Growing up Working argues that the concept of child labor is stuck in an industrial-era framing that fails to capture the reality of working youth in the global south today. Following children who work on Lima’s streets through their daily routines, Leigh Campoamor shows how these youth—and often their mothers—become subjects of moral intervention by state institutions, NGOs, and the general public. Arguing that reformers reinforce hierarchies of race, class, gender and age in the name of children's rights, the book shows how working youth assert agency while also performing invisible caring and affective labor that doesn't count as work under neoliberal capitalism.
Speaker: Leigh Campoamor, Durham Night School Bar
Campoamor is the curriculum coordinator at the Durham, North Carolina–based Night School Bar, where she also teaches and bartends. She has published articles in American Anthropologist, The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, and NACLA Report on the Americas.
Discussant: Marjorie Elaine, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, UCLA
Elaine’s research centers on the experiences of immigrant youth in urban schools and communities, including as language and cultural brokers for their families. She was an Associate Vice Provost in the International Institute from 2022-2025, was selected as a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association in 2021, and is a past president of the Council of Anthropology and Education. She was a bilingual classroom teacher in Los Angeles from 1983 to 1993.