40429 - Immigration and Child Labor

Description

Child migrant labor has long been a feature of the US economy. Yet, recent reporting on the rise
of child migrant exploitation, injury, and death in factories and construction sites and on farms
across the country has brought it to the fore of debates about the future of immigration, child
welfare, and the economy. Indeed, many are concerned that states’ move to weaken child labor
laws will put more children—migrant and non-migrant— at risk of entering a “new economy of
exploitation.” This panel examines the contemporary causes and consequences of labor among
im/migrant children and children of immigrants in the US, offering new perspectives to
understanding the rising phenomenon. Papers in this session will attend to how laws and policies
produce the conditions that prompt children to enter low-wage occupations and ask why
violations of children’s rights and harm to them are accepted by the public. From children’s and
youth’s perspectives, papers also consider how migrant children and children of immigrants
negotiate their entry into work, their pathways into low-wage labor, and the meanings they make
of their everyday efforts to contribute to their families and their futures. Together, this panel
offers insights into the formal and informal, visible and invisible, and agential and oppressive
work kids do and thoughtful solutions for a meaningful way forward.

Sub Unit

• Special Session

Presider

• Stephanie L. Canizales, University of California-Berkeley

Individual Presentations

• What we talk about when we talk about child labor: Policy, polarization, and the new social value of children - Isabel Jijon, Harvard University

• Housing (In)security as a Risk and Response to Child Migrant Labor in the United States - Stephanie L. Canizales, University of California-Berkeley

• “I feel a responsibility to help”: Understanding immigrant-origin young adults’ early entry into the labor market - Karina Chavarria, CSU Channel Islands

• The Invisible Family Labor of Children of Immigrants - Vanessa Delgado, Washington State University

Session Organizer

• Stephanie L. Canizales, University of California-Berkeley