Underpaid Child Labour and Social Reproduction: Apprenticeship in Kaolack, Senegal

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Periodical article

Title:	Underpaid Child Labour and Social Reproduction: Apprenticeship in Kaolack, Senegal
Author:	Morice, Alain
Year:	1982
Periodical:	Development and Change
Volume:	13
Issue:	4
Period:	October
Pages:	515-526
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Senegal
Subjects:	child labour informal sector Labor and Employment Development and Technology Education and Oral Traditions
External link:	https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7660.1982.tb00134.x
Abstract:	The type of under-industrialised urban economy found in Senegal appears to depend largely on the widespread use of cheap, sometimes unpaid, child labour, at least in small-scale production and trade. A study carried out among small-scale metal workers in Kaolack (Senegal's second largest town) in 1981 and 1982 allows identification of some of the characteristics of this juvenile labour force, which may be summarised in terms of the combination of its highly precarious economic position and of the paternalistic social relations which enable its exploitation. However, the super-exploitation of young workers does not necessarily mean super-profits for the immediate employer; the petty producer is merely an intermediary link in a much longer chain of exploitation and his own exploitation of children's labour occurs not in the framework of capitalist accumulation, but because he has no alternative. Notes.