This book shows how children's work can take on widely differing forms; and how it can both harm and benefit children. Differing in approach from most other work in the field, it endeavours to understand working children from their own perspective.

Manfred Liebel is Professor of Sociology at the Technical University (TU) of Berlin. His main area is international and intercultural research on childhood and youth. He is staff-member of the TU-Centre for Global Education and International Cooperation and consultant of working children and youth movements in Latin America and Africa. He is co-editor of NATs - Working Children and Adolescents International Review / Revista Internacional desde los Ni os y Adolescentes Trabajadores

Introduction
1. Working children's movements in Africa, Latin America, and Asia
2. Children's work from the perspective of social research: an international stock-taking
3. The working child has a will of its own: subject oriented and participative research on children's work in Latin America
4. Childhood and worn in non-Western cultures: the fruits of ethnological and anthropological research
5. Working children in Europe - loss or new perspectives of childhood?
6. Working children and adolescents in the USA - juggling school and work
7. Work and play in the lives of children: reflections on an unfortunate separation and possible connections
8. The economic exploitation of children: towards a subject-oriented praxis
9. How working children resist exploitation and strive to share decisions about their work: experiences and examples from various continents and periods
10. Ways to self-determined children's work? The significance and problems of educationally conceived work projects
11. Thoughts on a subject-orinted theory of working children