On being a ‘worker student’: understanding the intersected identities of children and adolescents in Nicaragua

Abstract

Children and adolescents in Nicaragua have intersected identities as both school students and child workers. Most of the literature supposes that a child must be one or the other, and problematises ‘child workers’ as either victims or heroes. Yet, in Nicaragua, this is seldom the case, as most children and adolescents are both workers and students. Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality helps to understand these young people’s lives: As students, they face multiple difficulties getting a decent education; as workers, they struggle for respect and fair treatment. However, as school students who also work, they face challenges specific to their intersected roles. In an empirical study, a group of socially committed adolescents accepted neither work nor school as identity-defining factors, emphasising instead their role in the community as rights defenders and builders of the future. Internationally, this ‘intersectionality lens’ may be helpful in developing policies that respect the rights of young worker-students.

Keywords:

• Nicaragua
• intersectionality
• child worker
• education rights
• rural childhood

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the Nicaraguan promotoras and promotores who participated in the research, and the team from CESESMA who helped to facilitate it. Thanks to Marlies Kustatscher for helpful feedback on an earlier draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Harry Shier http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6075-7804

Notes

1. Following the usual terminology in Spanish, ‘children and adolescents’ is used here in preference to expressions more common in English, such as ‘children and young people’, as it is clearly defined in Nicaraguan law and custom (children are 0–12, adolescents from 13 to their 18th birthday), whereas ‘young people’ is ambiguous and often misleading.

2. In a few cases (hopefully by mistake and not by intent), it is the child workers themselves who are to be eradicated, as, for example, on the website of the Kerala-based ‘Good Shepherd Trust’, which proudly offers a service of ‘Eradication of child workers’. (http://www.goodshepherdtrust.org/index.php).

3. An illustration of this can be seen in CESESMA (2012a, 33) where an adolescent girl footballer depicts herself resisting the pointing fingers accusing her of being unfeminine.

4. The present author admits to having in the past labelled these young people ‘child workers’, as it is an attention-grabber amongst British and Irish coffee-drinkers.

5. Although four of the participants had turned 18 and thus were technically no longer adolescents as defined in Nicaraguan law, they were not far out of their adolescence and for convenience, the group will be referred to collectively as adolescents.

6. A striking example by Irish street artist ADW can be seen here: http://irishstreetart.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/blog-post.html

Additional information

Funding

The empirical part of this research was supported by CESESMA in Nicaragua using its own resources. There was no external funding.