Discourse analysis around the issue of child labour in the Global South

Abstract

The paper focuses on the impact of discourses on positioning working children in social and political agendas in a semi-peripheral region of the world system. In Latin America at least two narratives around the issue of child labour coexist. Each of them has distinct political implications and practical consequences. On the one hand, we consider the Eurocentric conception of international agencies which establish the hegemonic categories related to childhood. This eurocentric discourse may seem distant and hardly operative in Latin American context, but we highlight its relevance since it is expressed in human rights instruments that have been ratified and incorporated in our countries legal framework. On the other hand, the postcolonial narrative raises the need to establish differentiated forms of nomination to address childhood in the periphery of the world system. Although this narrative may constitute a closer approach to the reality of children in the periphery, its corollary can be seen as a defense of child labour due to “cultural factors” that contributed to its naturalization and invisibilization. Though at face value it may seem an emancipatory discourse, we suggest that it consists of a conservative one, since it tends to the reproduction of inequality in society, based on the idea that people are assigned to certain positions in the productive structure due to their socio economic background. Altogether, the analysis of the ideological implications present in the narratives around the category of child labour is necessary to account for the factors that contribute to its persistence in Latin America.