The impact of coronavirus on working children in Buenos Aires
This article is part of a feature series exploring how the Covid-19 pandemic and the measures to prevent its spread are impacting the human rights of under-18s.
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This interview is also available in the original Spanish here.
[26 May 2020] Despite many countries having announced national lockdowns to prevent the spread of Covid-19, millions of people around the world don’t have the privilege of working from home or stopping working temporarily. In many countries, such as Argentina, where more than 35 percent of households live below the poverty line, this includes children and adolescents who work, and who in Argentina describe themselves as chiques del pueblo (or working class youth). Due to the financial circumstances at home, they see themselves required to work at home or in the informal economy, known as that because their work is not officially sanctioned.
To learn more about the situation in Buenos Aires’ low-income neighbourhoods, CRIN spoke with sociologist and teacher Santiago Morales, a member of La Miguelito Pepe, a group of community workers who advocate for the social and political rights and dignity of working children, and which partners with the local youth-led movement, Asamblea REVELDE, a member of the Latin American and Caribbean Movement of Working Children and Adolescents known as Molacnats.
Who are the children and young people you work with?
In the city of Buenos Aires many children and adolescents do the necessary chores so that the adults in the family can work outside of the home in exchange for money. They look after their younger siblings, they take them and pick them up from school, they do the food shopping, and clean and tidy the house. They also work alongside other adults in local markets or family-run shops. They learn different trades alongside adults with whom they have a trusting relationship, as well as contributing to the work itself.
They can mostly be found working in local markets in socially excluded neighbourhoods. Outside these areas, children and adolescents who work aren’t visible. In our country the policy of prohibition of child labour is very effective in the sense that it manages to hide the children who do work, which has driven child exploitation underground.
Being able to adhere to lockdowns and social distancing is considered a privilege. What do you think about this and what’s the reality of those living in low-income neighbourhoods?
The problem in Argentina, and in all of Latin America, is inequality. One out every two children in our country lives below the poverty line. Therefore the specific conditions in which quarantine can take place are very different from those in Europe.
To give you an example, in the house in front of the home one of the members of Asamblea REVELDE there live 35 people in five rooms and with two bathrooms. Two blocks from there, in the same neighbourhood, there’s a group of homes that aren’t connected to the sewer system and have no running water. And I’m talking about a neighbourhood that’s 20 minutes from the centre of Buenos Aires.
So in those situations of overcrowding and a lack of conditions of basic hygiene, we can ask ourselves how is it possible to follow the basic preventative measures. How can you ask someone to wash their hands if they don’t have running water? How can you ask someone to stay at home when they live with 35 people sharing five rooms and two bathrooms?
What risks do children and young people from low-income neighbourhoods face during this pandemic?
The main issue they face in the context of the pandemic is access to food. Because the majority of children from low-income neighbourhoods - that’s one out of every two children - are able to eat thanks to the adults who work in the informal economy. They live hand-to-mouth. They don’t have a salary; they have an income that depends on them going out to work. So, if they go out they have an income, and if they don’t go out they don’t have an income.
The national government has created policies to alleviate this situation by distributing packages of basic goods and financial support. But from what we can see in the neighbourhoods, it’s not enough. And if it weren’t for the solid network of organisations, NGOs, local movements and community workers that manage the delivery of food and basic goods, the situation would be exponentially worse.
Something else that’s concerning is the violence children suffer at home. They can’t call on school and community support services because everything has ground to a halt. However, children suffer violence in the home not just because of the social class they belong to; this violence mainly has to do with the patriarchal and adult-centric nature of our society, not with poverty.
In Latin America what’s understood by ‘child labour’?
The general conception of child labour suggests that it’s a form of flagrant human exploitation. And any type of economic activity that’s carried out by a child is categorised as child labour. We, with our feet on the ground, in real-world Latin America, clearly say that there are different types of work, and that it’s not all the same.
Excepting situations of violence, abuse and exploitation, there’s a Eurocentric understanding of childhood which equates being a child with play, school, dependence, and therefore an absence of responsibility and work. In Latin America this neocolonial model is so widespread that we view the reality according to European and North American models, which are based on realities that are completely different [to ours], yet they’re considered universal. That idyllic conception of childhood just doesn’t correspond to Latin American childhoods.
In particular in Buenos Aires, child labour is generally understood as equal to exploitation. They’re synonyms. But this is because of the abolitionist policies and campaigns led by the International Labour Organization - they’ve really seeped through. Whereas the child workers’ movements propose that we need to stop talking about child labour and instead talk about working children. Decolonising the lens through which we view Latin American childhoods is fundamental.
What measures could improve the insecurity that working children face in general and especially during this pandemic?
In view of the transformations that the global economy will experience as a consequence of this crisis, we would need to move towards a universal basic income for adults. It would also be important for there to be a recognition of the social contribution children make by going to school, by having an income they can manage themselves.
More specifically at present, the Argentinian government needs to urgently guarantee access to food and nutrition and implement communications campaigns about child helplines. Each province has its own helpline, but no one knows about them because they haven’t been promoted enough.
The first argument against giving an income to children would probably be that they would waste it...
Probably! This is a typical adultist argument. It would mean preventing children and adolescents from carrying out a certain activity - that is, to have an income - because they’re considered to lack the capacity to carry out that task, because of their age. Apart from the fact that it would be pertinent to ask if an adult, by dint of being an adult, has capacity to manage his or her money, it would be necessary for any policy of this sort to come with a learning process. If children don’t know how to manage money it’s because they haven’t been taught. We need to distinguish between capacity and know-how.
In any case, contrary to this argument, many children (whether they work or not) have a great capacity to manage money. But of course, it would be necessary to clearly establish how the implementation would work, based on different ages and interdisciplinary criteria.
Do you think that the labour activities child workers carry out should be regulated, legalising child employment or at least by lowering the minimum age to work?
The social movements of child and adolescent workers demand that their work be officially sanctioned. In fact, Bolivia’s child labour law was amended thanks to the activism of the country’s child workers’ organisation, UNATSBO.
Honestly, I don’t know if the work should be legalised. But what I do believe is that blanket bans are not the right approach because they don’t protect children. As a first step, I think it’s important not only to stop concealing this work, but also stop stigmatising and criminalising it. The reality is that children from low-income backgrounds work, whether international organisations like it or not. And in the future many more will be working.
The argument that child labour should be abolished presumes that being a child is one specific thing, and it doesn’t open itself up to the possibility that there are multiple childhoods that exist in Latin America. Moreover it’s an adultist approach in the sense that it doesn’t recognise children’s capacity to be social subjects and actors in overcoming their own realities - which, of course, are the product of inequality and poverty, but that’s our reality. What should really be prohibited is overcrowding, hunger and the concentration of wealth.
You mentioned the word ‘adultist’ - what does it mean?
Adultism is linked to adultcentrism. Basically what the term adultcentrism does is recognise the existence of a system of oppression that establishes access to and denial of goods based on age. That is to say, it gives rise to inequalities in the enjoyment of rights because of age differences.
So in thinking of society as adultcentric involves thinking not only that adults are at the centre, but also that the criterion for what’s valid, good, truthful, fair, is being an adult. Therefore our societies not only deprive themselves of the contribution that new generations can make based on what they experience, feel and know about, but also that children are excluded from the public domain; they are banished to the private domain. And adultism is the concrete form of violence typical of an adultcentric society.
We like to share interesting materials with our readers - which can you recommend?
Children in Motion: From adultcentrism to emancipation. It’s a book for researchers and teachers. And the series Anti-Princesses from the publishing house Chirimbote. It’s a children’s book. What it does is revisit female historical figures who, because of the patriarchal nature of our societies, were kept out of the history books.