Family, Child Labor and Social Welfare in Peru

The problematic effects of child labor are primarily caused by poverty and precarity, products of the social and economic inequality generated by the capitalist system in Southern societies. Approaches from the Global North generally deal with the issue of child labor by imposing the abolitionist stance promoted by the International Labour Organization and adopted by, for example, the Peruvian state. Abolitionism proposes that child labor must be eradicated because it limits the development of working children and adolescents. In this essay the abolitionist approach is contrasted with the value-based approach used by the Movement of Working Children and Adolescents and Children of Christian Workers. The latter approach is supported by the theory of the coloniality of power, which considers work to be an activity that dignifies and contributes to families’ economic and social well-being.