Child Labor and Writer's Block

Last night I had the latest in a series of compelling conversations about how obvious it is that I should write something about my visits to child labor sweatshops in India last summer. I've spent the last 24 hours wondering why I haven't written this article any time in the seven months since my return. Looking back, I can see that the paralysis that is keeping the article locked inside my head closed its fist around me gradually. When my British Airways plane landed at Dulles, I was still so fired up about the injustice of what I had seen in the sweatshops only weeks before that I could think of little else. The images I had captured on camera were burning a proverbial hole in my laptop, s0 eager was I to show them to everyone I knew who had any kind of heart. They still haunted me (they still do).

I wanted to give a slide show for my friends. I wanted to present my photos and tell my story to students at local high schools. I wanted to get appointments with the head buyers of Pier One Imports, Cost Plus World Markets, and Target, so I could show them my photos and demand acknowledgement, contrition, and action. Above all, I wanted to write it all down so people could read what I had seen and begin to think.

It's not that I haven't written anything about it. There was the original piece of writing I did the day I visited the sweatshops. It's a hand-wringing narration of my sweatshop visits, told from the perspective of My Emotions, without much reference to broader context about the child labor problem in India. I followed it with another thought piece that attempts to analyze the problem and examines several possible solutions. This second piece reflects a little more complexity of thought, but neither is publishable in its current form.

What has happened since I stepped off of that plane? It's easy to say that "life" got in the way: a dear friend's whirlwind (and wonderful) wedding was rapidly followed by cheerful reunions with friends, a move into a new apartment in Oakland, travel, and three months of grad school applications. But I think it's been more than that. I think, fundamentally, I just don't know what to say.

And that's because there aren't any easy answers. I feel compelled to offer a solution alongside the problem I present; in this case, I'm really not sure what to recommend. Sure, I can tell people how to avoid buying handcrafted products made by child laborers--that part is simple: 1) Buy from fair trade companies, like World of Good, Ten Thousand Villages, Global Exchange, or Mercado Global; or 2) Buy fine items whose craftsmanship is too advanced to have been done by children (read: don't shop at Claire's or Target for jewelry!). That ensures that your dollars don't directly support the mafia-run contractors who employ child laborers (or the corporations that sell those products to Western consumers for a profit). But it doesn't ensure that the children who lose their jobs because demand has shifted away from mainstream products will be okay.


This is my biggest hang-up: children who are employed as laborers in India typically contribute 20% of their family's total income, which averages at about $500/year: barely enough to survive. When a child laborer loses his* job, his family will struggle with starvation. As far as I can tell, there isn't much of a bridge in place to transition child laborers out of the work force and back into school with some kind of financial safety net for their families. A mechanism like that is necessary to ensure that drawing demand away from mainstream production toward fair trade production is beneficial to children on the margin. Now, you could make the argument that the long term gains of raising work standards are worth the short-term pain of shifting children out of the workforce, but when short-term pain means families--lots and LOTS of families--starving to death because their children cannot find work, it is a difficult call to make.

Looking back at history, most society-wide shifts in work standards (think the introduction of minimum wages in the U.S.) involve initial worker suffering that brings about long-term improvement in working conditions. Perhaps I can wholeheartedly endorse the shifting of demand toward fair trade products, knowing that if the market truly swings in that direction, children will suffer initially but those who survive the shift will live in a more just world. I'm fumbling toward a conclusion, but my lack of clarity on this point is confounding my attempts to begin writing about the experience. It brings me back to questions about authority and my voice as a writer. How can I claim the authority to write about something--especially something so important--when I don't completely understand it myself? And when I'm not even sure what my own observations mean, can I in good faith pass them along to an audience that might be even less well-informed than I am? Is this productive consciousness-raising, or is it a counterproductive, nonsensical game of telephone?

I think I need to write this article. I think I need to push past these uncertainties and Just. Write. It. Down. I think it will get easier once I get started.

And now I think I need to get some sleep.



*I say "his" because all the child workers I met in the handicrafts industry were boys. While I initially thought this might mean that child laborers in general tend to be predominantly boys, I was mistaken: I asked whether girls are spared from child labor for cultural reasons, and my colleague replied that girls are also working, but mostly as sex workers or domestic servants.