Traumatic Experiences of Asian Child Labour Victims in Boys without Names (Published)
Child labour though an age long social phenomenon, has claimed the lives of many Asian children and continues to exist in various forms even in contemporary times. As such, that phenomenon needs continuous interrogation. This paper therefore examines the traumatic experiences of child labour victims in Kashmira Sheth’s Boys without Names (2010). Using psychoanalytic theory, the study examined the travails, pains, trauma and emotional struggles of six child labour victims in the selected text. Findings revealed that poverty is the major cause of child labour and until poverty is curbed, child labour will continue to persist. The study also discovered that education is imperative as it is a great tool that can help to combat child labour, hence, every child deserves good and quality education. The study therefore recommended that children and parents should be sensitized on the advantages of education.
Keywords: Asia, Child Labour, Poverty, Victims, emotional struggles
Syrian refugee apprentices at Lebanese vocational schools: integration challenges (Published)
The conflict in Syria has been going on for eight years, and this led, according to UNHCR, to around 488 thousand school refugee children in Lebanon, nearly 2,000 of them are enrolled at Lebanese vocational schools. This paper shows the effect of enrollment of Syrian refugee trainees Lebanese vocational education’s public schools in term of access, and reveal the factors that hinder or encourage children refugees’ registration in vocational schools. This study evaluates the reasons behind successes and failures to register or dropout and tests further hypotheses related to links between vocational education and child labour, gender equality and early marriage.Data were collected among 200 refugees aged 15-20 enrolled at VET schools in Lebanon. Findings reveal that vocational education helps to control early marriage, child labour, and lack of social cohesion.The Lebanese Ministry of Education’s needs to create a refugee training policy to be ready to host more refugee trainees at the Public VET schools. An occupational, vocational training enrolment campaign and a national strategy for vocational education must include other initiatives related to child marriage and child labour.
Keywords: Child Labour, Refugee integration, Vocational education, early marriage
Influence of Agricultural Child Labour Experience On Students’ Decision to Study Agriculture in Delta State, Nigeria (Published)
This study investigated the effect of child labour experience in agriculture on the decision of students to study agriculture in tertiary institutions in Delta State, Nigeria. Delta State University and Delta State Polytechnic students of agriculture were purposively selected for the study. Random selection of students was done in each agriculture area of specialization in the tertiary institutions based on 10% of the population to result to a sample size of 151 students. Data for the study were elicited with the use of questionnaire and were analyzed with the application of descriptive statistics and Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient (PPMC). Most (52.98%) of the student were males. The students were mainly (96.02%) in the age bracket of 20-29 years. Most (76.16%) of the student had 6-10years of working experience in their childhood years in either family or others farms as many (64.90%) were residents in rural settlements, where majority (64.24%) of them did not witness extension agents’ visit to their farms. The involvement index of the children in poultry farming was 0.48; in arable crop production, 0.60; in fish farming, 0.20 and in plantation agriculture, 0.12. Some of them experienced hard labour (47.68%); no remuneration (no pay) (51.66%) and injuries (54.97%). Only 6.62% of them originally sought for admission to study agriculture. The reasons given by those who originally applied to read agriculture for doing so ranged from self employment, interest, lucrative nature of agriculture and familiarity with farming activities. Their involvement in agricultural child labour positively influenced their decision to study agriculture. It is therefore recommended that extension agents should interact with farm families in order to encourage the children on agriculture; farmers should be encouraged to simply mechanize their farming activities; farm families should be encouraged to give their children only non-hazardous activities to carry out and the children should only be involved in farming activities during the holidays in order not to compromise their schooling.
Keywords: Agricultural Labour, Child Labour, Farm Families, Influence, Involvement Index
Appraisal of Cultural Vices Affecting Women and Children Human Rights in Nigeria (Published)
The crux of this paper aimed at defining the concept culture and Human Rights, and to large extend analysis the various cultural factors under mining the smooth thriving of women and children rights currently, the cultural factors are, widowhood rites, female genital mutilation, early/forceful marriage, bride price, son preference/female infanticide, levirate marriage, ritual killing, wife beating, inheritance of wife, woman in purdah, on the part of the children are twins killing, child witchcraft ,child labour, street begging, child trafficking and finally possible solutions to ameliorate such cultural barriers by way of recommendation and conclusion
Keywords: Child Labour, Culture, Human Right, Nigeria, Women, children
Labour Practices in the Informal Sector of Nigerian Economy: A Critical Analysis (Published)
The dual labour market hypothesis recognized the existence of informal labour market as part of the Nigerian labour market dichotomy. This is to the extent that informal sector represents an important part of the economy and certainly of the labour market and thus plays a major role in employment creation, production and income generation in Nigeria. Therefore, this paper examines the nature of labour practices within the Nigerian context of the informal sector and the linkages between the formal and the informal sectors with focus on ways of improving labour practices in the informal sector
Keywords: Child Labour, Informal Sector, Integration, Labour Market, Labour Practices, decent work
CHILD LABOUR AND ITS SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS ON CHILDREN IN SELECTED CITIES IN NIGERIA (Review Completed - Accepted)
Severe economic crisis has contributed to the rise in the incidence of child labour in Nigerian cities. For many hours a day, children are engaged in economic tasks (paid and unpaid for), which are detrimental to their physical, mental, social and moral well-being. For these children, involvement in child labour has limited their social relevance to the immediate and larger society. The main objective of this study therefore, is to examine the social implications of child labour on children in selected Nigerian cities. The specific objectives of the study include: (i) assess the incidence of child labour in the Nigerian cities, (ii) examine the implications of child labour on children’s education, health and delinquent behaviour.
The study adopts survey research method in which relevant data were collected through administered questionnaire to respondents. The respondents were selected from three cities in Nigeria namely; Ibadan, Enugu, and Kaduna. The cities were selected based on their strategic importance as former administrative centres of the three old regions of Nigeria. Some of these areas were chosen randomly in each city and a total of 826 child labourers were selected as respondents using judgemental sampling method. Chi-square was used to determine the relationship between the type of child labour engaged in and respondents’ social characteristics.
Findings from the study revealed that: (i) child labour activities fall into different categories namely, bus conducting, car washing, hawking, begging and others such as weaving, tailoring, hairdressing and auto-repairing, (ii) most children who engage in child labour are largely from the lower economic stratum of the society; (iv) incidence of child labour was also significantly related to the rate of child’s health status (r = 0.21> t0.05); school attendance (r = -0.62 > t0.05); academic performance (r =0.39 > t0.05) their delinquent behaviours (r =0.57 > t0.05);contact with parent (r = 0.24 > t0.05) and child’s exploitation by employers (r= 0.31 > t0.05).
In conclusion, children who engage in economic activities are found to be different with respect to their social development. It is therefore recommended that: (i) strict measure should be taken by appropriate authorities to curtail employers from engaging under-aged children in hazardous jobs that can impair their health status and hinder their educational development; (ii) there should be public enlightenment programmes, targeted at the poor section of the population, on the negative implications of child labour to the victims (the children), the family and the society at large; (iii) efforts should be made to embark on realistic and practicable poverty alleviation programmes aimed at reducing the incidence of poverty among Nigerians which was found to be a major cause of child labour; and (iv) governments at all levels in Nigeria should take practical steps to enforce the existing legislation on free basic (primary) education as a way of removing many child labourers from the street to the class.
Keywords: Child Labour, Child Rights, Delinquent Behaviour, Poverty, Social Implications
