Tensions and controversies regarding child labor in small-scale gold mining in Ghana

Abstract

The recent resurgence in small-scale mining in Ghana has coincided with falling enrolments in schools, leading to public concerns about the participation of children and young people in mining work. The engagement of children and young people in gold mining is also perceived to diminish efforts to improve education, inviting abolitionist actions from the government. This has created tension between government and its functionaries on one hand and young workers and their families on the other. Drawing on qualitative research, this article explores controversies around young people's involvement in small-scale mining and governments' efforts to curtail it in Amansie West District, Ghana. We discuss the tensions between securing individual/household livelihoods and societal interest in reducing child labor. The study findings underscore not only the importance of work in the lives of young workers and their households but also its positive implications for educational pursuits as well as for future livelihood prospects. Whereas the abolitionist framework emphasizes children's right to education, it fails to acknowledge that the income generated through work makes schooling possible for most children. We conclude that policies rooted in global ideologies of work-free childhoods are at odds with prevailing socio-cultural and economic realities.

The dynamics and livelihood implications of illegal mining in Ghana: A critical assessment

“…Reports from women in Sierra Leone indicate that capital from small-scale mining makes an important economic contribution to households' school fees budget (Maconachie & Hilson, 2011). Studies have also shown how economic gains from small-scale mining help young miners support their own educational needs or support their parents and, without this work, many would probably drop out of school (Jonah & Abebe, 2019). Although basic education is to be free up to senior high school, many needs are not catered for by free education policy.…”

Policies and Politics Around Children’s Work in Ghana

“…Fishing, farming, mining and other constituencies that have been the target of child labour abolitionist interventions have expressed misgivings about the 'tutelage' or 'civilising' approach adopted by some of these measures (Nti 2017). They challenge what they consider as efforts to impose particular forms of childhood and children's socialisation on them through campaigns and narratives that delegitimise virtuous autochthonous cultures and child socialisation mechanisms and also overlook the socioeconomic drivers of children's work (Jonah and Abebe 2019;Okyere 2013).…”

Education and Work: Children’s Lives in Rural Sub‑Saharan Africa

“…The dominant discourse that circumscribes debates about the relationship between schooling and children's labour, as articulated by the likes of the ILO and the World Bank, sustains a hierarchical education-work binary, which positions education above work (Jonah and Abebe 2017). This is problematic for a number of reasons.…”

“…Given the relational and contextual contingencies, childhoods are never singular or uniform but rather complex and diverse. As we discuss later, they are experienced through the symbolic and material significance of a range of social variables that include gender as well as histories of migration, settlement and work in different contexts (Nieuwenhuys 1994(Nieuwenhuys , 2010Bourdillon 2006;Abebe 2009;Burman and Stacey 2010;FAO 2014;Jonah and Abebe 2017;Rai, Brown and Ruwanpura 2019). This means, for example, that gender practices within community and household contexts will produce operational understandings of appropriate work (domestic, unpaid, paid and/or hazardous) for both girls and boys in ways that delimit and define childhoods, future social trajectories and ongoing engagements in social and economic life.…”

“…Yet, while there are clearly contexts and conditions in which children's work may be detrimental to both, the overall picture is inevitably more nuanced. Importantly, in SSA, including in Ghana, the notion of working hard (in both domestic and waged labour) is part of being a 'good child' (Tafere 2013;Jonah and Abebe 2017) and a reciprocal intergenerational social pact between adults and children that is central to children's transition to adulthood within household and community life (Berlan 2004;Tafere 2013;Kassa 2016).…”