‘It is better to assist the mother than to be employed’ – Political-economic inequality, socio-cultural values and children’s work in

northern Thailand

Pia M VoglerDepartment of International DevelopmentQueen Elizabeth HouseDSA Conference 20105 November 2010

Outline of presentation

• Introduction• Sample and research methods• Political economic research context• Children’s economic activities

– Gender and generation– Socio-economic status– Paid work and cash crop production

• Social morality, values and children’s work– Children’s economic activities and socio-cultural work ethics– Being (not so) good: Diligence and laziness

• Life course aspirations reflecting values– Aspirations and household interdependencies – Aspirations and political-economic structures

• Conclusions

Sample and research methods

12 months of ethnographic fieldwork, largely village based

Sample: • 24 boys and 21 girls of between 11 to 17 years, 46 household members, teachers, and fellow villagers

Research methods:• Participant observation (nine months)• Ethnographic interviews with children and adults• Participatory research exercises with children of different ages and gender

• Mobility map• Seasonal calendars• Life course lines• Individual worksheet exercises

Political economic research context

Huay Tong village, Mae Wang district, Chiang Mai Province, northern Thailand

•Subsistence economy, wet rice farming•Since 1976 cash crop production• Increasing economic diversification since introduction of commercialized agriculture• Interdependencies between households, village communities and national Thai labour market

Huay Tong village

Cash crop production at Royal Agricultural Project

Economic interdependencies with Thai labour market

Children’s work: gendered and generational patterns

• Children’s tasks are interdependent with subsistence household economy

• From early years onwards they contribute through unpaid chores to the economics of household subsistence economy

Detail of life course drawn by Chaa (13.06.08) Learning to plough from a senior peer

Gender and generation

Detail of life course drawn by 14 years old girls (13.06.08)

• Household responsibilities increase with the onset of teenage years• Girls have more responsibilities than boys, work more

Learning to weave from a neighbour woman

Children’s work: socio-economic status

• Household tasks differ according to socio-economic status• Social status decides about children’s participation to different forms of paid work: Royal Project, food stalls, doll manufacture • Wealthier Karen households can afford not to have their children earn money, but rather assist in household economy

Animal care taking at the Royal Project Working at the seedling nursery

Social morality, values, and children’s work

• Thai and Karen adults value and encourage children’s work assistance

• Through work assistance, children contribute to wider working processes in households and community economies, at the Thai school, and also the national labour market

• Not only in the rural Karen village, but also in urban Thai places I observed children assisting others

• Children value their work provided it is ‘not hard’, ‘comfortable’ and ‘honest’

• ‘Diligent’ and thus ‘good children’ earn benevolence from seniors, who may also help further with life course aspirations (to study high or access jobs).

Children’s work assistance and socio-cultural work ethics

Assisting with carpentry work at school Tidying up of the school library

Being (not so) good: diligence and laziness

• Children are aware that they need to be helpful and contribute • In helping they show diligence at home and in school• Being diligent equals being ‘good’, being lazy equals being ‘not so good’• However, diligent and lazy are flexible notions

Aspirations and household interdependencies

• Realistic about economic interdependence with households

• Political and emotional attachment to space, ‘home’, ‘belonging’

Detail of life course drawn by Chaa (13.06.08)

Aspirations and political-economic structures

• aware of restricted occupational aspirations in insecure labour market

• Socio-economic infrastructure (commercialized agriculture) makes return of young people possible

• Migration important – out of the village to acquire skills and return to the mountains

Details of life course drawn by Somchai (13.06.08)

Conclusions

Economic diversification among children shapes their working activities

As ‘work assistance’ children’s economic activities have economic, moral, and socio-cultural value

Interdependencies between children’s economic activities and wider working and learning processes at local, regional, national levels

Life course aspirations show Karen children are socio-cultural and politically conscious persons

Karen children are aware of the cultural and structural marginality within wider Thai society

Children reproduce and re-appropriate dominant culture participate actively in moulding local versions of political economy in northern Thailand