Africa as producers of various consumer goods sought to
limit their production costs, increase
their competitiveness, and widen their profit margin.
Furthermore, it soon came to light
that a booming niche trade in the labour of children and the
youth in plantation agriculture was
taking place in various parts of the continent. This trade in
children’s labour was at the origin of
the transborder trafficking of young persons; the traffic has
been boosted in recent times by the booming informal
sector trade in domestic labour and
involving the recruitment of children and young persons from one
country to work as househelps in other
countries under conditions that some have categorised as
literally equivalent to modern-day
slavery. The difficult economic conditions prevailing across the
continent, coupled with the expansion in the boundaries
of poverty and informalisation, major
incidences of violent conflict, the increased problem of
refugees and displaced persons, the
growth of the tourist sector, and the devastating impact of the
HIV/AIDS pandemic have contributed to
the accentuated vulnerability of children and the youth to
exploitation in the labour process. Attention has been
drawn to the emergence of the
phenomenon of child-headed families and households and the role
which this plays in the increased
deployment of children and the youth into the labour process.
These developments constitute important elements
around which participants in the 2004
Session of the Child and Youth Studies Institute are being
invited to focus their attention with
a view to deepening knowledge about the contemporary dynamics of
the exploitation of the labour power
of children and the youth, as well as the range of abuses
associated with the process. In doing
so, participants will be encouraged to undertake a critical
assessment of the literature that has been produced on
children and the youth in the labour
process; contribute in a substantive way to questioning existing
theoretical/conceptual approaches and developing new insights;
marshal new empirical evidence;
provide fresh re-interpretations of existing data; address the
methodological fuzziness that
characterises much of the research that has been undertaken on
the exploitation of children and the
youth in the labour process; bring a historical perspective to
bear on the role of children in the labour process; weigh
the economic costs and benefits of
eliminating child labour; explore the directions in which
tradition has evolved as it pertains
to the place of children and the youth in the production and
reproduction of livelihood; identify
the sources of the susceptibility of children and the youth to
exploitation; pin-point the
international conventions that pertain to the involvement of
children and the youth in the labour
process, what they mean in practice, the developmental dilemmas
which they pose and how these dilemmas could be overcome;
and sharpen their own research
interventions through the production of publishable reports on a
given aspect of the theme of the 2004
session. In other to assist the participants in the realisation
of these goals, the resources of the CODESRIA Centre for
Documentation and Information (CODICE),
as well as the expertise of invited resource persons will be
made available to them.
