Nepalese child labourers' life-contexts, cognitive skills and well-being

Child labour: A Multi-disciplinary review

The aim of this article is twofold: firstly, I will examine the value of children's participation in working life in the South1 and particularly in Nepal. My second objective is to assess the theoretical possibilities of the psychosocial health screening tool used to answer the questions raised in the recent literature on child labour. Child labour is a social problem arising out of family poverty and the fact that children form a cheap, usually obedient, labour force not recognized by trade unions. I will examine the sociological, psychological, and institutional research contexts in relation to a study of children working in the carpet industry in Nepal, which was carried out by the autho…

Cognitive skills among Nepalese child labourers

The cognitive skills of 61 Nepalese 10-14-year-old working children with at least 2 years working experience (WE) were compared to two groups of children, beginners (N = 29) with less than 1 year of WE and a school group (N = 104) matched for age and ethnic background. All the children (N = 194) were tested by the Bender test, WISC-R for Arithmetic, Digit Span, and the Word Fluency test. The main results showed that the school group was better in all the cognitive tests, except for Digit Span Backwards, where the working group had the highest average score. The second main finding shows no major differences in cognitive skills between the beginner and working groups. However, the work exper…