Encountering Work: Intergenerational Informality, Child Labor, and Malnutrition in Urban Ecuador

Abstract

This article examines the interconnections among informality, child labor, and child malnutrition in households at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid in urban Ecuador. Through qualitative interviews with 120 adult informal laborers, mostly street vendors, I elicited stories that not only revealed current labor conditions but also reflected upon whole lives engaged in informal work. Interviews uncovered lifelong structural conditions that perpetuate the social and economic inheritances of intergenerational work in the informal sector and intergenerational patterns of a broader, more inclusive form of child labor termed “encountering work.” Social, political, and economic factors related to informality and child labor maintain structural vulnerabilities that contribute to the emergence and exacerbation of syndemic health conditions, most notably through multiple forms of child malnutrition. The children of these 120 informal sector workers, especially those that encounter work in a variety of ways alongside their parents, demonstrate profound childhood nutritional failures that will likely impact them throughout their lives. The challenges related to intergenerational informality, child labor as encountering work, and child malnutrition can only be understood in the context of pervasive, intergenerational poverty. Encountering work is a survival strategy that allows families to subsist in an unequal society that can simultaneously perpetuate vulnerabilities and inequalities in health and opportunity.

Syndemic contexts: findings from a review of research on non-communicable diseases and interviews with experts

“…Thirteen sources were selected for full-text review [15,16,[21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. The contextual factors were categorized using the four-layer model (Figure 2), adapted from the 'rainbow' model [19].…”

“…When defining the concept, they usually cited one of Singer's works [8,32]. One article [30] defined a syndemic by focusing especially on the adverse contextual factors that facilitate the emergence and exacerbation of multiple health conditions. Only two articles provided no explicit definition of a syndemic [26,29], but the authors' rationale and citations made it clear that they were well aware of the concept and its meaning.…”

Urban Neighbourhood Dynamics and the Worst Forms of Child Labour

“…Similarly, a study found that children who 'encounter work' by simply being with their families working in informal sector market jobs in Quito, Ecuador, also tended to live in informal settlements on the outskirts of town and have extended commutes to get to workplaces around the city (Hinrichsen 2017). This study did not specifically look at WFCL, but it noted that even the common experience of spending time in informal sector markets and working with family led to significant detrimental health effects and the perpetuation of poverty and marginalisation, locking children into informal work as adults.…”

Adult paleopathology as an indicator of childhood social roles: A case study of Perthes disease in a native Ohio female

“…Furthermore, in part because Western white hegemonic norms preclude the economic participation of children (Zhao, ), the economic contributions of children in bioarchaeology are often overlooked (Alfonso‐Durruty & Thompson, ). Ethnographic evidence, however, suggests a variety of conceptions of child agency and vulnerability across social groups (Bugarin, ; Hinrichsen, ; Stephens, ; Zarger & Stepp, ).…”