| Popis: |
In Madagascar, child domestic work is a long-standing and widespread practice. Previously ignored in global discussions on child labor, since the 2010s, the domestic work performed by girls has gained substantial attention among international organizations and (I)NGOs and has been redefined as a form of exploitation. While there has been extensive research on the different conceptions of childhood that intertwine in shaping child labor, there has been little consideration for the problematization of child labor at a particular moment in time. In this paper, I argue that understanding the sudden interest in girls’ domestic work requires first considering how it has been problematized. Drawing from Foucault’s concept of problematization, I show that the reframing of girls’ domestic work as a form of exploitation in the ILO report (2012) and (I)NGOs’ discourses is embedded in broader social, economic, and political dynamics. As global discourses and intermediaries condemn the work performed by girls, they define certain factors – education, family, culture, commodification, and poverty – as objects of knowledge and power. In particular, global discourses on girls’ domestic work shift the attention away from substantive drivers of poverty and associate child suffering with local forms of kinship and cultural practices. These discourses have the effect of controlling young women’s bodies, material desires, movement, and kinship relations while benefiting local intermediaries, who position themselves as an emerging middle-class. In so doing, they disconnect children from their family and community, thus enhancing their social and economic disadvantage. |
