Peer-reviewed article
Child Labour – What Can We Do about It?
Maciej Frączek, Aleksandra Żyła ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This peer-reviewed paper explores child labour as a persistent problem in developing countries, examining its drivers and potential solutions. The authors use literature review and legal analysis to identify how social economy and social entrepreneurship could contribute to reducing child labour. While they find no existing direct implementations of social economy solutions for this problem, they identify prospective areas where such approaches could be applied. The paper concludes that addressing child labour requires cooperation across government, private, and social sectors, including social economy organisations.
Key points
- Child labour remains persistent in developing countries despite growing knowledge of its harmful consequences, with the number of working children increasing in recent years
- The problem has both internal and external contributing factors that drive its emergence and perpetuation
- No direct implementations of social economy or social entrepreneurship solutions to child labour were found in the reviewed literature
- Multiple prospective domains and instruments exist where social economy activity could address child labour
- Effective abolition of child labour requires cooperation among governmental, private, and social institutions
Limitations
This is a literature review and legal analysis without empirical data collection or evaluation of interventions. It does not provide evidence on the effectiveness of any proposed solutions or describe specific social economy models tested in practice.
Abstract
Background: Despite increasing knowledge of its harmful consequences, child labour is a persistent issue in developing countries; moreover, the number of working children has increased in recent years. Research objectives: To explore the issue of child labour by defining its drivers and indicating strategies for reducing its extent and impacts. To answer the following research question: What are the feasible solutions to the problem of child labour that might also be applied in the context of social economy or social entrepreneurship? Research design and methods: The authors rely on a combination of an analytical and synthetic approach and draw mostly on a review of the literature as well as normative acts (in the latter case, taking advantage of the dogmatic-legal method). Information resources comprise scientific research, studies of international institutions, legal acts, and websites. The last section employs heuristic methods to identify new sectors of social economy activity in the context of efforts to combat and prevent child labour. As a result, the considerations are primarily qualitative in nature. Results: Despite the absence of instances of direct implementation of social economy (entrepreneurship) solutions designed to address the problem of child labour in developing countries, it is possible to identify numerous prospective domains and instruments where this sort of activity might be conducted. Conclusions: Child labour is a complex issue in developing countries since both internal and external factors contribute to its emergence and perpetuation. Its abolition requires immediate cooperation of multiple institutions and organisations from the governmental, private, and social spheres. It appears that social economy organisations should be included in the list of existing actors in this field.