Independent Child Migration in Southern Benin: An Ethnographic Challenge to the 'Pathological' Paradigm
Author(s): N. Howard
This paper explores the reasons for which children independently migrate it Benin. It is inspired by the evident disjunct between the dominant discursive representations of 'child trafficking' and the multiple and overlapping realities of independent child migrants in the country. It is based on detailed participant observation and 60 interviews, 30 with children and 30 with adults, carried out over a 3-month period from July-September 2007. Using a critical theoretical framework that challenges the assumptions in dominant western understandings of family, children, childhood, mobility, structure and agency, the paper begins by briefly outlining the different Beniniese social conceptions of both family life and migration, in order to offer a context to the life-worlds of Beninese adults and children. It then builds on this context to discuss the reasons for which children migrate in search of work in Benin, highlighting two distinct trends: decisions made by families, on the behalf of the child and his or her family, and decisions made by children themselves based on their own understandings of their lifeworlds. The paper draws on the notion of the inter-generational contract to explain the different types of child decision, namely the collaborative, the compromise and the conflictual. The conclusion is drawn that independent child migration in Benin is an ever-changing but deeply embedded social reality and that standard international civil society characterisations of it are both simplistic and illinformed.