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Jacqueline Demeranville is a Programme Officer at FAO in the Decent Rural Employment Team of the Social Policies and Rural Institutions Division. Her main area of work is the prevention of child labour in agriculture and the promotion of decent employment for rural youth under 18. She has published a wide range of knowledge products and capacity development materials and provides technical support to policy and programming at country level. Prior to joining FAO in 2010, Jacqueline worked for the International Labour Organization (ILO). She holds a master’s degree in development economics and a bachelor’s in economics and anthropology.
Jacqueline Demeranville
Particular attention needs to be paid to children who migrate on their own or with their families for (seasonal) agricultural work. Children are at risk of being engaged in child labour due to incentives such as piece-rate payments or pressure to meet quotas. Even though only the household head may be on the books, the whole family may work in order to earn enough to meet basic needs or to pay back debts incurred in migration. The children of migrant families may work longer hours and be exposed to more hazards that children of resident families. Additionally, migrant children might not have access to schools, either because schools don’t exist near the living or worksite, or due to factors such as language or cultural barriers, or the difficulties in moving between schools and the lack of recognition of coursework completed. Young children might accompany their migrant families to the fields due to lack of childcare, including relatives to look after them. In some cases, plantations may even require everyone to work if they live in company housing. Trust between migrant and host communities may also be a barrier in terms of leaving their children with others. Housing conditions are often unsanitary, transport unsafe, and children migrating on their own are also at particular risk of various kinds of abuse.
This points to a need for improvements in decent work for migrant workers in agriculture, not only internationally, but also internal seasonal migration in developing countries.
Children who are left-behind may also be at risk, in particular in households that are not receiving remittances and don’t have enough money to hire labour. In order to cover the labour needs for producing food and meet basic household needs, they may take over the work that the migrant household member used to undertake on the farm or in the home, being exposed to hazards, including long hours of work, and may be forced to drop out of school.
Targeted support is needed for left-behind families, to ensure that the remaining adult(s) in the household have access to support for successfully managing agricultural activities without resorting to child labour. This is particularly the case for women, who may face additional barriers and obstacles in ownership and control of the land, access to technologies, finance, extension services etc.
See also Migration and child labour: Exploring child migrant vulnerabilities and those of children left-behind