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Children
in the Global City Urbanization involves two often parallel processes: the creation of new cities as development displaces countryside; and the expansion of existing cities as people migrate from rural to urban areas. According to the United Nations Foundation, as of the year 2000, 2.9 billion people — or 47 percent of the world’s population — lived in urban areas. By the year 2030, 4.9 billion — or 60 percent of the world’s population — will live in cities. By the year 2007, just six years from now, the number of urban dwellers will exceed the number of rural for the first time in history. The number of people who live in large cities of 10 million or more remains relatively small, only 4.3 percent. But more and more people — especially in the developing world — are migrating to small urban areas of 500,000 to one million people. This shift from rural to urban life raises a number of concerns. When cities grow too quickly, there may not be enough jobs for everyone, or the jobs available may pay very little. Poverty may make it difficult for children to grow up safe, healthy and educated. It may be hard to find a place to live or hard to find clean water. Sanitation is likely to be a concern. Air pollution may also increase with more traffic and industry. The breakdown of the community safety net that may have existed in a rural environment means that people feel isolated from one another. This isolation puts increasing pressure on the traditional family unit and this, too, breaks down. Schools may be overcrowded or non-existent. Densely populated cities may be dangerous; the lack of jobs, education and money breed crime and violence. The causes of urbanization are largely economic. In an increasingly international and global economy, corporations headquartered in the developed world, and especially in the United States and Europe, freely locate their production in developing countries where costs are lower. Pharis Harvey, senior consultant with the International Labor Rights Fund, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization that advocates for fair labor conditions for workers across the globe, explains that "globalization makes societies more vulnerable" and it hurts the most vulnerable members of society: those already poor, women, and children. "Globalization creates a need for larger urban workforces and smaller rural ones," says Harvey. "As a result, people migrate to cities." Children
The impact on the world’s children is tremendous. In the worst situations, children are on their own, living on the street. The World Health Organization estimates that there are 10 to 30 million street children worldwide. The problem is most severe in Latin America and in Metro Manila where, among a population of nine million, there are approximately 60,000 street children. Street children are also a growing concern in Eastern Europe, especially in Moscow. While there were no street children in Russia’s capital 10 years ago, there are now 50,000. Twenty-five to 90 percent of street children are substance abusers. In South Africa, nine out of ten street children are thought to be dependent on glue. Many street children are orphaned (the parents of five to ten million children worldwide will die of AIDS by the end of the decade). Others live with at least one parent, usually their mother. Even children who are not homeless may find themselves on the street during the day, while their parents work. Children are often left to fend for themselves for hours at a time. Three and four-year-olds babysit their infant siblings. Children suffer from lack of food, from inadequate healthcare, and from neglect — by parents and society. In country after country — including places in the U.S. — public education simply does not exist or is inadequate. According to Free the Children International, a non-profit organization devoted to improving conditions for children across the globe, 125 million children around the world are denied the chance to go to school. Over 150 million additional children drop out of primary school before completing four years. Often, even where public education does exist, its hidden costs — for uniforms, books and supplies —put it out of reach of many. Oxfam’s Global Campaign for Education, calling for "world governments to adopt a global action plan to provide basic education for all children by the year 2015," estimates that it would cost just $8 billion to provide every child in the world with primary education, "the same as four days of global military spending." Left without access to education, children may wander aimlessly throughout the day or they may find work. For the lack of free accessible public education feeds child labor. As Harvey explains, "There are children hustling everything from toy balloons to themselves, and this is not just in one city or one part of the world but nearly everywhere across the globe." Over 100 million children work in India. At least 15 million work in Latin America and half of these are between six and 14 years old.
Child prostitution is increasing. More than one million children enter the profession each year, according to Free the Children. Sex tourism — arranging for men to travel to other countries to have sex with children — is also on the rise, especially in the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand and Eastern Europe. Children are usually 13 to 17 years old, but can be as young as five. Children work in mines and factories. Sometimes, they hustle items on the street. Sometimes, they enter domestic service. Children are also forced into bonded labor — to pay off family debts or to help support families where parents cannot find work. This is a particularly acute problem in India. The fluctuations and demands of a global economy often leave families — and children — with few options.
Harvey states, "Child labor perpetuates poverty, generates it and regenerates it." Working children become sickly adults with little or no education. They are less productive workers and their work increases adult unemployment. For children fill the jobs that adults would otherwise accept. In Mexico and throughout Latin America there exists the maquiladora syndrome. Maquiladoras are factories established in the developing world where products are made for U.S. consumers using very low-paid labor. Harvey explains, "The maquiladora syndrome leads young women — many of whom are below the legal working age — to migrate to produce for the United States." The problems caused by globalization and urbanization do not impact only developing countries. The developed world is affected as well. Increasing immigration to the U.S., for example, results as parents try to escape poverty and find a better life for their children. "But," as Carmen Guerrero, the Jubilee Ministries Officer on the national staff of the Episcopal Church, explains, "we are not wonderful to the children who are here in the U.S., who were born here, let alone to immigrant children." Javier Perez de Cuellar, former secretary general of the United Nations, said, "The way a society treats its children reflects not only its quality of compassion and protective caring, but also its sense of justice, its commitment to the future and its urge to enhance the human condition for coming generations." The look below at three global cities — New Delhi, India, a large South Asian city in the heart of the developing world; San Pedro Sula, Honduras, a developing smaller city in Latin America; and Los Angeles, California, a city that represents both American excess (Hollywood) and American poverty — tells a disturbing story. We, as an international society, seem to lack the compassion and justice that Perez de Cuellar discusses. As we look at children in these three representative cities, we have to ask ourselves, what is our "commitment to the future" and do we possess an "urge to enhance the human condition"? New Delhi Delhi is the capital of India, and it's also the travel hub of northern India. When entering New Delhi — a city of more than 14 million — you’ll notice the pollution, the crowds, the smell, and the noise, says Kailash Satyarthi, the chairperson of the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude (SACCS), a non-profit organization that has, as Satyarthi describes, been engaged in the liberation of slave children and child laborers for the last twenty years. "You will also see children working in most of the street restaurants or street hovels," says Satyarthi. "If you visit a middle class Indian home, you will see children working as domestic labor. A young girl will be cleaning houses and serving tea. Children work in retail industries, in plastics and metal industries. If you are touring in a cab, you will see children working at the gasoline station. You will find child labor in all automobile workshops. You will also see homeless children." More than 200,000 children live on the street. You will see an ecological crisis — pollution of air, water and land, chopping down of trees, inadequate disposal of waste, traffic.
"You will also see a large number of children begging in the streets of Delhi, but few are begging for themselves. The money does not go into their pockets, but into the pockets of the Big Mafia Market. Gangsters force children to do this," adds Satyarthi.
Even if children don’t work for pay, they may work at home, making it possible for their parents to go to jobs. Geeta Dharmarajan, a labor activist in Delhi, explains, "When a child’s family is very poor, there is no creative growth, no play for the child. There’s no time that the child can spend doing something that is not essential for the family’s survival. The child is the one who makes it possible for the parents to go to work by looking after the whole household, always in charge. She is the one who fetches the water and firewood, cleans the house, cleans the utensils, washes the clothes, gets the vegetables or the rice." A three-year old child, for example, may tend her eight-month old baby brother. A four-year-old may go out shopping for the family. The South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude fights child labor by physically rescuing children who have been forced into bonded service. Satyarthi explains that, in India and throughout South Asia, "a large number of children are lured away from native villages. Sometimes parents are cheated and children are taken away with promises and good dreams and incentives. The children are taken to factories or mines where they lose their liberty. They are not allowed to go to their parents and parents can’t come to them. Children work 18 hours a day and are sometimes beaten and sexually abused. They are paid no wages to speak of and have no hope. There are many cases where children were branded or beaten, especially if they cry for their parents. This exists in hundreds of thousands of cases. "We estimate 10-12 million children are engaged in bonded labor. Half of these are born in bondage. The parents or grandparents may have borrowed money from a landlord, and the child has to pay back the loan." Many are employed in shockingly brutal and hazardous conditions. Those in the Asian rug industry work in cramped quarters, frequently developing spinal deformities from persistent crouching, weakened eyesight and respiratory ailments from exposure to dust and wool fluff.
Take the story of Aghan, a boy sold to a carpet master when he was eight years old. When he once asked for his mother, his face was branded with a hot iron and the carpet master injected poison into one of the boy’s eyes, blinding it. In India, 300,000 children work in the carpet industry alone. "We physically liberate the children," says Satyarthi. "We receive information or sometimes requests from parents or relatives or even the postman or teachers. If we get requests, then we create a raid. We do this with the help of local judiciary because bonded labor system is outlawed in India, though the law is seldom enforced. We raid the factories, rescue the children and hand them over to their parents." SACCS has rescued over 55,000 children. Along with the raids to free children from bonded labor, SACCS also focuses on increasing educational opportunities for children. Satyarthi explains, "Education is one of our major areas and we struggle for the right for this. In India, we are one of those countries who spend less than one percent of our gross domestic product on education for children. Over 120 million children are out of school. Many are working, half of them as fulltime child laborers. The quality of the education that does exist is very poor. "Education needs to be a fundamental right. Ending child labor and increasing education go hand in hand." San Pedro Sula, Honduras Nearly halfway across the world from New Delhi stands San Pedro Sula, the business capital and second largest city of Honduras. Dense smog engulfs this mountain valley, recalling coal-polluted 19th-century London. Some locals jokingly blame the sordid atmosphere on a favorite San Pedro Sula pastime: smoking cigars. The real culprit is the city's booming industrialization. Taxis race along city streets spewing exhaust from diesel engines. Some 200 plants, many surprisingly modern, crank out clothing and other goods. Foreign manufacturers are building facilities in San Pedro Sula at a rapid pace encouraged by the country's generous tax incentives and the city's proximity to Puerto Cortes, Central America's busiest port, which is only two days by ship from Miami. San Pedro Sula, one of the oldest cities in Honduras, is home to approximately 500,000 people (an increase of almost 200,000 or 40 percent since 1989), and is the fastest-growing city in Latin America. Like Honduras itself, San Pedro Sula suffers from poverty, for more than 80 percent of the Honduran population lives in extreme poverty. Hurricane Mitch, in 1998, hit Honduras and San Pedro hard. Currently, San Pedro Sula is rebuilding the municipal structures damaged in the hurricane. The hurricane and growing industry brought migrants to the city. But when the jobs didn’t materialize or didn’t pay much, thousands were forced to live in slums, their homes consisting of cardboard boxes. Jubilees Ministries Officer Carmen Guerrero recently visited San Pedro Sula. She noted a city divided. "In the developed part of San Pedro Sula, there are new hotels, Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, all that kind of stuff. This is the part that most American visitors see, but the poor section is very poor.
"People have migrated to the city in hopes of finding a better job, and children were brought into the city, but the city is not prepared to take care of their needs. Women come to the city and have more children, but the educational and health systems are not ready for them. "The poverty is overwhelming. Those who end up bearing the brunt of health, food, housing problems are usually women and their children. "In downtown San Pedro Sula, lots of children are sleeping on the street, some with mothers and some on their own. "Most of the mothers are not married and the fathers are not around. To get a marriage license costs almost half of your salary. Mothers may be working in maquiladoras and they leave their children to care for themselves all day. There is lots of child abuse and little or no education." Free public school is available in Honduras only until the sixth grade, but few poor people make it that far. As Guerrero explains, "School is tenuous. In poor areas — whether urban or rural — public education happens only when the teacher comes. Many don’t know how to read and write. "The Episcopal Church is helping to create what are called little schools to reach the children in the neighborhood. Usually Episcopal schools are the elite schools. In San Pedro Sula, the Church of the Good Shepherd has an enormous, wonderful, elite school, but this doesn’t reach poor children." Guerrero describes the new little schools. "One is a day care center. It has no beds — just a row of little hammocks. The center is a roof, half a wall of cinder block and a chain link fence. But it gives the children a place to go and be safe. "Another was started by a woman who took a course and wanted to do some good. It has no electricity; the kids have to use paper twice — use it, erase it and use it again — things that we take for granted, but the kids are having fun, laughing, singing, and they are not afraid. The school is a little safe haven so kids don’t have to be afraid on the streets all day." Problems at Home The problems that result from an increasingly global economy and urban world affect not only developing countries but developed ones as well. As life in the developing world becomes more difficult, increasing numbers of families cross U.S. borders both legally and illegally, searching for a better life for themselves and their children. Once in the U.S., they discover what poor Americans have already learned. As more factory and production jobs have moved to the developing world, there are fewer decently paid blue-collar jobs left in this country. They also see that the minimum wage in America, $5.15 an hour, is too low to support a family.
Kozol also noted problems common to America’s poor children. Many are malnourished and under-immunized. They experience greater violence in their communities than do children who live in wealthier neighborhoods. And their schools are inadequate. Often the facilities are in ill repair. Academic and sports programs are lacking. The curriculum may be far from challenging. For example, Kozol offers this description of East St. Louis High, "The football field is missing almost everything — including goalposts. There are a couple of metal pipes — no crossbar, just the pipes." In the Introductory Home Economics class there is no work on Fridays and Advanced Home Ec is designed to prepare students for jobs at fast food restaurants. Frequently, in poorer school districts, the science labs lack basic equipment, like lab tables. Overcrowding may lead districts to transform closets into classrooms, as is done in my community of Hamtramck, Michigan, an urban district where over 80 percent of the students speak English as a second language. In some districts, like the Los Angeles Unified School District, children may attend school in rotation — two months off and two months on — in order to accommodate the space crunch. Like the bonded child laborers in India, or the slum children of San Pedro Sula, America’s urban poor may also experience hopelessness. A child without hope is a terrible waste. That child may turn to drugs and violence, to depression and suicide, to anger, or, perhaps at best (or least worst), to a job at McDonald’s. Los Angeles, California Los Angeles, California, may represent the most international of all major U.S. cities. Its population of 3.8 million is 45.6 percent Latino, 32.2 percent Caucasian, 9.4 percent African American, and 12.6 percent Asian and Pacific Islander. Rector William Leeson’s Todos Los Santos (All Saints) Episcopal Church in the Highland Park district of Los Angeles is typical of the city’s international and poor population. "It’s an inner city parish of 1,100 people," says Leeson. "Almost 95 percent are Latino, and a large group of these are undocumented people. This bears on what happens to children. There are maybe 50 Anglo families and 40 Asian families. People mostly come from Mexico and Central America. They have lots of kids. Many are young married couples and many are not married but they live together and have kids. We have a young congregation." Reverend Altagracia Perez, rector at St. Phillip’s in South Central Los Angeles, points to similar demographics in her parish. In both congregations, as throughout the city, the greatest challenges people face, are, says Perez, economic. "The impact of globalization and urbanization has left people in the inner city with very low-wage jobs. In order for them to live well, many young couples have to live with their parents or they have to live two families to an apartment. Many face economic problems as the cost of living increases." "Housing is very expensive," agrees Leeson. "A typical apartment is $600 a month. For a person making $5/hour, working under the table if the person is undocumented, earning no benefits and so taking home $200 a week, there are few options. "The U.S. economic boom," adds Leeson, "is due to a very, very low paid labor market in unskilled jobs. For illegal immigrants there is no recourse. They have to take what they can get, working for employers who don’t demand documentation. For many, this is under the table sewing or McDonald’s." Many other problems result from lack of documentation. "If you don’t have a social security number," says Leeson, "you can’t get a driver’s license or open a bank account. If you manage to get kids through high school and want them to go to college, if you are undocumented, the kids have to pay out of state tuition. "The kids are facing this. Knowing they can’t afford to go to college, they do not have much impetus to do well in school. They feel unaccepted because they are not legal." All Saints tries to combat this with scholarship and tutoring programs. Two undocumented students are going to college this year. He points also to problems for younger children. Often both parents work or there is only one parent and there are problems with supervision, especially after school. Perez agrees. With so much of a family’s income — often 60 percent — going to cover housing costs, there is little left for quality after-school care. "It’s hard for kids not to have adult support and security. It is hard because nobody is there to provide structure at home. No one advocates for the kids when they fall through cracks at school." Perez’s church offers an after-school program from 2:30-6pm. "This doesn’t mean parents are always home by six," says Perez, "but it does take away some latchkey time and helps keep kids out of trouble." The program provides academic help and enrichment, such as arts and sports programs.
"I have recently had the most heartbreaking experience," says Perez. "There was a child in my church who always had some trouble with academics and behavior. His mom left him alone. He graduated from fifth grade and couldn’t read. His mom was very upset. You could give him anything but he couldn’t read it for you. I was so furious with the schools that I took on tutoring this kid. I worked with him for a month and I’ve now found a place for him in our program. He has radically improved, and has gone from not being able to read anything to being able to read picture books. If in a month of tutoring him two to three times a week, I took him through first grade, it is clear that what he needs is attention. I talked to his mom about sitting with him for two to three hours a week after work even if she is tired. This will be hard for her. "Many parents leave home at 7am and don’t get home until 9pm. It’s a nightmare: how to be there for children, and do what you needs to be done in order to keep body and soul together." What Next? Pharis Harvey of the International Labor Rights Fund believes that the "solutions are at several levels." He just participated in a March Across India, sponsored by the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude. It was designed to encourage people to advocate for education for all children. One solution, he says, is to reprioritize World Bank loans, credits and grants to developing nations in order to provide basic education for all. Currently, many World Bank educational funds focus on technical education for a small minority rather than education for all. "There is also," says Harvey, "a need to provide transitional programs to take children from the workforce and put them into schools. Good projects could help phase children out of industry in a way that doesn’t cause hardship." U.S. legislation can also help and Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has been a leader in this area, sponsoring bills that require goods to be labeled if they were made by child labor. Harvey adds, "Poverty is usually blamed for a family’s decision to put a child to work. But the poverty that generates child labor has causes: policy decisions that either ignore the problem or make it worse, prejudice that pushes entire groups of people to the margins, and development schemes that reward corporations at the expense of local people. Child labor itself is a major contributor to the perpetuation of poverty in developing countries. When illiterate child laborers become parents, they often force their own children into the workplace, continuing a tradition that leaves generation after generation chained to a life of misery and degradation." The solution? asks Harvey. Remove children from work, fund schools, and invest in people and communities, rather than in corporations. While this shifting of priorities may seem painful at first, it is the only way that we can establish what former Secretary General of the United Nations Javier Perez Cuellar called our "commitment to the future"; it is the only way we will "enhance the human condition." Carmen Guerrero astutely notes, "We have no vision for the children who are in our midst, let alone for the children of the world." Isn’t it time to create one?
Camille Colatosti is a professor of English at Davenport University in Detroit, Michigan, and is The Witness’ staff writer. She may be reached by email at camille@thewitness.org
Related Links: Read The Global City, the November 2001 issue of The Witness. Read Globalization: For the common good or ill? the June 2000 issue of The Witness. |
As
adults struggle, working two jobs, their children go to the inadequate
public schools available for America’s urban poor. After school,
older siblings baby-sit younger ones, with the television serving as
primary caretaker. Minimum wage jobs rarely come with health insurance,
so preventive health care is nearly non-existent; eye checkups and dental
visits do not occur. As Jonathan Kozol noted in Savage Inequalities
(Crown 1991) when he visited the public schools in East St. Louis, "Dental
problems of kids — bleeding gums, impacted teeth and rotting teeth
— are routine matters."