Practices of the Seasonal Migrant Workers’ Children in Play

Abstract

Seasonal migrant and temporary agricultural labour is a form of employment emerging in the process of labour-intensive farming. Both academic studies and surveys conducted by various national/international organizations tried to address different dimensions and problem areas of the issue. They mostly focus on working and living conditions of the workers and child/female labour in these works. Still, these studies rarely focus specifically on the state of children aged 0 - 6 years in their early living and working environments. Throughout the period in which their families are engaged in seasonal works, these children share the same environment with adults, face same risks and receive no special care or attention. Given these facts, the objective of the study is stated as follows: “Exposing, through scientific methods, social, cognitive and developmental problems of 0 - 6-year-old children of families engaged in migrant-seasonal agricultural work of labour-intensive character and developing social policy suggestions for improving their life quality on the basis of findings to be obtained.” Within this framework, 7 to 10 days long field surveys were conducted with the participation of researchers from different disciplines in provinces and districts in order to conduct in situ observations on children aged 0 - 6 years. Participatory observation is adopted as the basic method in this survey. They mostly play with sand, inventing games by loading and unloading sand from a vessel or shaping it in some way. In two-child games children play together or parallel games. Also, gender preference is absent in this age group while choosing playing partners.