Michael Bourdillon, born in Kasama, Zambia, in 1942. Ph.D. from the University of Oxford. Professor Emeritus of the Department of Sociology at the University of Zimbabwe.
Fellow (1 September 2007 – 30 June 2008)
Children and Work
The aim of my fellowship at NIAS was, with the help of collaborators, to bring together a range of research on children’s work, together with theoretical developments in childhood studies and education. We place children’s work in the larger context of children’s responses to their environment as they grow, holding both hazards and benefits for them, and show that strategies to protect children need to take account of the context of children’s social lives. I have completed about three-quarters of a book provisionally entitled “The Rights and Wrongs of Children’s Work”. Unfortunately, my collaborators did not have the advantage of facilities and uninterrupted time at NIAS: I am dependent on them for the other quarter, which we hope to have completed around the end of 2008. I have also written journal articles on children in domestic employment and on children’s work in Southern Africa.