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Living and Working in Poverty in Latin America pp 13–39Cite as

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Resizing Children’s Work: Anthropological Notes on Mexican Girls

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Abstract

The main objective of this chapter is to analyze the limits established between the city as an adult, masculinized space and the girls who work in the streets of Mexico City. By means of an ethnographic approach based on interviews, participant observation, life stories, and drawings, this study deals with three aspects that are essential to an understanding of this phenomenon. First, the spaces of girls’ work will be analyzed, visibilizing the double inequalities to which they are exposed because of their age and because of their sex. Second, the gender differences in their working conditions, compared to the group of boys. Finally, based on the analysis of these inequalities, it is necessary to review the discourses and programs of social attention to childhood derived from the 2030 Global Agenda on Sustainable Development.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Tianguis is a Náhuatl word that means an open-air market. It can be temporary or permanent in certain urban areas, although they are usually mobile. Sometimes they are also called markets on wheels.

  2. 2.

    The micros are small private buses that provide public transport. They are also called peseros because in the past they use to cost one Mexican peso (currently the price ranges between four and six pesos).

  3. 3.

    By “minors of the streets” I mean boys and girls who have broken the family bond temporarily or permanently, who sleep on public streets and survive by performing marginal activities in the informal street economy, while “minors on the streets” refers to boys and girls who maintain their family bonds, usually are in school, and perform marginal activities in the street economy for their own subsistence or to help the family.

  4. 4.

    I use the concept reconstructed household to refer to second unions due to previous separations or widow/widowerhood.

  5. 5.

    Cháchara refers to second-hand articles that are sold at the open-air market.

  6. 6.

    Grocery store, food store.

  7. 7.

    Cooking pots and utensils.

  8. 8.

    Maquila doméstica refers to the small-scale production at home or in private buildings of certain products that are finished later in factories and industrial businesses.

  9. 9.

    Pepenadora is the person who search among dumps and waste for food or other articles that can subsequently be re-sold.

  10. 10.

    Girls who pack bags in supermarkets.

  11. 11.

    In typical definitions of children’s work, this activity is not considered to be work but rather “a marginal income activity.” I believe this is an error because this activity has the characteristics of other jobs such as temporal regularity, direct participation in the process, and retribution, monetary, or otherwise.

  12. 12.

    It is impossible to quote all the theoretical reflections and demands contributed by feminism. Some of the main references are the works by Beauvoir, Wollstonecraft, Friedan, and Pateman, among many others (see full references in the bibliography).

  13. 13.

    Regarding gender dichotomies, there is the male-centered model that presents men’s roles as active, strong, and pragmatic and with a command of reason, while women occupy roles of passivity, weakness, kindness, and feeling. In contrast to this model, the classical contributions made by the anthropologist Michelle Z. Rosaldo are interesting (regarding the domestic and public dichotomy) and Sherry B. Ortner (on the nature and culture of dichotomy) in Harris and Young (1979).

  14. 14.

    Due to advances in gender studies, in recent years this issue has been gaining visibility. Many studies have begun incorporating the economic contributions of domestic work (mainly done by women) in their analyses while at the same time making progress in recognizing the care economy as part of the international agenda and public policy. For more information on the subject, see, among many others, some reference works such as Himmelweit (1995) or the Special Issue on Unpaid Household Work published by the journal Feminist Economics (1996). However, in the case of female child work, there are still many aspects that must be reflected upon and studied in more depth.

  15. 15.

    The anthropology of gender has analyzed this situation in depth with many theoretical contributions. One classic publication is the study by Martin and Voorhies (1978).

  16. 16.

    Each year, UNICEF publishes a Report on the Worldwide State of Childhood. In 1997, UNICEF prepared a monograph on Children’s Work which is a classic reference for this subject.

  17. 17.

    Hand truck or dolly.

  18. 18.

    It is important to highlight that the current global number of children in a child labor situation has decreased by a third, from 246 million to 168 million, since the year 2000. About half, 85 million, are performing hazardous work (compared to 171 million in the year 2000) (SIMPOC, ILO-IPEC). For more information, see http://www.ilo.org/ipec/ChildlabourstatisticsSIMPOC/lang%2D%2Des/index.htm

  19. 19.

    As proof of this international progress, we can highlight certain conventions and protocols, such as the following:

    • Conventions and Recommendations on child labor (Convention no. 138 and Recommendation no. 146 (year 1973), Convention no. 182 and Recommendation no. 190 (year 1999)).

    • Conventions, Protocols, and Recommendations on forced labor (Convention no. 29 (year 1930) and its protocol from 2014, Recommendation no. 35 and no. 203, and Convention no. 105 (year 1957)).

    • Palermo Protocol (year 2000) to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children.

  20. 20.

    Similarly, since 1997 countries from around the world have shared information on policy and “good practices” and have committed to eliminate child work during a series of global conferences on child work held in Norway (1997), the Netherlands (2010), and Brazil (2013). The last of these, the III Global Mundial, held in Brasilia in October 2013, approved the Brasilia Declaration on Child Labor. At the end of the conference, the Government of Argentina announced that, in collaboration with the ILO, it would host the IV Global Conference on the Sustained Eradication of Child Labor in 2017.

  21. 21.

    See http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/

  22. 22.

    For more information regarding global progress on the fight against child labor, consult Alliance 8.7, available online at http://www.alliance87.org

  23. 23.

    Proof of this is their participation in the creation of ILO’s C-182 (1999) and their proposals for the Kundapur 10 points (1996). For more information on child participation, see (among others) http://molacnats.org/; https://www.unicef.org/adolescence/cypguide/index_child_led.html

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), Madrid, España

    Begoña Leyra Fatou

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  1. CONICET, Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    María Eugenia Rausky

  2. CONICET, Facultad de Trabajo Social, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Mariana Chaves

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Leyra Fatou, B. (2019). Resizing Children’s Work: Anthropological Notes on Mexican Girls. In: Rausky, M., Chaves, M. (eds) Living and Working in Poverty in Latin America. Governance, Development, and Social Inclusion in Latin America. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00901-4_2

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