Embedding the global womb: Global child labour and the new policy agenda

This paper seeks to understand how representations of child labour shape children’s lifeworlds globally. I use the term lifeworld to qualify the social world, which unevenly distributed symbolic resources contribute to misrecognize in favour of a mythical global order (cf. Couldry, 2003, 41 ff). My suggestion is that as representations of child labour hold out the promise of a labour-free childhood to the world’s children, children’s day-to-day responsibilities and word routines are diminished, denied or even criminalized. These routines are typically located in hidden landscapes of reproduction in the global south.