We interview Nina Schneider about her book, Child Labour Opponents and Their Campaigns in the Americas
Our member, Dr. Nina Schneider (Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany), talks about her book, Child Labour Opponents and Their Campaigns in the Americas: A Global Perspective (1888–1938) (De Gruyter, 2025).
Q: What is this book about?
This book examines the origins of activism against child labour by addressing a hitherto under-examined question: how and why did child labour develop into a key concern in various places between the 1880s and 1930s? Who were the protagonists who first raised the issue of child labour as a global concern and why?
It aims to provide the first account of the history of diverse and locally grounded – but nationally and frequently globally connected – child labour opponents in the Americas, their motivations and campaigns, at the turn of the 20th century.
I argue that, for the period between the 1880s and 1930s, one can identify similar protagonists, a joint goal, a broadly similar timing, common platforms, comparable campaigning mechanisms and many types of entanglements across regions. Unlike the anti-slavery movement, child labour opponents formed a loosely institutionalised network.
In the book I examine this global network. It was constituted by members of civil society and professionals who co-operated through manifold legal, conceptual, methodological and policy exchanges. This scenario paved the way for the introduction of the first national child labour laws in most countries by the 1920s or 1930s – the prerequisite for a future global initiative in the form of supranational child labour regulations by the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
I show how selected activists were the initiators and receptors of the first globalising policies, ideas and discourses. Deviating from a national perspective, I explore the tension between individual and collective action by comparing opponents from different societies and tracing their entanglements.
A global history approach to child labour opponents helps reveal large-scale patterns across societies and highlight similarities and differences between cases.
Q: What made you write this book?
I wrote the book because sources had clearly shown that child labour activism did not occur in a national vacuum. I wanted to understand how and why child labour developed into a key concern in many places between the 1880s and 1930s, both in the ‘Global North’ and ‘South’ alike.
The existing literature did not answer my questions. Comprehensive histories on child labour and activism for the regulation of child labour as a global phenomenon were unavailable.
Much literature focuses on national child labour histories in the West (mostly on Britain). By contrast, comprehensive and comparative child labour histories of the Global South are scarce, the most widely examined Southern region being Latin America.
Other studies collect national histories from across the world but just collate them. Systematic cross-regional comparisons of anti-child labour activists across the globe and their campaigns are notably absent.
By authoring this book, I aimed to initiate a new kind of historiography – one which narrates the history of child labour opposition from a global perspective.
The narrative outcome is experimental. Like a camera, it scales up from the biographical and local level to national and global ones (the eradication of child labour as a global movement).
It combines a bottom-up micro approach with an extensive history of child labour opponents as a global movement: It compares opponents and identifies connections, but it also maps the available historiographies from various regions worldwide.
An excerpt from the Conclusion:
This book aimed to expand the history of child labour and its opponents in a two-fold sense: namely, empirically by including cases from the South and ‘history from below’ protagonists and in terms of method and theory by extending beyond a mere compilation of worldwide national cases towards a comparative and entangled global perspective.
The book began by asking a key question: Is it empirically, theoretically and methodologically useful to talk of a global movement against child labour, or can the history of struggle against child labour be more accurately written as histories that occurred at different moments in time in diverse world regions?
I conclude that for the period between 1888 and 1938, speaking of a global movement against child labour makes sense, although it formed a loosely institutionalised, decentralised network of diverse actors and professionals in civil society.
In contrast to the anti-slavery movement, these child labour opponents lacked a forceful international philanthropic organisation. In the absence of an umbrella organisation and because they formed a socially, politically and professionally broad spectrum, global entanglements occurred in a less centrally structured manner, and activism was more segmented – initially along professional lines.
Nevertheless, one can identify similar protagonist groups across regions, a joint goal, broadly similar timing, common platforms, comparable campaigning mechanisms to a large extent and numerous forms of connections or entanglements. […]
For the period between 1888 and 1938, this study identified the recurrent types of anti-child labour activists, including organised labour, medical doctors, lawyers, philanthropists, social workers and journalists, who systematically denounced child labour exploitation (the who). These diverse anti-child labour opponents may be labelled a global movement, because they emerged in similar ways and with only slight time delays in numerous places across the world. Furthermore, they were united by the widespread goal of regulating child labour and introducing a set of child rights.
These child labour opponents may also be called a global movement, because their strategies and methods for campaigning against child labour are comparable (the how). During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, anti-child labour activists were national and international in their orientation.
While studies on global anti-child labour movement are still in their infancy, evidence from the countries under study (i.e. Brazil, the United States, Britain, several European nations, Argentina and Japan) demonstrates that activists examined the laws and policies of other nations and referred to them to convince legislators and public opinion of the need to curb child labour.
They compared their policies and laws with those of the nations that they regarded as more advanced or civilised. Thus, their international mindset was partially driven by national competition and patriotic sentiment.
Although each local and national anti-child labour struggle was context-specific, child labour opponents in nearly all countries under study were internationally linked through manifold channels of connections such as conferences, scientific journals and diverse forms of networking.
In addition to physical connection (or sociability), they shared knowledge and activist know-how. They also emulated institutions in other countries and adapted and modified them. Institutions that became globalised included juvenile courts, minor’s judges, child health and hygiene initiatives and the Children’s’ Bureau.
Thus, child labour opponents did not operate in a segregated national realm but in a common global space or environment, which is the core argument of this book. They referred to one another and were connected in a physical, cultural and imaginary sense (sharing images of a civilised nation) as well as through shared advocacies, strategies and institutions. This finding corresponds to the connected nature of social policies at large, as argued e.g. by Daniel T. Rodgers (2014).
Nonetheless, this categorisation only makes sense with a few caveats or preconditions. [... Speaking] of a global movement in the current context does not preclude diversity. Despite the many similarities and broader patterns which, in Cunningham’s parlance (2005: 15), ‘concentration on minutiae can obscure’, child labour opponents formed a diverse group nationally and globally (ranging from elite philanthropists to children), whose motivations and, to a certain extent, strategies diverged. However, the sociological diversity of child labour opponents was a globally common phenomenon.