Let Them Eat Labor: The resurgence of child labor deregulation

• In Event: Political Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Political Processes (Table 18)

Abstract

Since 2021, a wave of child labor anti-regulatory legislation has been proposed and passed at the state level throughout the United States. Because no systematic analysis has yet occurred, the purpose of this regulatory adjustment remains unclear. This paper will ask: what adjustments are being made in these bills and who are they impacting? Using a novel combination of minimum-edit-distance algorithm and textual analysis, I analyze a corpus of 116 child labor bills, introduced since 2021, with the intent of adjusting child labor regulations in The United States. Preliminary findings suggest the regulatory adjustments disproportionately lower child labor regulations in industries associated agriculture, meatpacking, and carework, and increase child labor regulations in industries associated with digital platforms like "vlogging". This suggests that children are possibly being positioned by the state as a solution to the labor vacuum left by the deportation of migrant laborers.

Author

• Paul McGovern, University of Wisconsin-Madison