index of 2005 conference papers

The Globalized Family: Both Sides of the Border
part of the "Globalization and Child Labor" Project

Erica G. Polakoff
Bloomfield College, NJ, U.S.

Preface

This presentation is part of a larger project entitled "The Globalized Family: Both Sides of the Border" which is an exploration of the impact of globalization on low-income families on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, and more generally, of the global North and South. Here, I will focus specifically on globalization and child labor.

Introduction

Defining who is a child

The most basic problem when studying children is defining who is counted as a child. A person of a certain age may be considered a child in one culture, but an adult in another, with dramatically different responsibilities and expectations for behavior. The definitions of "child" and "childhood" have changed over time, and vary not only from one culture to another but also according to social class and gender. Instead of indicating some "natural" or biological demarcation in the life span of a person--which, presumably, would be universal--the categories of "child" and "childhood" are socially and culturally constructed (Stephens 1995; James and Prout 1997; Scheper-Hughes and Sargent 1998; Schwartzman 2001).

In Children and the Politics of Culture, Sharon Stephens (1995:5-6) points that "while all cultures have given meaning to the physical differences of sex and age…(and) define childhood in terms of (their) own set of meanings and practices…the social worlds in which these physical signs have become significant are profoundly different." Furthermore, "current crises--in notions of childhood, the experiences of children, and the sociology of childhood--are related to profound changes in a now globalized modernity in which 'the child' was previously located" (Ibid: 8). In other words, culturally distinct definitions of childhood cannot be understood in the abstract or isolated from their larger context--that is, the complex, contemporary world of globalization which has produced profound changes in people's lives, transforming nations, communities, families and identities. Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Carolyn Sargent focus on connections between children's experiences and global political and economic structures, and the impact and consequences of wider relations of power on the daily experiences of children. Helen Schwartzman (2001:9) outlines some of the problems, obstacles and challenges facing children in the 21 st century including: exploitation in the labor force; assaults on health and well-being by world-wide epidemics, and by poverty, hunger and poor sanitation; state-sponsored political violence; immigration, forced displacement and relocation, resulting from war, natural disasters and economic necessity.

Discussion of these problems has been widespread. In 1989, for example, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was later ratified by more than 140 nations (but not the United States ). Unlike the Declaration of Rights of the Child which was adopted by the United Nations 30 years earlier, the Convention "is considered legally binding for ratifying states" (Stephens 1995:35). According to Article 1 of the Convention, "a child means every human being below the age of eighteen years."

In addition to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, there has been widespread support for the International Labor Organization's (ILO) Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention (adopted in 1999), and the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (adopted by the United Nations in May 2000). Article 32 of the ILO Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labor states,"children have the right to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous to or interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development" (www.unicef.org/media/media_27328). The ILO suggests that hazardous work includes:

a) work which exposes children to physical, emotional, or sexual abuse;

b) work underground, underwater, at dangerous heights or in confined spaces;

c) work with dangerous machinery, equipment or tools, or which involves the manual handling or transporting of heavy loads;

d) work in an unhealthy environment which may, for example, expose children to hazardous substances, agents, or processes, or to temperatures, noise levels or vibrations damaging to their health; or

e) work under particularly difficult conditions such as work for long hours or during the night or work that does not allow the possibility of returning home each day"

(Ibid).

Further on, I will demonstrate that the exploitation of child labor in agricultural, manufacturing and sex work industries violate these international laws and conventions.

How many child laborers are there?

In End of the Millennium, Manuel Castells (1998:149) noted the increasing incidence of child labor both in the "third world" and in the "first." He cited a 1996 report released by the International Labor Organization (ILO) that estimated there were over 250 million children between the ages of 5 and 14, who worked for wages in the "third world." For the first time, these estimates counted children between the ages of 5 and 10, doubling previous estimates of child labor. A press release distributed by UNICEF dated June 10, 2005 estimates that there are 246 million child laborers worldwide (www.unicef.org/media/media_27328).

A word of caution is in order regarding the numbers reported. Official or government statistics tend not coincide with statistics cited by other sources. In the United States , for example, the number of child laborers in agriculture is drastically underestimated in official reports because children under 15 years old are not even counted (see the section on agriculture below). It seems possible that this situation obtains in other countries as well. Over the last decade, increasingly children have been targeted as the new industrial labor force in the global South, enlisted as child soldiers by governments and militias worldwide, increasingly traded and exploited as sex workers worldwide, and hired as domestic servants, hidden from public scrutiny. Therefore, it would seem quite unlikely that the total number of child laborers today is less than or equal to the number reported nearly ten years ago.

Official underreporting may also result from the fact that many countries have laws prohibiting child labor. In India , for example, "bonded labor" (generally, a child sold as a laborer to help pay off a parent's or guardian's debt) is an illegal but widespread practice, with an estimated 15 million children (www.hrw.org/backgrounder/crp/back0610.htm). In Central America , there are explicit laws prohibiting child labor. A document published by the ILO in 2003 noted that:

The constitutions of five countries of Central America (Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua) include special provisions concerning the employment of minors…In some cases such employment is absolutely prohibited on the grounds of the need to safeguard a young person's normal physical, mental and moral development or to ensure that the young person complete a minimum education. In other cases there are provisions for special protections ( www.ilo.org/public/english/dialogue/download/cafta.pdf).

Even though national laws with "special protections" for children exist, a government may be compelled to allow its laws to be violated due to pressure from domestic corporate interests, other nations, international financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), or as a result of trade agreements like The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

In this paper on globalization and child labor, I hope to demonstrate that the categories "child" and "childhood" are not only socially and culturally constructed, but also politically manipulated to meet the interests and needs of global capitalism. By examining the exploitation of child labor in three economic sectors--agriculture, manufacturing industries and sex work--I intend to show that in spite of international conventions and/or national prohibitions against child labor, children's rights are violated frequently and without apology, on both sides of the border.

The Globalization of Agriculture and World Hunger

According to researchers at the Institute for Food and Development Policy and the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies, the consequences of the globalization of food production have been uniformly disastrous for the majority of people in the Third World . (See for example: George 1977, 1979 1984; Lappé, Collins and Rosset 1998). The globalization of agriculture has involved protecting U.S. government-subsidized, privately owned agribusiness corporations at the expense of local farmers and state-owned enterprises in the global South.

The U.S. government subsidizes U.S. agricultural industries with taxpayers' money. Then the big agribusiness corporations sell their products at below market rates to the developing world, thereby undercutting competition from local producers in those countries. Local, Third World markets are flooded with cheap, U.S. agricultural surplus, a common practice under Public Law 480 (a.k.a. "Food for Peace"), that puts local farmers out of business. The choices for small farmers are limited as they are also frequently denied access to credit, loans and agricultural inputs, they fall deeper into debt and eventually are forced to sell their land. Once self-sufficient in the production of food for local consumption, these nations soon become dependent on U.S. imports ( See: Lappé, Collins and Rosset 1998 ). In Mexico , for example, 600 farmers lose their land each day as a result of "cheap, subsidized agricultural products" flooding the local market. . People whose families worked the land for centuries are forced off of their lands; many end up working on corporate- owned plantations as day laborers (See: Richter 1985). Many "head to the U.S., where they find death or incarceration at the border, or a job in a sweatshop, or work as a day laborer, or enslavement in the fields, working twelve to thirteen hours a day, six days a week, to earn $20" (Mittal 2003). In Vandana Shiva's words,

As farmers are transformed from producers into consumers of corporate-patented agricultural products, as markets are destroyed locally and nationally but expanded globally, the myth of "free trade" and the global economy becomes a means for the rich to rob the poor of their right to food and even their right to life (Shiva 2000:7)

What we are seeing is the emergence of food totalitarianism, in which a handful of corporations control the entire food chain and destroy alternatives so that people do not have access to diverse, safe foods produced ecologically. Local markets are being deliberately destroyed to establish monopolies over seed and food systems (Ibid:17).

Other consequences of the corporate control of land and the production of export crops include environmental destruction and the creation of "man-made" disasters such as famines, floods and droughts resulting from deforestation, soil erosion, and desertification. Contamination of the land and of the food produced on it (through increased use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides), the loss of biodiversity (due to the use of genetically modified seeds), unemployment, increased population pressures on urban resources (due to migration from rural to urban centers), increased poverty and hunger, and the loss of a way of life, also result (Richter 1985).

Of the nearly six and a half billion people in the world, more than 1.2 billion live on $1 or less per day. Of these, 780 million suffer from "chronic hunger" which the World Health Organization defines as an insufficient intake of calories to lead healthy and active lives (www.who.int; www.worldhunger.org). The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), asserts that world hunger is not the result of a lack of food resources, but rather, of the grossly uneven distribution of those resources. According to the FAO's 2002 report, world agriculture produces 17% more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70% increase in world population; this is enough to provide every person with at least 2,750 calories per day (www.fao.org). The real problem is not global food insufficiency, but rather that people do not have sufficient land to grow food or sufficient income to buy it.

Child Laborers in Agriculture

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), worldwide, 170 million or 70% of all child laborers work in agriculture. Even though the number of children who work in agriculture is ten times that of the number of children working in manufacturing, until very recently, little attention has been focused on the problems confronting child farmworkers. A cross-national comparison of child agricultural laborers in Egypt , Ecuador , India and the United States conducted by Human Rights Watch in 2004 reveals that despite country differences, the risks to, and abuses of, children working as hired farmworkers are very similar. These include violations of rights to health and education, wage exploitation and lack of protection from hazardous working conditions ( www.hrw.org/backgrounder/crp/back0610.htm).

The wages children receive are very low in all four of the countries studied. Children are subjected to long hours of exhausting physical labor; they suffer high rates of fatalities and suffer work-related injuries for which they get no compensation. In the United States , for example, it is estimated that 8% of child laborers work in agriculture, yet children account for 40% of work-related fatalities among youth; another 100,000 children in the U.S. sustain farmwork-related injuries per year (Ibid). In all four countries, labor practices violate domestic laws as well as international laws and conventions. 

Child Farmworkers in the United States

As noted earlier, children 14 years old and under are not counted in any official national survey of farmworkers in the United States. The General Accounting Office (GAO), a federal agency, collects data on children 15 years and older. The GAO estimates that 300,000 15-17 year olds work as hired laborers in large-scale commercial agriculture each year--planting, weeding, applying pesticides, and harvesting. A more accurate estimate (which would include children under the age of 15) is provided by The United Farm Workers Union which estimates the total number of child farmworkers in the U.S. to be 800,000 per year ( www.hrw.org/reports/2000/frmwrk/frmwork006-02.htm ). According to Human Rights Watch, Farmworkers aged 17 and under…can be found working all across the country. Virtually no state is without child labor in agriculture. Federal and most state laws permit children as young as 12 to work for hire in agriculture, an age far younger than in other occupations. Even children aged ten and eleven can work as hired farm laborers…regardless of the damage done to their health, their studies, and their overall well-being (Ibid).

Examination of the labor laws of the United States , reveals that while children are legally protected in non-agricultural labor, they are not afforded the same protections in agricultural labor. According to a 1997 survey by the Child Labor Coalition, eighteen states have no minimum age requirements for farm workers; in the state of Oregon, the minimum age is 9; in the state of Illinois, it is 10; in fourteen states, the minimum age is 12; in nine states, it is 14 (Ibid).

With regard to federal law, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which was passed by Congress in 1938, set the minimum age for child labor, but excluded farm workers from protection. In 1974, restrictions on hired child laborers in agriculture were added to the law (Ibid). Even so, there were, and still are, significant discrepancies between allowable practices in nonagricultural vs. agricultural labor. These include not only minimum age requirements, but also restrictions on the numbers of hours of work per day and per week. For example, in nonagricultural occupations, the FLSA prohibits from working, children who are 13 years old or younger. Fourteen and fifteen year olds are permitted to work in any non-hazardous occupation for up to 3 hours per day on a school day and up to 8 hours a day on a non-school day, but they are not permitted to work before 7 AM or after 7 PM (Ibid).

In contrast, the FLSA permits even children under the age of 12 to work unlimited hours in agricultural labor, as long as the work takes place outside of school hours, on a small farm and with parental consent. Twelve and thirteen year olds are permitted to work unlimited hours (outside of school hours) on any size farm with parental consent. Fourteen and fifteen year olds do not need parental consent (Ibid). Furthermore, the FLSA also stipulates that 16 and 17 year olds are allowed to work under hazardous conditions in agricultural labor, whereas in other occupations, the minimum age is 18 (Ibid). In other words, federal law, by exempting agriculture from legal requirements, protects agribusiness over and above the rights of children, and is in direct violation of international laws.

Farm work requires mobility, strength and endurance. Children endure excessive and inappropriate hours of exhausting work that is performed under unhealthy and often dangerous conditions. One of the major risks is exposure to pesticides on a daily basis. Workers are sprayed with pesticides by crop dusters flying over the fields while they work. Also, both children and adults are often required to mix and apply pesticides without the use of protective clothing or equipment. Dr. Lynn Goldman of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that, "In addition to cancer, pesticide exposure has been repeatedly linked to brain damage, endocrine (hormonal) disruption and birth defects" (Ibid). The EPA reports an average of 300,000 pesticide poisonings per year, but Human Rights Watch notes that this figure is likely to underestimate the total since only a small percentage of pesticide-related illnesses is reported to the federal government, state authorities or health officials (Ibid).

According to a National Resources Defense Council report, "Trouble on the Farm: Growing Up with Pesticides in Agriculture" authored by Dr. Gina Solomon,

Farm children are like canaries in the coal mine. Canaries were placed inside mine shafts where they would breathe the first whiffs of poisonous gas. More susceptible than humans to these gases (in part because of their small body size and rapid respiratory rate), the birds would suffer health effects before the miners, providing an early warning of dangerous conditions. We are putting farm children in a situation where they receive some of the highest pesticide exposures in our country. Children, like canaries, have greater susceptibility to the health effects than do adults. Yet…many of the expected health effects occur years or even decades after the exposures (www.nrdc.org/health/kids/farm/intro.asp).

According to the National Resources Defense Council, pesticide use, especially of the most toxic and carcinogenic chemicals, has been increasing in the United States . However, precise figures are difficult to obtain since the federal government and individual states do not require the reporting of data of this kind. " California is the only state in the nation that requires commercial pesticide users to report the time, location, and amount of pesticides applied" (Ibid).

In addition to pesticide exposure, other hazards of agricultural labor include lack of drinking water, water for hand washing, and toilet facilities, which are the minimum sanitation requirements established by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration. But according to the Human Rights Watch report, "even these minimal requirements are often ignored by growers and by farm labor contractors who bring in workers. Furthermore, Congress prohibits enforcement of these regulations on farms with ten employees or less" ( www.hrw.org/reports/2000/frmwrk/frmwork006-02.htm ). Thus, workers frequently suffer from heat exhaustion and other illnesses related to insufficient or contaminated water and lack of sanitation.

Another consequence of agricultural labor for children has to do with the demanding physical nature of the work itself, changes in the growing cycle and the shifting location of work, all of which have an impact on children's education and progress in school. Human Rights Watch interviewed child farmworkers in the state of Arizona who reported that twelve-hour days, six and seven days per week were routine. During peak harvest times, children reported working 18 hours, seven days per week (Ibid). Those who managed to attend school endured interruptions in learning due to the seasonal demands of the work, and many were required to change schools several times during the year. Child farmworkers tend to get little sleep, have very long days of exhausting work; they frequently fall behind in their studies and may eventually drop out of school all together. The GAO estimated the dropout rate among child farmworkers to be 45%; the dropout rate for children engaged in nonagricultural labor was estimated at 29% (Government Accounting Office. 1992. "Hired Farmworkers Health and Well-Being at Risk." Washington , D.C. : GAO/HRD-092-46, p. 37).

Because farmwork pays so little, even when all members of the family work (regardless of whether the families are documented permanent residents of the United States, "guestworkers" from Mexico or undocumented workers), family incomes are very low and the poverty rate is very high. Families whose children work as hired agricultural laborers often depend on their children's contributions to the family's survival. In addition, many parents cannot afford to buy school supplies, books, shoes or clothing for their children to attend school. Because of these obstacles to making progress in school-- indeed, the GAO reports that 80% of all adult migrant farmers have a literacy level equivalent to the fifth grade or lower (Ibid)--the difficulties of breaking out of the cycle of poverty are formidable.

Due to the geographic isolation of farm labor, non-compliance with the minimal federal and state laws that do exist is rampant, and, not surprisingly, there is a great deal of exploitation and abuse of farmworkers. Those most vulnerable are non-unionized workers, non-English speakers, those who are unfamiliar with U.S. labor laws, and children. Wages are rarely higher than minimum wage and frequently much lower especially when wages are paid at piece rates rather than hourly rates. "Unscrupulous employers" may also withhold social security, and instead of reporting it to the federal government, pocket the money for themselves. Wages are frequently docked to cover fees for the housing or electricity that is sometimes provided. Then there are deductions for transporting workers to the work site (www.hrw.org/2000/frmwrk/frmwrk006-02.htm). There is no such thing as overtime pay; nor are there health, unemployment or disability benefits.

According to Human Rights Watch, neither U.S. laws nor enforcement practices protect child laborers in agriculture. The United States also fails to comply with international laws and conventions including the ILO Convention Concerning the Prohibition and Immediate Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor (also known as the Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention), and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Manufacturing Industries

Women and Children as Industrial Laborers in the Global South

The integration of women into the industrial labor force in the Third World has been the subject of a number of studies. Twenty years ago, the phenomenon of targeting Third World women workers for "light assembly production" or "offshore" manufacturing for export was referred to as the "new international division labor." Early analyses of this phenomenon included those by Diane Elson and Ruth Pearson (1981), Annette Fuentes and Barbara Ehrenreich (1984), and Maria Patricia Fernandez- Kelly (1983). In the 1980s, "offshore production" was concentrated in two major regions of the world-- Southeast Asia and Mexico .

In the mid-80s workers were in their 20s and 30s. One advertisement from a Mexican newspaper in the mid-80s read, "We need female workers; older than 17, younger than 30; single and without children; minimum education primary school, maximum education one year of preparatory school (high school); available for all shifts (Fuentes and Ehrenreich 1984:11). Women have been the preferred labor force in the maquiladoras or subcontracting manufacturing industries because they are believed to have "nimble fingers," to be docile and more manageable and less likely to object to conditions of work or employment practices. Business leaders claim that Third World women have "natural patience" and that while working in the factory they "genuinely enjoy themselves. They are away from their families. They have spending money. They can buy motor bikes" (Ibid:15). Men, in contrast, are considered to be "to restless and impatient to be doing monotonous work with no career value. If displeased they sabotage the machines and even threaten the foremen. But girls, at most they cry a little" (Ibid:13).

By moving their production operations to the Third World , corporations maximize their profits. They do this by exploiting workers. Wages are very low and workers work long hours without overtime pay, health or disability benefits. Corporations benefit from a 10-year tax holiday. They pay little or no import or export duties. Their operations are also protected by local security forces. They have access to the best resources, and do not have to abide by national labor laws, or health, safety or environmental regulations. In addition, they are encouragd to move "offshore" by the U.S. government which provides U.S. taxpayers dollars to finance the cost of relocating (Parenti 2002).

In the 1986 documentary film, "The Global Assembly Line," Lorraine Gray, Ann Bohlen and Maria Patricia Fernandez-Kelly take us inside the garment industry and the electronics industry in Export Processing Zones (EPZs) in the Philippines and Mexico . The filmmakers demonstrate that the conditions of employment are precarious and dangerous to the health of workers. They also reveal the absolute lack of corporate accountability to, or concern for, the welfare of the workers expressed by the corporate managers. For example, the Philippine manager of Dynetics Corporation discusses the hazards of working in the electronics sub-component industry. He states, "The girls wear special breathing devices" (which, as the filmmakers show us, turn out to be paper masks), and later, "Young girls can take the abuse. They abuse their bodies" (Gray et al. 1986).

Today, the global assembly line extends throughout the world, even in remote and previously isolated regions. Wages have deteriorated in both absolute and relative terms, working conditions are increasingly dangerous, contamination of the environment is more widespread, and damage to young women, their families and communities is greater. The global factory also undermines small, indigenous, small-scale creative production that has often been in women's hands, and replaces it with cheap, mass-produced goods, mostly for export. Women in the global South are no longer the "new" industrial labor force; they are the primary labor force in an increasing number of countries. Moreover, in spite of child labor laws prohibiting the exploitation of children's labor, workers in the global factory are getting younger and younger. Today, the overwhelming majority of workers targeted for the global industrial labor force are, in fact, children.

In the documentary video, "Zoned for Slavery: The Child Behind the Label," Honduran labor leader, Jorge Sierra of CODEH, in an impassioned statement, comments on the future of young women who work in the maquildoras and on the fate of their country.

For a 15 year old girl who has not yet completely formed her personality, who has not yet completely developed physically, who is just beginning to feel life, who is opening her eyes to so many new things important to any human being--love, friendship, living among other people--to fall into the maquila is to fall into a deep, dark well. She must cease to be a person. She must become a cog in the wheel that is only important to the degree that it makes the great machine of the maquila function.

The wages that these girls receive are so low that they cannot afford even the minimum requirements to satisfy their nutritional needs. So we begin to see these girls with pale skin, extremely thin, with clouded eyes. (The problem) is psychological in that it is destroying their love for life. It is immoral in the sense that they begin to believe that life is a long road of injustices. The feeling that no matter what they do, they will always be on this road of injustice, destroys them morally.

In fact, the maquila is wringing the Honduran youth dry. Within 10 years we are going to have 25-30 year-old women who are tired of life, sick. This will produce serious social problems for our country. We are going to have people without imagination, people who believe in nothing and who will not be able to function in the development that we want for our country. By treating our young people, our young girls as they are being treated, they are destroying our future, no more or less (Belle et al. 1995).

One of the young women featured in "Zoned for Slavery" is a 15 year-old named Leslie who has been working in the factory since the age of 13, and who frequently works 12-hour shifts. Leslie has completed the fifth grade in school. When the interviewers ask her if she ever thinks about going back to school, she replies, "Yes. If I could go to school for three more years (one to finish elementary school, and two years of "high school"), that would be enough." What are the future prospects of nations whose young people are kept at a depressed level of education, whose very wishes and desires are so terribly limited that they cannot even envision a better world for themselves?

In June 2003, I visited a Canadian-owned swimsuit factory, “Phantom” in CIVAC, the industrial park on the outskirts of Cuernavaca , and spoke with its General Manager, Engineer Gabriel Hidalgo. I was informed that this was one of the better managed (i.e., more humane) factories specializing in export processing production. Workers at Phantom, on average, were in their early 20s and had a starting daily salary of 35 pesos (equivalent to $3.50), though the "more experienced" workers (who were primarily men) earned 55 pesos per day (or $5.50). A day’s work was 10 hours long, including 30 minutes for lunch and a 5-minute break in the afternoon. Workers were allowed two additional 5-minute breaks during the day, but their efficiency coefficient would suffer if they were to take those breaks, and their pay may have been docked as a result. Engineer Hidalgo mentioned that his company was having a difficult time competing with other companies, and that recently he had to lay off 300 workers. He also said that one company that paid its workers less than Phantom did, already left Mexico in search of even cheaper labor in China (See: Polakoff 2003).

China , is, in fact, the capitalist's dream territory: it has new, previously untapped resources, new and cheap labor, and new markets to exploit, all of which fuel the expansion of corporate capital (The International Forum on Globalization 2003:19-21). In the transition to a market economy, "the privatization or forced bankruptcy of thousands of state enterprises" will mean that another 35 million workers will be fired (Chossudovsky 2003:2). These will be added to the already unemployed in China 's rural areas. Many corporations are leaving the industrial "parks" like CIVAC in Cuernavaca , for example, and transferring their manufacturing operations to China , where they pay workers $1 per day (Polakoff 2003). Again, the overwhelming majority of workers (nearly 90%) are young women or girls in their early teens. Many come from rural areas in China where there are an estimated 130 million "surplus workers" (Chossudovsky 2003:2). Thus, the architects and beneficiaries of globalization are looking to China as the next frontier.

De-industrialization in the Global North

Corporate colonization of the global South has been accompanied by massive de-industrialization in the North. Communities and regions of the United States , for example, both rural and urban, which previously depended on the manufacturing industries, have deteriorated rapidly. According to Christine Ahn (2002:xv):

Between 1994-2000, the United States experienced a net loss of 3.2 million jobs. In one ten -month period, between September 2000 and June 2001, 675,000 jobs were eliminated in the manufacturing sector alone. These were generally union jobs with decent pay and benefits, and their loss left workers to find new work that paid only 70% of their former salary.

When well-established industries leave a community, large numbers of people experience job loss, and the economic foundations of the community are undermined. The consequences for the families of these workers may include social isolation, diminished educational opportunities, exclusion from the formal labor market often leading to participation in the criminal economy, dilapidated housing, increasing interracial hostility, and an increase in inter-personal violence. (See especially: Castells1998; Blakely and Goldsmith 1992; Fine and Weiss 1999; Kozol 1991; Savage Inequalities: Children in America 's Schools. NY: HarperPerennial; Medoff, Peter and Sklar 1994; Parenti op. Cit.; Wilson 1996.) Single-parent households headed by women have become increasingly common. Young mothers are often left to fend for themselves and their children. Surrounded by a culture of violence and left in deteriorating neighborhoods with few resources, many find themselves trapped in poverty. Their male partners--many of whom have few options for gainful employment--often are reduced "to the opportunities provided by the criminal economy," to confinement in prison, to probation or parole under the supervision of our highly discriminatory criminal "justice" system, or to abandoning themselves to drugs and alcohol (Castells op. Cit.:144).

Lack of employment opportunities for the urban poor combined with the drastic reform of social welfare programs--beginning with Reagan's first administration--in public health care, public housing, public education and training programs, and public assistance, has reproduced Third World conditions within the First World . In 1996, under President Clinton's "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act," 7 million people, the overwhelming majority of whom were women and their children, were cut from the welfare rolls, leaving them with little chance to survive with dignity (Hancock 2002). LynNell Hancock, in Hands to Work, analyzes the impact on women, of the government's cuts in public assistance. The new regulations imposed a five-year lifetime limit on cash allowances to families. They required all welfare recipients, even those with infants and young children to work after two years, with no provisions made for child care. They denied housing to homeless families, and prohibited teenage mothers from receiving their own welfare checks until they graduated from high school. They undermined women's efforts to continue their education past high school by strictly adhering to the work rule. The new rules had women running all over the city to meet arbitrary deadlines, to work jobs that provided no opportunity for learning real skills that might have allowed them to raise themselves out of poverty, to fill out paperwork, and to keep frequent appointments with welfare officials. Failure to comply with any of these resulted in being cut from the rolls, requiring former recipients to start the process all over.

Another consequence of competition from the "global assembly line" production of goods has been the proliferation of illegal sweatshops in the United States . Especially prevalent in the garment industries, these operations depend on an immigrant labor force consisting primarily of young, undocumented women workers. Many recent arrivals to the United States who do not speak English and are unaware of their rights, are not unlike their counterparts in the global South. They are "super-exploited," enduring horrendous working conditions and terms of employment. John Anner et al. (1996) in Beyond Identity Politics: Emerging Social Justice Movements in Communities of Color, documents both the abuses perpetrated against these workers and their struggles for justice. According to Anner, the struggle is especially difficult because in the manufacturing industries (like in the agricultural sector), the middlemen or labor contractors or procurers, who also known as "subcontractors," legally relieve the owners of responsibility and accountability for the conditions at work.

Expansion of the Global Criminal Economy: Children in the Sex Industry

In "The Perverse Connection: The Global Criminal Economy," Manuel Castells describes an important and frequently overlooked consequence of globalization, the phenomenon of global crime.

Crime is as old as humankind. But global crime, the networking of powerful criminal organizations, and their associates, in shared activities throughout the planet, is a new phenomenon that profoundly affects international and national economies, security, and ultimately, societies at large (Castells 1998:166).

He provides an impressive list of global criminal activities including the trafficking of drugs which is "the most important segment of this worldwide industry," and arms deals which "also represent a high-value market." According to Castells (Ibid:167), the global criminal economy includes:

everything that receives added value precisely from its prohibition in a given institutional environment: smuggling of everything from everywhere to everywhere, including radioactive material, human organs, and illegal immigrants; prostitution; gambling; loan-sharking; kidnapping; racketeering and extortion; counterfeiting of goods, bank notes, financial documents, credit cards, and identity cards; killers for hire; traffic of sensitive information, technology or art objects; international sales of stolen goods; or even dumping garbage illegally from one country into another.

Along with the trafficking of drugs and weapons, the trafficking of people--illegal immigrants, body parts, and a growing trade in women and children--is on the rise. According to statistics published by the ILO this year, 1.2 million children per year are trafficked across national borders to work in agriculture, mining, manufacturing industries, armed conflict and commercial sex work (www.ilo.org/public/english/standards/ipec/themes/trafficking/index.htm). Commercial sex work is a significant component of the globalization of crime. Castells (1998:154-155) notes that children, especially, "have become sexual commodities in a large-scale industry, organized internationally through the use of advanced technology, and by taking advantage of the globalization of tourism and images."

Thailand has a reputation for being the "hot spot of the global sex industry," where according to the Center for the Protection of Children's Rights, "as many as 800,000 children are in prostitution (Ibid:155)." Estimates for other countries include India with 400,000 - 500,000; Brazil with 200,000; and Peru with 500,000. Far from being a Third World problem alone, "one of the fastest growing markets for child prostitution is in the United States and Canada" where the number of child prostitutes has been estimated at 100,000 - 200,000 (Ibid).

The bodies of women and children are exploited in the global sex trade. In "The Belly of the Beast: Sex Trade, Prostitution and Globalization," Jyoti Sangera analyzes the "ever-expanding sex industry" and the new forms of prostitution that have developed in our "globalized" world, and which are as prevalent in the First World as in the Third. According to Sangera (1997:2), regardless of how they got there (voluntarily or "through means of deceit or coercion"), millions of women and young girls participate in the sex industry worldwide. Indeed, "prostitution has increasingly become a means of sustaining and maintaining vast numbers of third world women and their families." Although prostitution is often referred to as the oldest known profession, Sangera outlines three ways in which globalization has contributed to the creation of new forms of prostitution.

First, is the transnationalization of the sex trade itself. In addition to being one of the most profitable of global industries, it is also one of the most diversified, sophisticated and specialized. It offers a vast array of services, caters to a spectacular range of customer demands, offers specialized venues for sex entertainment in different countries of the world, caters to every need in terms of price range in the consumer market, and has designed a mind-boggling repertoire of market strategies to attract prospective clientele (Sangera 1997:7).

A second factor has to do with the ways in which Third World women's bodies "are increasingly defined as the new raw resources," constituting "a prime export item for national development and international trade. This human cash crop is unique in that it offers a double-featured advantage: women's bodies are both goods and services at the same time" (Sangera 1997:8). The labor of women, and increasingly children, "is exploited beyond acceptable human rights standards through forced labour and slavery like practices," and "is one of the prime tools of capital accumulation under globalization" (Ibid).

A third factor that has contributed to the transformation of prostitution is the fact that many countries throughout the Third World "have been encouraged by international bodies such as the World Bank and the IMF to develop their tourism and entertainment industries" (Sangera). "Without exception" this has meant focusing "disproportionately on developing (the) sex trade into an industry" (Ibid). Essentially this means that the formal and criminal economies have become integrated in compliance with externally managed institutions operating through internally controlled structures. Castells (1998:167) explains the process of integration of criminal activities into the formal economy: "Complex financial schemes and international trade networks link up the criminal economy to the formal economy, thus deeply penetrating financial markets, and constituting a critical, volatile element in a fragile global economy."

In a feature article for The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Peter Landesman investigated sexual slavery, that is, the process by which young women and girls are abducted, sold by their families, deceived, or coerced to participate in the sex trade. He discovered that thousands of "under-age women and girls from dozens of countries," including the former Soviet Union and the Baltic republics, "are trafficked and held captive" in Mexico and in the United States (Landesman 2004:32). The collapse of the economies of the states of the former Soviet Union , Eastern Europe and the Balkans in the 1990s, certainly has contributed to an increase in sex trafficking of women from these areas. Women are lured into the sex industry, though many may be led to believe they are leaving for jobs as nannies or hostesses. According to Donna Hughes, Professor of Women's Studies at Rhode Island University, who studied sex trafficking in Eastern Europe and Russia, "A few of them have an idea that prostitution might be involved. But their idea of prostitution is 'Pretty Woman,' which is one of the most popular films in the Ukraine and Russia . They're thinking, This may not be so bad" (cited in Landesman 2004:36). Whether they arrive in the U.S. from Eastern Europe or Latin America , many women are "processed" in Mexico .

Because of the porousness of the U.S.-Mexico border and the criminal networks that traverse it, the towns and cities along that border have become the main staging area in an illicit and barbaric industry, whose "products" are women and girls (Landesman 2004:32).

But, as Landesman (2004:36) notes, " Mexico is not merely a way station en route to the U.S. for third-country traffickers, like the Eastern European rings. It is also a vast source of even younger and more cheaply acquired girls for sexual servitude in the United States ."

In the documentary "Senorita Extraviada" or "Missing Young Woman," filmmaker Lourdes Portillo (2001) investigates the circumstances surrounding the disappearances and unsolved murders of young women in Ciudad Juarez , across the border from El Pas , Texas . Though uncertain of the exact number of young women who have been killed, Portillo estimates it is between 200 and 400 over the last decade. She says, "In Juárez, predators have no trouble finding their prey. The only fact about the victims that we are sure of, is: that they were all poor, slim, they were dark, and they had shoulder-length hair." Portillo asks, "why are the deaths of these young women being ignored? Why are the murders still happening?"

Interviews with the Francisco Barrio, the Governor of the state of Chihuahua from 1992-1998, and with his Assistant Attorney General, Jorge López, reveal the attitudes of many public officials. Barrio blames women for being in the wrong place and hanging around with the wrong kind of people. López's solution to the problem is to impose a curfew on the residents of the city: "All the good people should stay at home with their families and let the bad people be out on the street." When the interviewer asks him, "but what about a city like Ciudad Juárez where we have a huge industry--the maquiladoras employing over 185,000 very young people, many young women. Many enter at 5 or 6 am and finish at midnight and have to be out because of the necessity to work." López responds, "It's a matter of how you look at things. Clearly, if you need to work--you can't impose this on workers. But let's start with the ones who can. People who work follow a clear path and dress a certain way."

She interviews Judith Galarza of the Latin American Federation Families of the Disappeared who states, "Neither political party has solved this problem. Instead, they have contributed to increasing the violence against women from the moment they said we were out at night and dressed provocatively. They blamed women and the murders increased."

By interviewing members of the families of the disappeared and law enforcement agents, Portillo pieces together a possible explanation for the disappearances and the murders. Clearly a factor is globalization which has very nearly seamlessly integrated the criminal economy into the formal economy. "To some North Americans it (Ciudad Juárez) is where everything illicit is available… One of the leading businesses is illegal narcotics. It is a multi-billion dollar industry…With NAFTA, multinationals have flooded into the city. Eighty percent are American-owned. The maquiladoras generate $16 billion per year… For young women arriving from the rural areas, Juarez is the city of the future. Here they can earn $4 or $5 a day and the hope of their economic independence." Later, Portillo uncovers the fact that many of the disappeared young women worked in the maquiladoras. Implicated in their disappearance are the managers of the factories, local law enforcement agents, and the purveyors of the sex and pornography industries. Young women are kidnapped, forced into prostitution, and then many are killed. Thus, Portillo identifies the global links between the formal economy and the criminal economy, both of which exploit young women as "goods and services," and rob them of their humanity.

Conclusion

The United Nations estimates that 30% of the world's current population of approximately six and a half billion consists of children and youth under the age of 15. Insufficient food, poor nutrition and lack of prenatal health care, all of which have been exacerbated by global capitalism, increase risks for both mother and child. More than 25% of all children in the developing countries live in abject poverty (i.e., in families that earn less than the equivalent of US$1 per day); 25% of children in developing countries under the age of five suffer from malnutrition. Eleven million children under the age of five die each year, four million in the first month of life ( www.unicef.org/media/media_9475.html). Over 200 million children (about 10% of the world's children) "suffer some form of physical and/or mental disability or developmental delay (low cognitive ability)" often the result of food insufficiency ( Ibid). More than 15 million children have lost at least one parent to HIV/AIDS (www.unicef.org/media/media_27306.html); another half a million infants each year lose their mothers in childbirth-related complications ( www.unicef.org/media/media_9475.html). UNICEF estimates that hundreds of millions more are victims of exploitation, abuse and violence each year. (www.unicef.org/media/media_9482.html) .

On June 7, 2005 , UN Secretary General Koffi Annan released the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG) 2005 which underscores improvement in the conditions under which children live as central to meeting development goals. According to UNICEF, "Children must be at the heart of development efforts" (www.unicef.org/media/media_27306.html). UNICEF's Executive Director, Ann M. Veneman noted, "If we care about making progress on development, we have to care about children. Not one of the MDGs can be attained if childhood continues to be threatened by extreme poverty."

I maintain that the forms of child labor discussed in this paper are manifestations of deeper, more structural problems related to globalization itself. The forces of economic globalization and global capitalism have penetrated even the most isolated regions of the world and integrated those regions into the global economy.

Global corporate interests and values are protected by governments and the military, upheld by international financial and trade institutions, supported by academic and research institutions, and rationalized by the “demand” for technological “progress” and consumer goods. Global corporate bureaucracies are involved in the creation of policy and are behind the development of trade agreements. Vandana Shiva (2000:9) notes for example, "Monoliths such as Cargill and Monsanto were both actively involved in shaping international trade agreements, in particular, the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Trade and Tarriffs, which led to the establishment of the WTO." Increasingly, these agreements have provided corporations with control over governments and national laws, enabling corporations to ignore and/or violate child labor laws, environmental protections, occupational, health and safety regulations, civil rights, and laws banning the importation of genetically modified organisms.

The international financial and trade institutions that have promoted globalization and have supported global corporate control over land, resources and people include the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the North American Free Trade Agreement. The policies and practices of these institutions have accelerated the integration of local economies into the global market. They have pressured governments to open up their borders to foreign investment, to allow foreign ownership and exploitation of national resources, to gear local economies toward export production, and to remove barriers to the influx of foreign goods onto the local market. The result has been an increase rather than a decrease in poverty worldwide. Joni Seager (2003:86) notes, "Women not only bear the brunt of poverty, they bear the brunt of 'managing' poverty: as providers and caretakers of their families, it is women's labor and women's personal austerity that typically compensate for diminished resources of the family or household." The survival of many families worldwide absolutely depends on children's economic contributions. I believe that the exploitation of children will not cease until the global economy is restructured to benefit local communities, rather than global capitalist interests.

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index of 2005 conference papers