International Labor Organization (ILO) has recently drawn attention to migrant child laborers as an underreported but highly vulnerable group. ILO has argued that migrant child laborers are even more vulnerable compared to local child laborers due to harsher working conditions, less visibility, lack of parental protection, and heightened disenfranchisement. Hence, a deeper understanding of the family circumstances and processes in this context is critical in developing more effective interventions targeting this population. According to ILO, 68 million children (ages 5 and 17) are child laborers, constituting about 11% of the child population worldwide. Forty-one percent of these child laborers are female. Child labor has been associated with serious health, developmental, educational, and psychological risks for youth. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) continues to be the continent with the highest incidence (21.7%) of child labor. Ghana is one of the SSA countries with the highest incidence of child labor (21.8%), 47% of which are females. In Ghana, adolescent girls frequently migrate alone from three highly impoverished northern regions to the southern cities to work as laborers in the informal economy. Adolescent girls increasingly make up the majority of the North-South migrants. Yet, there is a scarcity of research on the beliefs and attitudes of parents towards child independent migration and child labor. There is also limited understanding of the complex family processes behind the migration of adolescent girls to work as child laborers. These gaps are critical to address in order to have a more complete and contextualized understanding of girls' migration for work, which will subsequently inform policies and programs for more effective interventions. In light of the gaps in the literature, the purpose of this qualitative study is to explore parental ethnotheories on childhood, child independent migration, and child labor, as well as family processes behind decision making including multi-level factors (both protective and risk) that influence female children's/ adolescents' migration from home to work as child laborers. The study will explore the perspectives of three groups of parents/caregivers (n=90) from sending villages in two of the poorest districts of Northern region with adolescent daughters: 1. who migrated to work in the informal economy; 2. who dropped out of school but stayed in their village; and 3.who remained in school full-time. Given the gap in knowledge on parental perspectives on female child/adolescent migration for work in the cities, the findings of the proposed research study will contribute to the literature on child/adolescent migration for child labor. The findings will also allow for more effective and developmentally-, and contextually-relevant interventions. The proposed study is relevant to global public health as it will provide insights into the push factors that lead female children/adolescents to migrate alone to the city for child labor, which has critical negative psychosocial and health outcomes.
This proposed research study is well aligned with NICHD's mission to support research relevant to the psychological, behavioral, and educational development and health of children. The proposed study is also relevant to global public health as it will provide insights into the push factors that lead female children/adolescents to migrate alone to the city for child labor, which has critical negative psychosocial and health outcomes for children/adolescents.
