Roy Huijsmans

Children Working beyond Their Localities: Lao Children Working in Thailand.

Globally, migration statistics indicate rising numbers of people who have for various reasons left their local community. Of these, a considerable proportion is below the age of 18 and often engaged in some kind of work. Yet, the phenomenon of children working beyond their localities receives little special attention in migration studies or child labour studies. It is, however, increasingly addressed under the label of human trafficking. This article critically discusses the notion of human trafficking in relation to childhood and combines this with an analysis of a set of recent studies on Lao children working in Thailand. Based on this, the article concludes with some suggestions to come to a greater understanding of, and more relevant interventions for, children working beyond their localities.

‘Doing Gendered Age’: older mothers and migrant daughters negotiating care work in rural Lao PDR and Thailand

Abstract In this article I analyse the reconfiguration of the intersection of relations of gender and age manifesting between older mothers and their migrant daughters. For this I study the negotiation of care work between differently positioned women, drawing on material from Lao PDR and Thailand. Theoretically I draw on the constructivist notion of ‘doing gendered age’, which allows us to integrate the performance of gender–age subject positions with structural changes, most notably the generational dynamics of rural transformation, an expanding neoliberal labour market and demographic transition. I conclude that gender–age subject positions hold women accountable for ‘doing gendered age’ in a particular manner. This forms an important basis for informal mechanisms of social protection. However, these subject positions are neither pre-given nor voluntary but are enacted through everyday social interaction and subject to change.

Children and Young People in Migration: A Relational Approach

Migration has long been an important area of study in geography and related disciplines. Yet, it has only relatively recently gained some analytical status in children and young people’s geographies. This essay first presents a brief overview of the literature on children and migration before concentrating on a specific subsection of this literature: independent child migration, a research field that has emerged based on studies in the Global South. Juxtaposing this with the very different concerns articulated in the youth geographies of migration (including research conducted in the Global North), which often deals with subjects of the same chronological age, raises some initial questions about the limitations of a categorising approach to young people in migration. Whilst acknowledging the policy success achieved on the basis of a categorising research agenda, the essay proceeds by developing a relational approach towards young people as migrants. It does so by drawing on the literature based on research conducted in the Global South predominantly on young people involved in migration without their parents or caregivers and pays particular attention to the case of young Lao villagers involved in internal and cross-border migration. The relational perspective is firstly developed by treating the concept of age as an important relation of social differentiation and not merely as a marker of static age-categories. Second, it is further developed by attending to the relational fabric of the networks facilitating young people’s migration and young people’s relational position within these, and thirdly, by situating young people’s migration within the field of the (transnational) household and the social fabric of intra-household relations. Fourthly, the ways in which young people’s involvement in migration relates to wider processes of social change and continuity is explored. The essay concludes that whilst many of the policy questions related to independent child migration remain unresolved the relevance of studying young people in migration is not limited to such policy questions – however urgent. This essay suggests that realising its conceptual and theoretical potential for the field of children and youth geographies as well as the larger discipline is better achieved through a relational approach. One approach towards deepening the conceptual and theoretical basis of work under the label of independent child migration that is suggested throughout this chapter is greater engagement with the literature on rural youth out-migration in both the Global North and the Global South.

From Access to Post-access Concerns: Rethinking Inclusion in Education Through Children’s Everyday School Attendance in Rural Malaysia

Drawing on 10 weeks of research in four primarily ethnic minority villages in insular Malaysia, this paper analyses the factors and relations underpinning the frequency of children’s school attendance. Using a range of participatory methods has illuminated children’s active role in co-shaping the outcome of everyday decision-making process concerning school attendance. The findings suggest our understanding of exclusion and inclusion in relation to primary education in developing countries needs to go beyond the current focus on children’s school enrolment, drop-out, and adult-centred discussions on school attendance, towards an appreciation of the relational dynamics underpinning frequency of attendance and children’s active role in co-shaping their inclusion in or exclusion from school.

Rural youth and urban-based vocational training: gender, space and aspiring to ‘become someone’

ABSTRACT The policy phrase Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) is rapidly gaining ground across Southeast Asia (and beyond). Despite numerous policy reports, little is known about how vocational training and education work as sites of practice. This is especially true for informal household-based apprenticeships and privately organized, commercial classroom-based training. Yet, these latter arrangements are numerous, an integral part of the widespread informal economy, and reflecting the fact that homes have retained their productive character in much of the Global South. Combining a village-based perspective (Laos) with an urban-based perspective (Cambodia), we analyse how these informal and privately organized training spaces are situated in rural youth’s gendered lives and shaped by, but also generative of, aspirations of ‘becoming someone’. In addition, comparing informal apprenticeships with classroom-based training leads us to raise some important questions about the implications of the (global) policy emphasis on the standardization and formalization of TVET.

Generationing Development: An Introduction

This introduction chapter sets out the overall framework informing the volume and surveys the relevant literature. It lays out a relational approach to studying children, youth and development with age and generation as key concepts. This chapter introduces and develops these central ideas, and their various interpretations, and links them to the contributing chapters.

‘Knowledge that moves’: emotions and affect in policy and research with young migrants

ABSTRACT Migration is an emotional experience, and so is the policy and research work associated with it. Yet, discussions on emotions and affect remain largely absent from the literature on children and youth migration. Writing auto-ethnographically, I revisit my research with/about young Lao migrants with the aim of teasing out how emotions, of young migrants, of my own and in policy making emerged in relation to various dimensions of young people’s migration. On this basis I make the case for appreciating emotions as knowledge. While emotions are ‘moving’ in an affective sense, I proceed by arguing the productive dimension of emotions through the idea of the emotive as ‘knowledge that moves’. I substantiate this point by discussing instances in which emotions as a particular form of knowledge ‘move’ research decisions, policy making processes, theorizing the youthful dimension of migration as well as the interpersonal relations through which ethnographic research is realized.

Experiencing the State and Negotiating Belonging in Zomia: Pa Koh and Bru-Van Kieu Ethnic Minority Youth in a Lao-Vietnamese Borderland

Geopolitical borders physically demarcate the nation-state. They delimit the territoriality of nations, which Anderson (2006) famously described as ‘imagined communities’. It is the work of states to construct and nurture such imagined communities, first and foremost within its national borders. This is done, among other things, through projects of nationalism which are here understood as efforts ‘to make the political unit, the state (or polity) congruent with the cultural unit, the nation’ (Fox and Miller-Idriss, 2008, p. 536). Such social practices or the absence thereof erect borders but also render borders irrelevant, rather than the physical demarcation of state territory as the quote above illustrates.

The EU’s Ambiguous Position on Migrant Underage Workers

Independent child migration for purposes of work has received considerable attention over recent years (Camacho 1999; Iversen 2002; Punch 2002; Whitehead/ Hashim/Iversen 2007; Yaqub 2009). This body of literature mainly concentrates on internal and international child migration taking place outside the European context. These studies demonstrate that young people under 18 years of age leave their families and communities for a number of reasons. This frequently encompasses work, and often involves a considerable degree of strategic decision-making on the part of parents, children or both (Camacho 1999; Iversen 2002; Punch 2002; Whitehead/Hashim/ Iversen 2007). Some argue, therefore, that these migratory dynamics cannot be reduced to human trafficking despite exploitation and abuse taking place (Bastia 2005; Whitehead/Hashim 2005; Huijsmans 2008). Yet, the policy space to address the phenomenon of minors migrating for work autonomously as anything other than human trafficking has been described as “very narrow” (Whitehead/Hashim 2005: 4). This, despite indications that policies stemming from the human trafficking discourses amount to anything but making migration safer for minors (Busza/ Castle/Diarra 2004) and do not discourage migrant minors from involvement in work (Dottridge 2006: 11).

Children: ethnographic encounters

Children: Ethnographic Encounters is the latest title in the Bloomsbury series Encounters: Experience and Anthropological Knowledge (series editor John Borneman). In line with the series mandate, it brings together a set of essays discussing material that too often is left out of published work: reflections on personal experiences of doing ethnographic fieldwork. All contributions are written in a highly accessible manner, free from disciplinary jargon or particular theoretical concerns and with only a bare minimum of literature citations. The result is a unique text appealing to a broad readership. The chapters convey a real sense of what ethnographic research with children and youth is all about, including insightful reflections on the many dilemmas researchers inevitably encounter. In this way, the title offers something that the various textbooks on doing research with children and youth rarely achieve and as such forms an excellent companion to such conventional texts. The volume consists of 10 core chapters, complemented with a full length ‘introduction’ and ‘guide to further reading’ by the editor. The introduction chapter outlines some key issues shaping the volume. How children’s ‘relative structural disadvantage’ (6) in adult-structured societies shape (adult) researchers’ ethnographic encounters with children. The second key theme concerns participant observation, anthropology’s core method, and whether it is actually possible for adult researchers to become a full participant in children’s life worlds. This theme is beautifully captured by reading across James Johnston’s chapter about the ‘exemplary adult role’ that he was pushed into in his school-based research in China, and the chapter by Anne-Marie Sim who succeeded in trying to be younger than she actually was. Although Sim came to fully participate in children’s everyday lives in London (both in and outside of school), she learnt that by trying to be younger she was actually ‘not being a child’ (79). Another core theme is how context matters, and especially how the particular unfolding of (global) social change affects research encounters with children in place-specific ways. Lastly, ethnography is often turned to in contexts where more formal methods are futile. This is not necessarily because the anthropological method always succeeds. Rather, from an ethnographic perspective, and appreciating knowledge as partial, failure and ‘difficulty’ can be reflected upon very productively as many of the chapters demonstrate. The ‘guide to further’ reading that closes the volume goes beyond the ‘contemporary anthropologists’ that have contributed to the volume and refers the reader to a number of core texts on the ethnography of childhood from more distant and recent pasts. The contributing authors are a good mix of senior and more junior anthropologists, some reflecting on fieldwork conducted over 20 years ago (e.g. Heather Montgomery’s chapter on her research on child prostitution in Thailand), while others draw on very recent PhD research (e.g. Natialia Buitron- Arias’ chapter on the significance of joining children in Ecuadorian Amazonia on their everyday journeys). Although none of the chapters reflect on research with the very young (under-five), it is good to see that under-tens feature regularly throughout the book. In line with the book’s title, teenagers in secondary education form the upper end of the age-range covered. Reflective of the state of affairs in childhood studies, most contributors are female (except two, James Johnston and Ole Johannes Kaland both drawing on research in China). Although the gendered dimension of conducting research is not explicitly reflected upon throughout, several of the chapters do make some important points in this respect. For example, Anne-Marie Sim notes that because of being female and looking young she finds that her initial worries of being regarded as a ‘strange adult’ were misplaced; in her research setting the popular perception of threat to children is typically represented as older and male (78). In other instances gender appears more subtly, for example in how adult researchers’ physical otherness can sometimes come to facilitate research (children’s interest in playing with long blond hair of female researchers), or, in fact, come to mark otherness in less facilitative ways (the thick beards of some of the male researchers). These examples also illustrate the importance of appearance in adults’ research encounters with children. The literature on childhood research focuses on the challenge of conducting research across age-based categories, the encounters described suggest, however, that at least at the level of everyday interaction it is the performativity of age that matters more so than chronological age. Age in this sense becomes more malleable albeit not necessarily in all places (e.g. the school) and all respects (e.g. physical size, 62). These generational insights on the practice of doing research, including its many challenges, give the reader a real sense of how ‘age works’ in different settings and how generational relations shape the research and can also be reworked. The chapters are geographically diverse, with contributions based on research in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. Nonetheless the book by-and-large reproduces the problematic idea that it is Western anthropologists who conduct research in the Global South. Further, while there is considerable reflection on the ‘foreigness’ of the researcher, the one chapter (Sim) that appears to be by a ‘native anthropologist’ does not reflect on this dimension (Narayan 1993). Contributions by anthropologists from the South conducting researching in Europe or North-America would also have made welcome additions (e.g. Sadjad 2016). Another theme I was expecting to see more about is the role of the digital dimension in ethnographic research with children. Although, social media and mobile phones are mentioned on a few occasions (e.g. 75, 84, 112) it is not subject to any specific reflection. Despite these observations, I would fully recommend this book to anyone interested in doing research with children – certainly not just anthropologists!