Learning Skills, Building Social Capital, and Getting an Education: Actual and Potential Advantages of Child Domestic Work in Bangladesh

Abstract

When analyzing child domestic work, should one focus on the potential and actual exploitation and abuse due to the difference in age, wealth, status, and power between the child and the employer, or should one focus on the potential and actual provision of shelter, food, clothing, salary, skills, social capital, and maybe even an education? Policies on child domestic work are based on potential risks, resonating with and building upon an ideal middle-class childhood of the minority world. In this critical chapter, it is argued that without thoroughly analyzing the geographical context of child domestic work, i.e., the local cultures and living standards of children and youth who are recruited into domestic work, policies will not be relevant for the people they are meant to help. As long as children’s basic needs are not fulfilled in the household of their parent(s) or other guardians, one should not deny children the opportunity to seek better conditions in someone else’s household. However, academics and policy makers have a responsibility to ensure effective regulation and monitoring of child domestic workers’ work conditions. Much can also be done by NGOs and employers to further expand access for child workers to schools and alternative spaces of learning, such as drop-in centers for child domestic workers, where not only literacy and numeracy but also health, life skills, and vocational skills are being taught.

Portions of this chapter also appeared in “Space-time geography of female live-in child domestic workers in Dhaka, Bangladesh” (Children’s Geographies, Vol. 12(2), pp. 154–169) by Kari B. Jensen, 2014.