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Representation as power and performative practice: Global civil society advocacy for working children

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 July 2015

ANNA HOLZSCHEITER
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Abstract

This article analyses global civil society advocacy in the field of child labour through the lens of theories on political representation in global governance. The article is sympathetic to newer theories on political representation which, fundamentally, understand representation as a dialectic of performative practices between representatives and their real or imagined constituencies. However, the article argues that the contemporary literature on political representation turns a blind eye on two aspects that are central to understanding this dialectic of representation in the child labour case: first, representation as power and second, the contested nature of citizenship. The article thus proposes an approach to political representation that allows highlighting the power-dimension inherent to the interrelation between formal and performative aspects of representation, that is, between civil society actors’ power to represent and their power over representation. Using such an approach, the article presents empirical insights on CSO representation in global policymaking on child labour – a field in which conflicts over legitimate representation, citizenship, and grassroots participation continue to be exceptionally fierce.

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Articles
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , April 2016 , pp. 205 - 226
Copyright
© 2015 British International Studies Association 

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Footnotes

*

I thank Mertkan Hamit, Benjamin Stachursky, Christian Thauer, and Cornelia Ulbert for valuable comments on earlier versions of this article. I am also grateful to Jackie Bhabha and the faculty at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard School of Public Health for comments on the article during a lecture at FXB. Monika Glowacki has been of tremendous help in the final editing of this article. I have also benefitted greatly from the comments of the two anonymous reviewers as well as the editors of the Review of International Studies. The finalisation of this article wouldn't have been possible without a generous research scholarship funded by the Center for European Studies at Harvard University and the German Academic Exchange Service.

References

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18 Ibid., p. 163.

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23 Ibid., p. 12

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39 I am grateful to one of the two anonymous reviewers for this article who highlighted this point.

40 Holzscheiter, Children’s Rights in International Politics.

41 General Assembly resolution 44/25 of 20 November 1989, ‘United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child’, entered into force 2 September 1990, Article 1.

42 Gerison Lansdown, Evolving Capacities and Participation (Victoria/British Columbia: Institute for Child Rights and Development, 2003); Roche, Jeremy, ‘Children: Rights, participation and citizenship’, Childhood, 6:4 (1999), pp. 475–494CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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44 Invernizzi, Antonella and Williams, Jane, Children and Citizenship (London et al.: SAGE Publishers, 2008)Google Scholar.

45 Among the most well-known global CSOs working in the field of child protection are: the Save the Children Alliance, CARE, PLAN, World Vision, the Terre des Hommes International Federation, and the Bernard van Leer Foundation. In child labour, Anti-Slavery International is commonly considered to be the most influential non-state actor while the Global March Against Child Labour is the largest network of organisations in this field.

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47 Bourdillon, Michael, Levison, Deborah, Myers, William E., White, and Ben, Rights and Wrongs of Children’s Work (New Brunswick/New Jersey/London: Rutgers University Press, 2010), p. 40Google Scholar.

48 Already by 1921, the ILO had adopted six entire Conventions concerned with working children.

49 Today the NGO is called Anti-Slavery International.

50 Myrstad, Geir, ‘What can trade unions do to combat child labour?’, Childhood, 6:1 (1999), pp. 75–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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52 Ibid., p. 112.

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55 Boyden and Levison, Children as Economic and Social Actors.

56 ILO, International Program on the Elimination of Child Labour, available at: {http://www.ilo.org/ipec/lang--en/index.htm} accessed 7 May 2015.

57 The Programme, however, does not exist any longer; see {http://web.worldbank.org/archive/website01048/WEB/0__MENUP.HTM} accessed 7 May 2015.

58 United Nations Global Compact, ‘The Ten Principles’, available at: {www.unglobalcompact.org/AboutTheGC/TheTenPrinciples/index.html} accessed 7 May 2015.

59 Office, International Labour, Union Policies and Action Plans to Combat Child Labour (Geneva: ILO, 2000)Google Scholar.

60 Dahlén, The Negotiable Child, p. 185.

61 International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, ‘Campaigning Against Child Labour’, available at: {http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/netzquelle/01316.pdf} accessed 7 May 2015.

62 Fyfe, The Worldwide Movement Against Child Labour, p. 26, fn. 55.

63 Fyfe, The Worldwide Movement Against Child Labour.

64 The institutionalisation of cooperative relationships between ILO and these CSOs is evidenced by the fact that Education International and the Global March are partners in the Global Task Force on Child Labour and Education, hosted by the ILO, available at: {http://www.ilo.org/ipec/Action/Education/GlobalTaskForceonchildlaboburandeducation/lang--en/index.htm} accessed 7 May 2015.

65 See ILO/Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, The Hague Global Child Labour Conference 2010, The Hague Conference Report, p. 7 (The Hague, 2010), available at: {http://www.ilo.org/ipecinfo/product/viewProduct.do?productId=14575} accessed 7 May 2015.

66 Ennew, ‘The history of children’s rights’, p. 48.

67 Boyden and Levison, Children as Economic and Social Actors, p. 6; Liebel, Manfred, ‘Working children as social subjects: the contribution of working children’s organizations to social transformations’, Childhood, 10:3 (2003), pp. 265–285CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

68 Fyfe, The Worldwide Movement Against Child Labour, p. 48.

69 The eschewed politics of child participation of the Global March have also been studied at the national/local level. See Susan Levine’s article on the Global March campaign in South Africa in the late 1990s; Levine, Susan, ‘Bittersweet Harvest: Children, work and the global march against child labour in the post-apartheid state’, Critique of Anthropology, 19:2 (1999), pp. 139–155CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 Fyfe, The Worldwide Movement Against Child Labour, p. 46.

71 Bourdillon et al., Rights and Wrongs of Children’s Work, pp. 143ff.

72 Following their emergence in Latin America, most working children’s organisations have adopted the acronym NATs (niños y niñas trabajadores). Today, the largest child worker organisations are the African Movement for Working Children and Youth/Mouvement Africain d’Enfants et Jeunes Travailleurs; the Latin America Movement of Working Children and Adolescents (MOLACNATS); the Working Children’s Movement in South and Central Asia; and EUROPANATS.

73 Miljeteig, Per, Creating Partnerships with Working Children and Youth (Washington: The Social Protection Unit. Human Development Network. The World Bank, 2000)Google Scholar.

74 See the statement by MOLACNATs in the context of the 2010 Global Child Labour Conference Conference organised by ILO in the Hague, available at: {www.cetri.be/spip.php?article1609} accessed 7 May 2015.

75 Hungerland, Beatrice, Liebel, Manfred, Milne, Bryan, Wihstutz, and Anne, Working to be Someone: Child Focused Research and Practice with Working Children (London/Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Pub, 2007)Google Scholar.

76 Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, ‘Combating the Most Intolerable Forms of Child Labour: A Global Challenge, Report of the Amsterdam Child Labour Conference (February 1997), available at: {http://ilo-mirror.library.cornell.edu/public/english/comp/child/conf/amsterdam/report.pdf} accessed 7 May 2015.

77 Miljeteig, Creating Partnerships with Working Children and Youth, pp. 18–19.

78 The 2010 meeting of EUROPANATS took place alongside the official 2010 ILO Conference in The Hague, staged as an alternative meeting to express ‘deep disagreement’ with ILO’s child labour policies, available at: {www.italianats.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=216%3Aprogramma-incontro&catid=35%3Aamericalatina&Itemid=69&lang=en} accessed 7 May 2015.

79 See ‘Child Labour Dialogues’, available at: {http://www.childlabourdialogues.org/} accessed 7 May 2015.

80 See speech by Antje Weber, VENRO, during the Brasilia Conference, available at: {http://blog.kindernothilfe.org/de/archives/3368} accessed 7 May 2015.

81 Hindman, Hugh D., The World of Child Labor: An Historical and Regional Survey (New York: ME Sharpe, 2011)Google Scholar.

82 Global March Regional Coordinators, ‘From Exploitation to Eduation’, Global March Position on Child Labour and Education (2004), available at: {http://www.globalmarch.org/images/GM-Position-Paper-on-Child-Labour-and-Education.pdf} accessed 7 May 2015.

83 This focus arguably distorts the image of the working child, considering that the majority of children who work full time do so within a family context. In 2011, ILO reported that worldwide, 60 per cent of all child labourers were working in agriculture, and of these the ‘majority of working children are unpaid family members’, available at: {http://www.ilo.org/ipec/areas/Agriculture/lang--en/index.htm} accessed 7 May 2015.

84 CARE on ‘Children and Poverty Campaign’, available at: {www.careusa.org/campaigns/childrenpoverty/index.asp} accessed 7 May 2015. For a similar statement see: SOS Children’s Villages, ‘How does child labour undermine literacy?’, available at: {http://www.soschildrensvillages.org.uk/about-our-charity/news/international-literacy-day/how-does-child-labour-undermine-literacy} accessed 7 May 2015.

85 Global March on ‘Child Labour’, available at: {www.globalmarch.org/issues/child-labour} accessed 7 May 2015. For a similar quote, see terre des hommes on ‘child labour’, available at: {www.tdh.ch/en/topics/protection/trafficking-abuse-and-exploitation}accessed 7 May 2015.

86 Woodhead, Is There a Place for Work in Child Development?

87 Bourdillon et al., Rights and Wrongs of Children’s Work, p. 11.

88 A word search in Google, in fact, produced 11,350,000 hits for ‘child labour’ and ‘child labor’, while ‘children’s work’, ‘child work’, and ‘working children’ together accounted for only 1,263,000 hits.

89 See speech by ILO Director General Guy Ryder at the 2013 Global Conference on Child Labour in Brasilia, available at: {http://www.ilo.org/ipec/Campaignandadvocacy/BrasiliaConference/lang--en/index.htm} accessed 7 May 2015.

90 Bourdillon et al., Rights and Wrongs of Children’s Work, p. 9.

91 Dahlén, The Negotiable Child, p. 185.

92 See, for example, Kathmandu Declaration, ‘Convergence of working children from South and Central Asia’ (August 2005), available at: {http://www.italianats.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=49%3Akathmandu&catid=40%3Adichiarazioniufficiali&Itemid=62&lang=en} accessed 7 May 2015; Final Declaration of the 2nd World Meeting of Working Children and Adolescents, Berlin (April/May 2004), available at: {http://www.italianats.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=48%3Aberlino&catid=40%3Adichiarazioniufficiali&Itemid=62&lang=en} accessed 7 May 2015.

93 Miljeteig, Creating Partnerships with Working Children and Youth.

94 Hertel, Unexpected Power, ch. 3.

95 Fyfe, The Worldwide Movement Against Child Labour.

96 Miljeteig, Creating Partnerships with Working Children and Youth, p. 23.

97 Declaration of MOLACNATS on the occasion of the Global Child Labour Conference in Den Hague (May 2010), p. 3, available at: {http://www.pronats.de/assets/Uploads/molacnats-erklaerung-deutsch.pdf} accessed 7 May 2015.

98 IREWOC, Studying Child Labour: Policy Implications of Child-Centered Research (Amsterdam: IREWOC, 2005)Google Scholar.

99 See, for example, the information provided by MOLACNATS, available at: {http://molacnats.org/index.php/movimientos/argentina/263-presentacion-del-manthoc} accessed 23 April 2015; or the ‘protagonismo infantil’ promoted by Infejant, an educational institution for child workers in Latin America and the Caribbean, available at: {http://www.ifejant.org.pe/} accessed 23 April 2015.

100 General Assembly resolution 44/25 of 20 November 1989, ‘United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child’, entered into force 2 September 1990, Art. 12.

101 Holzscheiter, Anna, ‘Power of discourse or discourse of the powerful? The reconstruction of global childhood norms in the drafting of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child’, Journal of Language and Politics, 10:1 (2011), pp. 1–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

102 The twenty-fifth anniversary of the UNCRC offered an opportunity to observe the degree to which child-focused CSOs had opened up to the principles enshrined in the Convention. Plan International, available at: {https://plan-international.org/where-we-work/geneva/news/commemorating-25-years-of-the-convention-on-the-rights-of-the-child}; Terre des homes on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the UNCRC, available at: {http://www.terredeshommes.org/universal-childrens-day-25th-anniversary-convention/} accessed 7 May 2015. CARE as one of the leading charities working in child protection, however, is occasionally making reference to the UNCRC but does not include a broad children’s rights agenda in its advocacy activities.

103 Peruzzotti, ‘Democratic credentials or bridging mechanisms?’, p. 163.

104 Lansdown, Gerison, Benchmarking Progress in Adopting and Implementing Child Rights Programming (London: International Save the Children Alliance, 2005), p. 62Google Scholar.

105 In fact, the 2012 UNICEF report card on adolescents (aged 10–19 years) argues that the international community knows less about adolescents ‘than other segments of the child population: too little about their situations, habits, hopes and dreams’; see UNICEF, Progress for Children: A Report Card on Adolescents (New York: UNICEF, 2012), p. 3Google Scholar. Interestingly, however, the 56-page report card contains only a small passage on working adolescents, which talks solely about exploitative labour, avoiding picturing adolescents as, potentially, economic actors earning an independent living.

106 On the child as an economic actor see Boyden and Levison, Children as Economic and Social Actors; Levison, Deborah, ‘Children as economic agents’, Feminist Economics, 6:1 (2000), pp. 125–134CrossRefGoogle Scholar.