Notes: Children in Sex Work - Part 1

In all my travels and years in development work, I always find the plight of children to be disturbing. As a foreigner and tourist in developing countries, I can’t help but notice children in the streets begging or being involved in the flesh trade. It is the latter that I find most upsetting. I know that the main reason behind these activities is poverty. But I can’t also help but wonder if children engaged in sex work are pure victims, or do they exercise human agency in making sense of, and living in the social world of sex work? What aspects of sex work are open to their decision-making? And how do children decide and interpret their engagement in this occupation?

ADULTHOOD AND RATIONALITY
Many studies have been conducted on the involvement of children in sex work, but very few studies have dealt with the issue from the perspective of the child, as it is being lived and experienced by the child herself. Policies and laws regarding children reflect the social construction of children as incompetent human beings who lack reason and are thus “incapable of supporting themselves and of acting for their best interest.” Because of their perceived inability to act rationally, children are not allowed to participate in the adult world, and are seen to require the protection and supervision of adults. It is this adult bias that leads society to approach the issue of children’s sex work from an adult perspective.

However, there is no defining line that distinguishes the rational adult from the rational child. While adulthood is associated with full rationality, childhood cannot be considered as a period of complete lack of reason, since maturity and development of reason is a gradual process through the acquisition of ideas and experiences. As such, I contend that regardless of the limitation of knowledge and experiences of the child, the child makes sense of the social world in the process of living in it. I support the contention that human beings both act in the social world, and are acted upon by it.

In general, adults are assumed to be the only knowledgeable, active and competent social actors in society. Children are considered incapable of making the right decisions and taking the right actions because they are not yet equipped with the skill to make rational decisions, and they lack the knowledge of the rules and structures of society that would enable them to become active and competent actors. Thus, as a rule, adults make decisions for children until such time that the latter are deemed competent and fully capable of deciding and acting for their best interests.

In most countries, the transition from childhood to adulthood is defined by age; a person is considered to be an adult upon reaching the age of 18 years. Only then can the person act and be treated as an adult. Individuals have to undergo a process of socialization throughout their childhood and adolescence in order to prepare them to become adults. It is through the socialization process that social actors learn the social rules and structures of society that would guide their behavior and actions in any situation.

Through socialization, children are taught the idea of self-determination, and of agency, during this preparatory phase. They learn to exercise their agency. Society has even formed social structures that would facilitate a more ordered socialization of children. First and foremost of these are the family and school.

However, in the case of the children sex workers who are living apart from their family, and are not in school, their socialization has to be continued in their everyday life, and with the social actors in sex work. Sex work can then be considered as both the context and the process by which the children sex workers are socialized into a world of social inequality, based on social class, gender and age.

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Notes: Poverty and Development – Part 1

As a development worker and tourist in developing countries, I noticed one common and disturbing theme: POVERTY. For me, poverty is THE development issue. It has been a perennial problem that majority of the world’s population faces. Billions of dollars have been spent on thousands of various poverty interventions. Countless seminars, fora, conferences and conventions have been held to discuss poverty and come up with workable solutions. Technological innovations have focused on increasing food production.

Despite all these efforts, poverty still remains as a huge problem in itself, as well as both a major cause and consequence of other issues that underdeveloped and developing nations struggle with. This apparent lack of impact of development initiatives on world poverty has prompted many development stakeholders to ask why, including me. It makes me wonder if development programs helping poor countries as intended or are they fostering dependency on international aid, corruption within the government and consequently, furthering poverty and underdevelopment. So, what have we not done right?

ACROSS THE YEARS
Development paradigms, approaches and interventions have evolved throughout the years. These are intricately intertwined with political-economic discourses. The first paradigm equated development with economic progress. It proposed that poverty can only be addressed through economic-oriented interventions.

With this, the socialist-communist perspective argued that only by revolutionizing the political-economy of the country can true development prosper -- by eliminating inequality, poverty will be addressed. From the other end of the political-economic spectrum, the capitalists believed that strengthening the economy is the only way to development and address poverty.

The cold war brought on not only the arms race, but also a development race. As capitalist nations tried to prevent the spread of socialism-communism to the rest of the world, development funding and interventions naturally poured in from them into the underdeveloped and developing countries. They believed that effects of economic progress will trickle down to poor countries and communities.

However, as time passed and very little change was perceived in the poverty situation of the beneficiary-nations, development planners and managers realized that economic progress, while an important prerequisite to development, is not the only aspect that needs to be addressed.

Acknowledging the cyclic nature of poverty, development initiatives moved to encompass education and health among others. This resulted to a more comprehensive measure of development. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP), considered as a reliable measure was then replaced by the Human Development Index (HDI). In line with the new encompassing approach, the HDI includes indicators on education and health, along with economic indicators like income and employment.

While equality, human rights and people’s participation are considered integral to democracy, these were yet to be realized in a capitalist-led development. Thus, as the socialist-communist nations pursued their brand of development with the same ideals of equality and empowerment, and gaining new allies along the way, development planners and managers from the rich capitalist nations had to reconsider their approaches. Equality, human rights and empowerment moved from the political sphere into the development arena.

A whole new development paradigm took shape by the last quarter of the 20th century. From the top-to-bottom approach typical of capitalism, interventions moved on to the bottom-to-top participatory approach. The focus changed from economic-centered empowerment to general political empowerment. The scope covers not only economic progress but a more holistic development that includes environmental sustainability as well. And finally, the method changed from being curative problem-oriented to preventive awareness-raising and capacity-building.

This is still the development paradigm that shapes the current development approaches and interventions. Yet, as I have noted earlier, poverty still remains, if not increasingly becoming the biggest development problem in the world. This brings us back to the question of “why.”

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