Consuming Work: Youth Labor in America

4. Pay or Play? : The Youth Labor Force in the United States and Other Industrialized Countries

4 Pay or Play? The Youth Labor Force in the United States and Other Industrialized Countries The heart desires neither coffee nor coffee house: It desires friendship, coffee is an excuse. —Turkish proverb I n When Teenagers Work (1986), the pioneering work on youth employment in the United States, Ellen Greenberger and Laurence Steinberg argue that working while still in school is exclusively an American practice: The student worker per se is a distinctly American phenomenon. In many countries of the western world, it is virtually unheard of for youngsters to participate intensively in the labor force while still in school. The reasons why American teenagers are flocking to the workplace are embedded in events that have taken place in school, the family , and the economy—and in the motives, values, and aspirations of young people themselves. (1986: 4) The view that working while still in school is a distinctly American phenomenon has been well established in the field. However, despite the unanimous agreement on the unique nature of the American youth labor market, little research has been done to compare the American youth labor force to those of other industrialized countries. Often times, high rates of employment are cited to justify the uniqueness of the American youth labor force. Greenberger and Steinberg (1986) point to young people’s motives and reasons for working in understanding the unique nature of the American case; however, traditionally, young people have been left out of the study of youth employment. Young people’s own motives for working and their aspirations and thoughts were rarely included in typical studies of youth employment. Because young people were typically left outside the study of employment, their reasons, motivations, and aspirations were rarely examined. In recent years, however, an emerging Pay or Play? 71 literature has called for the inclusion of the perspectives of the central actors into the study of youth work—young people themselves (Besen-Cassino 2008; Liebel 2004). As Bernard Schlemmer notes: Even less than the labourer, the peasant, the immigrant, pauper or exploited person—already more often considered as the objects of social policies, development, integration, support and consciousness-raising rather than the subjects of their own history—the child is never perceived as an actor but always as the “target” (according to international institutions’ current term, whose cruelty and cynicism one would believe to be unintended), the passive recipient of measures taken to protect him or her, i.e., to hold him/her “outside” the world he/she is going to have face on reaching adulthood. (2000: 4) Because young people are typically considered to be passive subjects rather than active agents, their unique perspectives, motives, aspirations, and values have not been well documented. Although the effects of their employment, especially on academic progress, emotional development, future employment, and deviant behavior, have been widely discussed and debated, the young people themselves have rarely been included in the discussion. Because the central actors have been left outside the study of youth employment, their reasons for working have typically been reduced to an assumed economic need. That is why typical international studies of youth employment point to economic need and difficult conditions of work (Alvim 2000; Banpasirichote 2000; Fukui 2000; Gulrajani 2000; Lange 2000; Marguerat 2000; Mbaye and Fall 2000; Niuwenhuys 2000; Ramanathan 2000; Sastre and Meyer 2000; Schlemmer 2000; Suremain 2000; Tarancena and Tavera 2000; Verlet 2000). This has led scholars to study youth labor either as a historic artifact in industrialized countries or associate it with developing countries (Lavalette 2000). As Michael Lavalette argues: For many in Western Europe this is a phrase [child or youth labor] which applies to labour practices which have been abolished by “historical progress” or, alternatively, it is something which is pervasive in the NICs and UDCs and indicative of their economic “backwardness.” In Britain it is generally assumed that when children work they do so in light, healthy jobs which are compatible with schooling and aid the transition into adulthood. (2000: 214) This perspective is deeply entrenched in academic thinking on youth employment . Because youth labor in industrialized nations is seen as innocuous, 72 Chapter 4 youth labor exists as a social problem to be studied only in the context of newly industrializing countries. Even in such a context, the reasons for working are rarely explored. As Schlemmer observes, “Those not conforming to the ideal model are being seen solely as victims and, ultimately...