Child labour in small-scale mining: examples from Niger, Peru, and Philippines

Abstract

Young workers engaged by concession holders to work in small-scale mines are attractive for a number of reasons. Firstly, as they are working illegally, any complaints regarding wages or working conditions would likely be ignored. Secondly, young workers are generally compliant and tend not to question the tasks assigned to them and the living and working conditions they are faced with. The fact that wages are often not received until after the end of a work contract is undoubtedly a constraint on rebellion. Lastly, for many rural young people there is no alternative wage employment outside the small- scale mining sector; subsistence farming is neither attractive nor sustainable.