Seasonal migration affects education

Millions of children whose parents are seasonal labour migrants are either deprived of an education or it is disrupted — and they too may have to work.

According to the Global Education Monitoring report, Migration, Displacement and Education: Building Bridges, Not Walls, published by Unesco, children “are often treated as an additional workforce and may have to leave school to work”.

The children of migrant workers on farms in South Africa have also been affected.

“A lack of accessible, affordable day care in rural areas meant younger children were brought to the fields and exposed to the same workplace hazards as their older siblings and parents,” the report states.

The report gives staggering numbers that show how seasonal migration has had a negative effect on the education of children around the world.

A 2010 study in Turkey looking at children aged six to 14 who participated in seasonal agricultural migration found that although 97% were attending school, 73% started school at a late age, and they were absent for an average of 59 school days out of 180.

In India, 10.7-million children aged six to 14 lived in rural households with a seasonal migrant in 2013. About 28% of 15- to 19-year-olds in these households were illiterate or had not completed primary school, compared with the cohort overall. It was also found that there were no education facilities near work sites for about 80% of seasonal migrant children in seven Indian cities — and 40% of them worked, experiencing abuse and exploitation.

A survey in 2015-2016 in Punjab in the northwestern part of India found that between 65% and 80% of children aged five to 14 worked in the construction sector for seven to nine hours a day.

Some countries are trying to remedy the effect of seasonal migration on children’s education. In Thailand, for example, partnerships between civil society organisations and the companies employing seasonal labour migrants have established partnerships. The solutions include the provision of mobile schools, and teams of teachers, that then rotate through the areas where migrant labourers spend their time. — Bongekile Macupe