Learning and earning: relational scales of children's work

Area

(2006) 38.3, 231–239

ISSN 0004-0894 © The Authors.Journal compilation © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2006

Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Learning and earning: relational scales of children’s work

Joel Jennings*, Stuart Aitken**, Silvia López Estrada

†

and Adriana Fernandez**

*Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Downing Place, Cambridge CB2 3EN

Email: [email protected]

**Department of Geography, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182-4493, USA

†

El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Departamento de Estudios de Población, Tijuana, B. C. México, C.P. 22320

Revised manuscript received 23 February 2006

There is an important dissonance in recent studies of children’s work between the global effortsto eradicate abusive forms of child labour on the one hand and, on the other hand, localsettings where children’s work plays an important role in social reproduction, socialization andskill acquisition. This research explores the reasons for this dissonance by eliding both theglobal perspectives of children’s rights and the local realities of children’s daily geographies.By closing the gap between global knowledge about children (from above) and children’sknowledge and agency in their own environments (from below), we seek to present arelational account of children’s work within the context of their daily geographies. Wedraw on data collected with child workers in Tijuana, Mexico to demonstrate thecomplex role that children’s work often plays in the daily geographies of young people.

Key words:

children, scale, Tijuana, work, agency, resilience

Context: children on the edge

Tijuana is located in the extreme north-western cornerof Mexico, and is part of one of the most dynamicborder regions in the world. This growing andchallenging city experienced high population growthrates and substantial economic expansion since 1940(Ganster 2000), when the US government created theBracero Program to employ Mexicans in agricultureand railroad construction. While the origin of Tijuana’seconomy was based on the commerce and servicesoffered to North American tourism, in the 1970s theestablishment of the maquiladora industry

1

radicallychanged the local economy and the labour marketby increasing formal employment opportunities (López1998). However, informal activities continue to persistin Tijuana and account for 10 per cent of theeconomically active population (INEGI 2000).

Within the globalized economy, the growth ofsupermarkets as dominant buyers in global foodmarkets has developed in the last decade in Latin

American cities like Tijuana. These enterpriseshave access to suppliers all over the world throughnetworks of production and exportation linked toglobal chains (Dolan and Humphrey 2004). In Tijuana,supermarkets emerged in the 1980s when, in thecontext of economic devaluations, the commerceand services sectors were transformed in order tointroduce national products. Thus, supermarketsand large self-service stores of national firms wereestablished in Tijuana, in turn creating a structure ofopportunities for children’s work as packers.

2

Besides the devalued peso in Tijuana, a large partof the supermarkets’ success is due to the peculiareconomics of the US–Mexico border. Mexicancustomers who used to shop across the border are nowstaying home, while more US customers, particularlythose of Mexican origin, are crossing over in searchof bargains or Mexican products. The growth in thecommercial sector, accelerated by the implementationof the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994,created another challenge for supermarkets as in recent

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years major retail chains entered into joint ventureswith US powerhouses Wal-Mart, Price Club, OfficeDepot and others. This challenge likewise increasedthe number of positions for children as packers.

The spatial organization of Tijuana has been deter-mined by continuous waves of migrants, as well asan existing mass of marginal and unemployed poor.The federal government has intervened to developtourist, industrial and commercial areas, but thesedesign elements have been inconsequential. They fallparticularly short when considered in the contextof significantly underestimated population growththat has resulted in a chaotic and polarized urbanstructure (López 1998). Thus, the fragmented nationalretailing sector, ranging from traditional corner storesto specialized and modern auto-service supermarkets,is reflected in the geographic organization of the city.During the 1990s the eastern section of Tijuanadeveloped, comprising primarily middle class and lowincome neighbourhoods. Supermarkets took advan-tage of the developmental process to locate their newbranches in this zone, so they are contiguous toresidential areas where clients and the labour force(including child packers) live.

Overall, supermarkets’ urban expansion contributesto a growing presence of children’s work, a processthat characterizes major Latin American cities likeTijuana. According to the study 100 Ciudades (DIF-UNICEF 2004, 19), in 2003 in Tijuana there were4752 children working as shoe cleaners, streetsellers, packers and in other such jobs. At that time,child packers in supermarkets represented 25 per centof the total working child population in the city.

Our investigation focuses on the economic andsocial geographies of a particular group of about1200 children who worked in Tijuana supermarketsin 2004. Known collectively as Los Cerillos (TheMatchsticks) for their matching brown aprons andwhite uniforms and red caps, the children work afterschool and on the weekends as grocery packers forsupermarket customers. The young people, boys andgirls between the ages of 9 and 14, are not formallyrecognized as workers by store management but,rather, they are called ‘volunteers’. As volunteersthey enjoy no formal rights as workers nor do theyreceive any standardized pay. Rather, store patronswho appreciate the children’s efforts at packinggroceries (and often loading groceries into their cars)will give the children a few pesos and occasionally buythem ice cream from carts near the entrance of stores.

This seemingly innocuous means for children toearn pocket change, upon closer inspection, is fraught

with contradictions that say as much about post-industrial society as it does about children’s work.We utilize the children’s daily geographies of workas a foil against which we theorize the complex rolesof children’s work at a number of different socialscales.

3

Moreover, rather than exploring children’swork only ‘from above’ through global treaties andmandates from the developed world, or ‘from below’by exploring methods of resistance and survivalstrategies, our goal in this research is to bring thegeography back in (cf. Mitchell 1997) and to analysechildren’s work using a number of geographic scales.

The concept of scale, always an important themein geographic research, has been explored in somedetail in the past several years. Marston (2000) arguesthat three basic tenets have emerged from recentresearch of geographic scale. First, geographicscale is not a ‘naturally occurring’ phenomenon, butrather is socially constructed. Her second argumentis that geographic scale has material implications inthe real world – it is not merely a theoretical concept,but rather constrains or enables those with the powerto manipulate it. Marston’s final point argues thatgeographic constructions of scale have ‘both rhetoricaland material consequences [which] are often contradic-tory and contested and are not necessarily enduring(2000, 221). Geographic scale, as a social construction,is alternatively permeable, flexible and inherentlypolitical. We draw on this notion of scale as aninherently political construction to explore the con-flicting and contradictory practices and discoursesthat surround children’s work in Tijuana supermarkets.

4

Howitt (1998) provides a complementary meansof analytically considering the socially constructedaspects of geographic scale. He argues that under-standing geographic scale as a

relational

metaphorprovides a means for geographic phenomena to takeon different meanings based on their role within thescale being observed. Howitt suggests that geographicfeatures, similar to notes in a musical scale, mayserve entirely different purposes and have differentnomenclature, depending on the construction of themusical scale being employed.

The relational nature of geographical scale isparticularly relevant to our investigation because theimplications of children’s work can be construed asradically different at various geographic scales. Workoften provides a means for children to demonstrateindividual agency while contributing to their family’seconomic strategies. Simultaneously, children work-ing in the supermarkets may be resisting efforts ofthe Mexican state to regulate their participation in

Learning and earning

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the work force, thus violating Mexican law andinternational children’s rights treaties to which theMexican state is party. We seek, in this research, tounpack the various meanings of children’s work inthe specific context of Tijuana supermarkets, whilesimultaneously seeking to situate children’s work inthe context of a late capitalist economy (Harvey 2000).

Children: scales of agency and autonomy

In past studies (Grey and Senser 1989; ILO 1993),researchers and policymakers have characterizedchildren’s work as a problematic social stigma thatdestroys the future of individual children as wellas the nation-states they inhabit. Recent literature,however, has begun to explore the spaces of children’swork as holding potential benefits for children andtheir families (White 1994; Woodhead 1999; Boyden

et al.

1998; Punch 2000; Katz 2004; Aitken andJennings 2004). White (1996) correctly points outthat although abuses of

child labour

5

can regularly befound in NGO reports and even daily newspapersand should certainly be eliminated,

children’s work

raises issues that are socially and economically morecomplex. Children’s work, when conducted undercaring oversight and with responsible guidance fromadults, can lead young people to exercise greaterpersonal agency, including experiencing more spatialautonomy within their daily geography (Boyden

et al.

1998; Aitken and Jennings 2004).

Agency

Children demonstrate agency by making decisionsthat shape the social and material environments inwhich they live. James and Prout define children’sagency as ‘[being] active in the construction anddetermination of their own social lives, the lives ofthose around them and the societies in which theylive’ (1990, 8). Thus, children’s decisions to work inthe supermarkets as well as their ability to create spacesof play and exploration within their work environmentreflect important displays of personal agency.

Though children demonstrate many examples ofagency in their working environments, we focushere on two predominant spaces where childrendemonstrate agency: the home and the supermarket.

Young workers recognize the importance of themoney they earn for contributing to the family, whichmay serve any purpose from buying school suppliesto ensuring that there are sufficient resources tokeep the family economically solvent. According tosurvey data collected in our research, 77 per cent of

child packers reported contributing at least a portionof their income to their families’ economy.

6

Children generally give the tips they earn at thestores to their mothers, who in turn use the moneyto support the children’s education by buying schoolsupplies, clothing and even food (Grey Postero

et al.

2005). Young people also reported retaining someof the money they earn to buy candy, toys and otherpersonal items (cf. White 1996). By contributing aportion of their income to their families, however,some children find that they are able to redefineand strengthen their position within their families(Aguirre 2004).

The work environment, for the child packers, mayat times also provide a forum for play and imagina-tion. Katz (2004) argues that children’s work, eitherin groups or individually, is often seamlessly inter-twined with play. Interviews with the young peoplewho work in our study support this argument(Aitken

et al.

2006). When the stores are quiet andcustomers do not need assistance, for example, girlpackers may sit on benches near the front of thesupermarkets and play at being actors and actressesin their favourite Mexican soap opera, and someboys and girls play at being soldiers while standingin the line, as a way to perform the required dis-cipline in the supermarket floor (Aguirre 2004). Oneparent also teased that her children enjoyed workingin the store because it gave the young people anopportunity to have a girl or boyfriend at work. Theagency that young people demonstrate by choosing towork at the grocery stores may thus help young peopleacquire and develop inter-personal social skills. Suchskills may in turn help them enjoy greater social andeconomic success as they enter the work force.

Accepting the value of young people’s knowledgeabout their decision to work and incorporating theirvoices into the discourse around children’s work isan important step toward a deeper societal know-ledge of the impacts of young people’s work as wellas a strengthening of children’s agency in their ownwork (Johnson

et al.

1995).

Autonomy

Children’s spatial autonomy, or freedom of independentmovement between various locales (O’Brien

et al.

2000) is an important aspect of agency exercisedby child workers in their daily geographies. Thedemands of negotiating the urban landscape betweenwork, school and home in many cases necessitatethat children travel autonomously within the city. Theschool day in Tijuana, for example, is conducted in

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two shifts, from 8:00 am to 12:30 pm and from 1:00pm to 5:30 pm, with children attending one of thesessions and working in the supermarkets during theother times.

The young workers who participated in our researchindicated geographic knowledge of not only theirown neighbourhoods, but also significant knowledgeof the public transportation system between theirhomes, school and work. Through a bricolage ofqualitative methods, including open-ended interviews,focus groups and mental mapping, young workersdescribed personal geographies that at times encom-passed large sections of Tijuana.

7

The closely woven strands of personal autonomyand responsibility for many child workers play outacross the streets and alleys of the Tijuana city-scape. The employment schedule of many parents,furthermore, means that working children learnquickly that they alone are responsible for ensuringthat they arrive at work on time. Negotiating tripsbetween work and home may require half an hourto an hour (total travel time) in a day already crowdedwith school, work and responsibilities at home.

While some children suggested they enjoy boththe economic and geographic autonomy that work-ing in the supermarkets provides, the demands ofnegotiating often significant distances in their dailygeographies unquestionably can also be taxing forchildren, or even adults. The additional stress that mayaccompany spatial autonomy, however, also provideschildren with an opportunity to explore their interestsand learn to live in the urban environments thatshape their daily experiences.

Children, at the scale of the individual, learnimportant lessons and often make vital contributionsto their families through their efforts in the super-markets. In this case, children’s work seems to bea careful balance of the agency and autonomy ofeach child as children and parents seek to meet thedaily needs of survival while ensuring that childrenare not overly stressed or abused in any way in theworking environment. Furthermore, child workersmay empower themselves through their earningswhile at the same time accepting the responsibilitiesof being a worker, whether or not their positions asworkers are acknowledged formally.

Child workers, whether working or playing, how-ever, are taking part in the global market place –the increasingly free market economy that originallyforced some of their parents to move from theinterior of Mexico to Tijuana. Thus the seeminglybeneficial and unproblematic aspects of children’s

work at the individual level take on more difficultaspects at other scales.

Households: the scale of social reproduction

Cindi Katz (2004), in her research about the Sudanesevillage of Howa, explores the concepts of resilienceand household survival in the face of capitalpenetration of rural villages. She argues that children’swork was widely adopted as an important aspectof family’s survival strategy. In contrast, among thefamilies of children working as packers in Tijuanasupermarkets, there is significant variation in the roleof children’s work in their families’ larger economicstrategy. For some families, including those who haverecently immigrated or are of lower socio-economicclass, children’s work and earnings can play animportant role in their economic survival strategies.In the study of 100 Ciudades by DIF-UNICEF (2004),it is suggested that household economic hardship isthe main reason for children’s earlier incorporationto work. In fact, according to our survey information,75 per cent of child packers declared that they workedto contribute to their families’ income. Of the other25 per cent, most were families of higher economicbackgrounds or consistent employment, who did notdepend upon children’s earnings for daily survival.The variation in family strategies relative to children’swork reflects both the importance of children’swork (particularly to those families that depend onchildren’s earnings) and may imply perceived benefitsthat more financially established families believe aregained from children’s work.

Resilience

For the families in our study that immigrated toTijuana recently, a great show of resilience is suggestedby their decision to move thousands of miles fromtheir homes, towns and extended families to begin anew life in Tijuana. Forced, in many cases, to choosebetween the impossible competition of subsidizedagriculture from the United States and Europe ormoving to Tijuana to find work, many of the familieschoose to leave their homes in the interior of Mexico.

Internal migrants, in similar fashion to transna-tional migrants, employ strategies of geographicmobility to resist the penetration of market forces intheir local economies. Transnational theorists (Basch-Schiller

et al.

1994; Portes 1997) have argued thattrans-migrants are demonstrating resistance to theinvasive economic policies of free-market capitalism


235


by creating flexible networks of economic activityoutside the traditional capital markets of the developedworld. Such strategies may include establishing informalbusinesses that import saleable goods carried bymigrants from visits to developed countries, thuscreating an informal goods market in many developingcountries. Children’s work in Tijuana supermarkets,for some families from lower socio-economic back-grounds, may be one such strategy of resilience atthe household scale.

Children working in Tijuana supermarkets, how-ever, come from a significant range of backgroundsand are certainly not all recent migrants. The diver-sity of economic class, furthermore, led governmentofficials to conduct a study in another area of the US–Mexico border to attempt to ascertain the number ofchildren who worked because of economic need asopposed to those children who were working forother reasons.

8

Thus, while children’s work

may

be an exampleof resilience to the penetration of capital into theinterior of Mexico, our research suggests that familiesmake the decision to let children work in Tijuanasupermarkets based on a range of factors

besides

immediate economic need. This leads to the conclu-sion that children’s work in Tijuana supermarkets(not to mention in less formalized spaces of work) iscomplex and varied not only between scales butalso within a given scale.

Community and state: scales of responsibility

Children’s work is a deeply integrated element ofMexican society. The changing demographic organ-ization of Mexico, however, driven by urbanizationand population shifts from the interior of Mexico tocities like Tijuana, is likewise changing the tradi-tional methods of oversight of children’s work. Therapid urbanization of the US–Mexico border, inareas like Tijuana, has led to important shifts in thetraditional oversight and a struggle for the right togovern children’s work. Traditional means of socialreproduction, including children’s participation froman early age in family businesses and agriculturalendeavours, is giving way to oversight by federaland state government agencies. The tension betweenthese two methods of monitoring children’s work onlyserves to complicate the already complex dynamicsof children’s work. The community, as we arguebelow, traditionally has been the scale at whichresponsibility for children’s work was circumscribed

in both urban and rural areas. The rapid growth inthe number of supermarkets in Tijuana, however,has led to the local authorities becoming involvedwith the monitoring and regulation of children’s work.Thus children’s work, while raising questions ofautonomy and agency at the scale of the individual,changes character dramatically at the societal scale tochallenge the role of the community versus the state.

The community: oversight from within

Children’s participation with both urban familybusinesses and agriculture is so deeply ingrainedin the culture and traditions of Mexico that it isprotected in the federal law of Mexico. Accordingto Article 22 of the Federal Labor Law, children arenot permitted to work when under the age of 14,

unless

they are working with their parents or closefamily members in a family-owned business. Thistacitly acknowledges the role of children’s work inthe realm of social reproduction and suggests thetrust that society puts in parents and families toprovide the necessary oversight to protect theirchildren in the working environment.

Children who work to support their families,particularly in the agricultural settings of the interiorof Mexico but also in urban family-run businesses,are part of a tightly woven social structure that isdesigned to protect the children while simultaneouslyteaching them the skills that will benefit them laterin life. In direct opposition to the de-contextualizedimages that Ruddick (2003) notes are used by inter-national child charities, children who work as packersin the supermarkets are enmeshed in a network offamily, educators and even at times store officials(though relations with this last group are oftenambiguous). Parents and extended families tradition-ally provide a network of support, care and respon-sibility for child workers, whether in the urban orthe rural environment.

External governance: the state

Rapid population growth, high population densityand the dollarized

9

economy have turned Tijuanainto one of the fastest growing cities in all ofMexico. Supermarkets, to meet the demand of thegrowing city, have sprung up all over Tijuana. Thegrowth of the supermarket industry in Tijuanadraws on the traditional role of children workingwith family businesses and creates opportunitiesfor children to work. Though it cannot be assumedthat because children’s work is occurring underthe supervision of family members that it is free of

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exploitation or even abuse (Boyden

et al.

1998),children’s work is still broadly viewed as the purviewand responsibility of the family. The massive scaleof economies within the grocery industry, exemplifiedby the presence of 64 supermarkets across Tijuanaat the time of fieldwork, however, have led tofundamental changes in the oversight of children’sparticipation as grocery assistants within the super-markets. Unlike small, family-operated neighbourhoodstores where the managers are generally familymembers, supermarkets are run under a corporatemanagement structure. Concern about the well-beingof child workers within the corporate structure ofthe supermarket chains have led the Tijuana branchof the federal government’s Secretaría del Trabajo yPrevisión Social (STPS) to begin a programme thatwill monitor the working conditions of children withinmost of the supermarkets in the area.

STPS is charged with ensuring the welfare of workersand the enforcement of labour laws throughoutMexico. Though STPS is a federal entity, it hasindependent branches in each federate state ofthe country, and some programmes are createdand administered at municipal level. In Tijuana, forexample, the local STPS agency created a regionalprogramme entitled

Apoyo Institucional para elDesarrollo Integral del Menor Empacador en Tien-das de Autoservicio

(PAIDIMETA),

10

which is taskedwith responsibility for ensuring safe working condi-tions within the supermarkets and educating thechildren about health and safety issues. PAIDIMETAalso keeps a roster of children who are participatingin the programme and issues permission for childrento work in the supermarkets, provided that childrenmeet all of the requirements. PAIDIMETA regula-tions require that all children who participate in theprogramme must demonstrate that they are attend-ing school full time, usually by presenting a letterfrom their school principal. Programme regulationsalso mandate that children can only work 20 hoursa week and they may not leave the store premiseswhile they are working. Furthermore, an officerfrom STPS is assigned to visit supermarkets aroundTijuana in order to monitor store conditions, whilecaseworkers from the Family Welfare System (DIF)provide educational meetings for the children toattend on store premises.

The conflict between community/family governanceof child workers and the state is further reflected inseveral anecdotal events that occurred during ourdata-gathering process. During our research, severalof the adults commented that they could not under-

stand why we would be interested in studying thechildren working in the grocery stores: they aregenerally well-protected by the community andthis was certainly not a case of abuse. If we wantedto study children, why didn’t we go and studythe children who were involved in prostitution inthe red-light district? Likewise, during a trip to theinterior of Mexico, we found adults bewildered bythe thought that we could be conducting a study ofchildren who worked in the supermarket. The conceptof children working in supermarkets being overseenby government agencies appeared to be an equallyforeign concept. However, it is important to notethat in other Mexican states such as Coahuila andZacatecas a similar programme exists to regulatechildren’s work at supermarkets. Children whowork in supermarkets in the interior of Mexico earnfar less than their counterparts at Tijuana, but theirearnings play an equally significant role in theirfamily’s economic strategy.

The unique economic geography of Tijuana, com-bined with the changing social structure of Mexicansociety in the face of hyper-urbanization, creates atension between the traditional role of family over-sight of child workers and the new post-industrialreality of global culture. Children and families livingin northern border cities like Tijuana can no longerbe guided solely by their cultural traditions, but mustcontend increasingly with the social and economicpenetration of the free market global economy.

The global: creation of a discourse

Eliminating the worst forms of child labor thus involvesa sustained combat that goes beyond legislating: itpresupposes a vision of society and of development.To be effective and sustainable, any action aimed atprohibiting and eliminating the worst forms of childlabor should be inspired, on the one hand by anawareness of the complexity of the economic,social and cultural issues involved, and on theother by practices that have proven to be effective.(ILO 2002, 6)

Aitken (2004) argues elsewhere that children shouldbe considered at the heart of the globalizationprocesses. In this research, however, we want toexplore globalization in the context of the creationof a discourse about children’s work. Children inMexico, as we outlined above, traditionally haveplayed an important role as workers and contributorsin the family unit. We suggest that children’s work,though widely accepted as an important aspect of


237


Mexican culture and codified into Federal LaborLaw, becomes culturally problematic only when inclose proximity to the economic and culturalhegemony of the United States.

The double-bind of the Mexican economy for manyfamilies centres around the under-development ofthe interior of the country and the dollarizedeconomy along the border. While it is true thatthe development of the post-industrial maquiladoraindustry has provided a significant amount of oppor-tunity for unskilled labourers along the US–Mexicoborder, the impact of the US dollar on the economyin Tijuana raises the cost of living to rates compara-ble with the United States. Thus, children’s labourcontinues to play a vital role in the economic survivalof the family.

In a number of states in Mexico that have similarprogrammes for children working in the supermarkets,however, children’s work is no longer an unquestionedpart of the family structure but, as we discussed above,now comes under the watchful eye of the government.The pressure for children to be in school rather thanat work is interwoven into the urban reality. Parentsand family members may find themselves torn betweenparticipation of children in the economic structure andthe discourses and theories of childhood. Emanatingfrom more developed counties (Woodhead 1999),non-governmental organizations, government sourcesand even local politics, the discourses of childhoodas a time free of work and responsibility createstensions and dissonance around the appropriaterelationship between children and work.

International organizations, particularly the Inter-national Labour Organization (ILO), have been makingsignificant efforts to create global policies that adjustfor realities of children’s work without giving a free passto corporations and individuals who abuse childrenthrough child labour. The ILO’s ‘Target the Intoler-able’ movement seeks to focus on eliminating childlabour abuses without destroying children’s rights tocontribute to their family’s income.

Ruddick (2003) further suggests that banning allchildren’s work without consideration for the speci-fics of a working environment may lead children tofind more harmful sources of income such as childprostitution. We argue with Bey (2003) and otherchildhood theorists (cf. Miljeteig 1999) that children’swork plays an important role in the social and familyfabric of developing countries like Mexico. There isa growing body of research, furthermore, that outlinesthe role and reality of child labour and children’swork in more developed parts of the world (Lavaletta

1999; Leonard 2004). Reaching beyond the globalgrand narrative of children’s work as an evil to bestamped out may benefit individual children andstrengthen social policies that regulate and governchildren’s lives. Efforts by the ILO, the UnitedNations and individual researchers to change thejudgmental aspects of the rhetoric surroundingchildren’s work represent important steps towards aresponsible and inclusive policy that will providethe greatest amount of benefit for child workers,their families and their societies.

Conclusions: relational scales of children’s work

[Child labour] implies condemnation, for the simplefact that, by referring to work done outside the homeand family, it produces the notion of economic profit.However, work is an economic activity and the factthat it might be performed by a child is not a reasonto eliminate the notion of profit. We see in the examplestudied here that if exploitation occurs, it concernsthe family as a whole. (Bey 2003)

In the past children’s work has been constructed asa grand narrative without addressing the nuances ofgeographic location, cultural tradition or economicreality. By utilizing a case study of children who workin Tijuana supermarkets as a foil against which toelaborate the complex realities of children’s work,we have sought to unpacked the complex rolethat geographic scale and cultural traditions play inthe construction of children’s work. Though we riskover-simplifying the complex dynamics of children’swork by breaking apart the process to individualscales, we believe that this method of analysis providesinsights that are otherwise obfuscated in the com-plexity of the debate around children’s work.

Conceptualizing children’s work in the context ofa set of relational scales provides a means for resear-chers to take multiple perspectives on a complexsocial scenario. Thus children’s work in Tijuanasupermarkets, as we suggested above, provideschildren with opportunities to demonstrate personalagency, take responsibility and ownership in theirwork, and contribute to their family’s economic needs.Children also face conflicts both in the supermarketfloor (with clients, supermarket managers and otherchildren), and at home (with parents and siblings).Each of these meanings are inscribed upon the bodiesof working children, suggesting once again thatchildren are indeed at the centre of any globaliza-tion debate (cf. Aitken

et al.

2006).

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Though international treaties like the United Nation’s

Rights of the Child

provide important advances overpast attempts to eliminate children’s work aroundthe globe, our research seeks to support and furtherthe claim (White 1994 1996; Boyden

et al.

1998)that any effort to universalize the ‘global child worker’runs great risk of ignoring the social and geographiccontext of children’s work. There is a continuingneed for theorizing children’s work, not merely asan economic process, but rather as a process con-tingent on the individual realities of children, theirfamilies and societies.

Acknowledgements

This project was funded by a research grant from the UC-Mexus-Conacyt Binational Fund. The authors would like toacknowledge the fund for its generous support. The authorswould also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers fortheir thoughtful comments on this paper. Their input improvedthe quality of this paper considerably and is appreciated.

Notes

1 Maquiladora industry: The term maquiladora refers toenterprises set up by foreign corporations in Mexico toprovide industrial processes or services that transform,produce or repair foreign merchandise that has been tem-porarily imported and is finally intended for exportation.By decentralizing the production process, transnationalcorporations benefit from cheap labour which reducestheir production costs.

2 In Mexico, children’s work as packers started in smallfamily businesses, and proliferated with the opening ofthe first supermarket firms in the 1940s. Despite this typeof work, children’s labour work had a late developmentin the northern border, but showed accelerated growthduring the 1990s.

3 This paper seeks to raise theoretical questions about chil-dren’s work and due to space limitations does not incor-porate ethnographic data collected with the children whoparticipated in the study. A more detailed account of theempirical data collected in this project can be found inAitken

et al.

(2006). A complete methodological accountof this project can be found in the research report (GreyPostero

et al.

2005).4 We recognize that Marston has moved beyond this

research in a recent publication (Marston

et al.

2005), butbelieve that this conceptualization of scale nonethelessadvances discussions of children’s geographies.

5 Child labour is generally viewed as exploitative due toinequality in their power relations with adults (Boyden

et al.

1998), whereas children’s work may be viewed aschildren exercising autonomy and independence inshaping their own daily geographies (Aitken

et al.

2006).

McKechnie and Hoobs (2000) state that while childlabour is economically motivated, child work is con-sidered as part of a child’s natural development, a socialgood; this definition of work makes sense of the way inwhich children’s work within Mexican families tradition-ally has been conceptualized. Here we agree withAitken’s (2006) critical definition of children’s work.

6 Although the survey was based in a non-probabilisticsample of 450 child packers, we think that the data reflecta trend in children’s motives for working, and the use oftheir earnings. In addition, workshops and interviewswith child packers allowed us to confirm this information.

7 A fuller review of the methods and study participants inthis research can be found in Appendix I at the end of thispaper.

8 Personal communication with PAIDIMETA official.9 The dollarized economy is identified as such because

workers earn Mexican currency (pesos) but must pay USprices for consumer goods, including basic staples likefood, clothing and even housing.

10 Programme of Institutional Support for the Integral Develop-ment of Child Packers in Tijuana’s Supermarkets.

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Appendix I: MethodsThis research is based on ethnographic and surveydata collected in Tijuana, Mexico between June2003 and December 2004. The fieldwork in thisstudy was conducted in three overlapping phases.An initial phase investigated the research site andthe potential for study participants (summer 2003).A second phase included preliminary interviewswith government officials, NGO practitioners, theparents of several child workers and a pilot studywith five children (December 2003). The third andlargest phase included focus groups and interviewswith 35 children and a broader questionnaire surveyof 450 children (autumn and winter 2003/2004).

The children’s interview and focus group processwas designed to learn why children worked, theimpacts of their work on their daily lives and to gainmore information about the children’s daily geogra-phies. Children were interviewed in small groups attheir schools and were asked to discuss the impactsof work on their daily lives. Themes discussed withthe children during the interviews included: family,migration, school, work, employment structures,incomes, social lives and future expectations. Chil-dren were also asked to draw maps of their dailygeographies during the focus group sessions andthese were also used as points of discussion duringthe interviews.

The adults interviewed during the second phaseof this research were included in the study becauseof their direct involvement with the children work-ing in the supermarkets. Study participants includedgovernment officials responsible for child welfarein Tijuana, NGO practitioners who work with childworkers in many types of work, parents of childrenwho work, and a medical doctor who cares for severalof our study participants. Researchers, employingsemi-structured interviews, asked adults to discussthemes including: the impacts of children’s work ontheir daily lives, necessity vs desire to work, chil-dren’s contributions to their household economicstrategies and the potential risks to child workers.

Learning and earning: relational scales of children's work

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