Negotiating change: working with children and their employers to transform child domestic work in Iringa, Tanzania

Abstract

This paper documents the practical and action-oriented findings of an investigation into child domestic work undertaken in Iringa, Tanzania from 2005 to 2007. It provides an overview of the experiences of both child domestic workers and their employers, before discussing their suggestions for how child domestic working arrangements may be improved. The latter sections of the paper relate the attempts to regulate child domestic work that emerged from such dialogue. In providing detailed information on that process, the paper is positioned within the field of action research and resists the boundary frequently applied between academia and activism. It also moves beyond the tendency – observed in many existing studies of child (domestic) work – to document problems without proposing solutions. The regulatory focus of the project is theoretically supported by a social constructionist reading of the situation facing (child) domestic workers in Iringa (and elsewhere). Domestic workers have been discursively constructed as ‘one of the family’ rather than employees. This paper posits that the exploitation of child domestic workers relies on such constructions, and that improved regulation of this employment sector may offer an opportunity to discursively and tangibly reconstruct child domestic work as ‘real work’. Although formulated in the Tanzanian context, the recommendations are of broader geographical relevance.

Keywords:

• child domestic work
• social constructionism
• action
• participation
• regulation

Acknowledgements

The research upon which this article is based was conducted with the participation of Esther John Malifedha, Paul Mbenna, Faidha Mlossi, Vaileth Mvena, and Amina Haule. Their contributions were substantial and are duly acknowledged here. The author would also like to thank Professors Kevin Dunn and Chris Gibson for their guidance over the duration of the research project, and Professor Dunn and three anonymous reviewers for commenting on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes

I adopt the definition of children as people under the age of 18 years, but acknowledge the extensive debates within the literature (including children's geographies) over the appropriateness of delineating a specific age of transition to adulthood (see Fyfe 1989, Valentine 2003, Panelli et al. 2007).

I follow Punch (2000) by using the terms ‘Minority World’ and ‘Majority World’ rather than South/North, developing/developed, Third World/First World.

Article 32 stipulates that children have a right to be ‘protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development’.

The ILO Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labour 1999 (No. 182) (Article 3) identifies the WFCL as follows: ‘(a) all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom and forced or compulsory labour, including forced or compulsory recruitment of children in armed conflict; (b) the use, procuring, or offering of children for prostitution, for the production of pornography or for pornographic performances; (c) the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit activities, in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs as defined in the relevant international treaties; (d) work which by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children’.

The Regulation of Wages and Terms of Employment Order was updated in 2007, increasing the (adult) minimum wage to Tsh. 65,000 ($U.S. 52.98) regardless of rural/urban location. U.S. Dollar conversions were calculated on exchange rates as at June 28th, 2007. No information could be located on the updated wage for those aged 15 to 18 years.

Amina Haule is a pseudonym. She was the only member of the research team to indicate that she did not want her real name used in publications resulting from this research.

Street chairpeople are elected representatives who live on the ‘street’ for which they are responsible. They are actually responsible for several streets, but it is a sufficiently small area for them to be very familiar with the households in that area. Street chairpeople operate at the level of government below ward executive officers.

Employers indicated that they often did not have sufficient information about their child domestic workers' families to be able to contact them if the young employees became sick or even died. This distressed some employers enormously, as they felt it was their duty to inform these children's parents/guardians.

Only 15% of the suggestions made by employers, 10% of those made by former child domestic workers, and 8% of those made by current child domestic workers were abolition-oriented.

In this research project, a radio programme was developed and aired on a local radio station in Iringa, in an attempt to address this issue (see Klocker 2008).