Despite studies showing that women and children tend to bear the brunt of structural adjustment policies modifying a nations economy, when international, national and even local policies are made, they are often decided without considering the ways in which such policies will concretely affect resources and opportunities available for young people.
Under the direction of Victoria Lawson, doctoral student Dena Aufseeser will explore the effect of economic restructuring and international children's rights regimes on working children in Lima and Cusco Peru. The research will attempt to answer the questions 1) In what ways do Peruvian welfare policy and programs aimed at economically disadvantaged children reflect international children's rights and free-market ideologies? 2) What strategies do economically disadvantaged children use to negotiate these changes? and 3) In what ways do children's lived experiences differ from how they are constructed and portrayed by policy, government officials, and care workers? Informational interviews with government officials, program staff, NGO directors and police officers, along with analysis of relevant child welfare policy, will provide data on available services and opportunities, requisites to utilize such services, and the ways in which adults invoke children's rights. Extended interviews and participant observation with 15 street children in Lima and 15 street children in Cusco will provide data on children's livelihood strategies and responses to social and economic change, exploring topics related to work, education, and interaction with service-providers. Data will then be compared to examine gaps and disconnects in the ways in which adults construct and portray childhood and the ways children describe and frame their own experiences. The methodology recognizes children as social actors, providing spaces for their participation, rather than just providing glimpses into changing social indicators. The findings will indicate how economically vulnerable children respond to structural constraints in creative ways, as well as explore the ways in which free-market ideology and international children's rights complement and contradict each other in the context of child welfare policy in Peru. The investigators expect to demonstrate that children's actual experiences of social and economic change differ significantly from government officials? and policy makers? Claims and portrayals of child poverty, as children's rights continue to be defined by adults, and are selectively applied.
This research looks at how global ideas relating to free-market ideologies and international children's rights are reworked in specific contexts. It analyzes the ways in which working children in Lima and Cusco respond to, and negotiate, economic and social changes. An understanding of children's livelihood strategies and views of their future will contribute to strengthening policy regarding child labor and education, as well as overall national development within Perú. In particular, by raising awareness of some of the limitations of current indicators used to measure poverty, this work will contribute to better policy analysis, and in turn, better policies to address issues related to child poverty. It may also impact the literature on international development and children's geographies by considering the ways in which children utilize public spaces as places of work and living. Because child poverty is an issue all countries face, increased communication and awareness of the ways in which both youth and governments respond to such problems can facilitate collaboration to make a concerted effort to improve children's opportunities for future success everywhere. This project is jointly supported by the NSF Geography and Spatial Sciences Program and the Americas Program of the NSF Office of International Science and Engineering.
By ratifying the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Peruvian government committed both to ensuring children’s right to free accessible education and to protecting children from economic exploitation and hazardous labor. However, at the same time, Peru has implemented a series of structural adjustments, or policies modifying a nation’s economy, including cuts to social spending, the promotion of market-led growth, and increased privatization. Despite studies showing that women and children tend to bear the brunt of structural adjustment, economic policy reforms are often implemented without considering the effects on the resources and opportunities available for young people. Through an in-depth look at children’s everyday experiences and livelihood strategies, this research examined the impact of economic restructuring and international children’s rights frameworks on the lives of working children in Lima and Cusco Peru. In particular, it considered whether international children’s rights have played a meaningful role in improving street children’s lives, especially in the face of little government support for social services. The intellectual merit of this work lies in initiating a conversation between literatures about international development with analysis of children’s livelihood strategies and agency to reveal the way such discourses are shaped and experienced on the ground. International development theories and policies have been critiqued for presenting Western experiences as universal. However, the ways in which universal assumptions of childhood inform poverty reduction policies and interventions have not been challenged as much. This project found that children’s rights, especially because they are selectively implemented and enforced, have ironically provided the moral justification for the removal of working children from public spaces. Police apprehend children working in wealthy or touristy neighborhoods by appealing to laws against child labor and to Peru’s law to protect children found begging. Additionally, other children’s rights policies that have been modeled after ‘universal’ understandings of childhood inadequately reflect street children’s experiences. In particular, this project challenges a false dichotomy presented between education and labor, suggesting alternative readings of children’s rights that are less-top down. This project has important implications for how poverty is measured and defined. Currently, poverty is primarily defined in economic terms, often based on income or household consumption. Even multivariate measures of poverty, however, fail to look at what poverty means for children. This project found that while lack of money and food are important characteristics, children themselves also placed a big emphasis on poverty as the absence of caring relationships. Being poor then is having no parents to look after you. Leaving the street similarly depended not just on gaining access to material resources but finding caring individuals to support them. This work pushes academics to include elements of care in their measures of poverty. It suggests that programs aimed at warehousing street children in large institutions, without also addressing the lack of care in their lives, will be inadequate. Other broader impacts of this research relate to policies regarding child labor and education, suggesting there may be unintended consequences of exclusively lobbying against children working without considering alternative sources of livelihood. Additionally, it highlights possible barriers to school attendance. Reports from this research will be published in both Spanish and English and made accessible to various NGOs and governmental agencies within Peru. Because child poverty is an issue all countries face, increased communication and awareness of the ways in which both youth and governments respond to such problems can facilitate collaboration to make a concerted effort to improve children’s opportunities for future success everywhere.
