‘Child labour’ and child prostitution in Thailand: changing realities (2007) by Simon Baker (ISBN: 9789744801166). Simon Baker is an Australian scholar, who carried out PhD field research in Khonkaen in 1996. That research is the basis of this book.
His study concludes that Thai children are better off than ever - they are the beneficiaries of Thailand’s economic development. According to the back cover blurb the book explains why “there has been a dramatic decline in Thai ‘child labour’ numbers.”
Today, the position of Thai children has never been better. Their lives differ greatly from their grandparents, parents, and even older siblings. They are fewer, as a proportion of the total population, better educated, and far less likely to be working as child labourers or child prostitutes than at any other time…
[This post is provided by the National Library of Australia as part of our Book Zone feature. For further information on the featured publications contact Saowapha Viravong at sviravong@nla.gov.au]
4 responses so far ↓
1 Dickie Simpkins // Nov 22, 2007 at 8:38 pm
hrmmm
“They are fewer, as a proportion of the total population, better educated, and far less likely to be working as child labourers or child prostitutes than at any other time…”
maybe that is why there is so much worry about labor in Thailand. Soon enough, the low-child-rearing Thai’s will be a minority…
2 david w // Nov 23, 2007 at 1:03 am
Or has their fate improved on a general statistical level because Thai businesses and individuals now use more child labor from Thailand’s neighboring states than was the case a generation ago? Merely displacing the nationality of child labor in Thailand, but not the enduring reality of it? I would be interested to know if anyone has comparative, historical statistics on child labor broken down by nationality.
3 Ask Simon // Nov 23, 2007 at 11:14 am
s.baker@unescobkk.org
4 Johpa // Nov 26, 2007 at 5:45 am
Relative to child prostitution and child labor, I believe Mr. Baker is correct in noting that things have improved for those who are ethnic Tai or have obtained Thai citizenship with the burden now on those without Thai citizenship and on minorities, especially highland minority children from the north, and as a previous poster noted, neighboring populations. But once in their early teens, options are still not that great for those who attended rural Thai public schools, but certainly better than a generation ago.
The question remains open whether the decrease in child prostitution is a function of “development” or perhaps the decline of a middle aged Sino-Thai population in Bangkok that honestly believes that having sex with very young girls is beneficial towards one’s physical health and longevity.
And how is Erik Cohen still being taken seriously? The man suffered from a serious bout of that bane of Southeast Asian anthropologists, village headman hypocredulitis, believing all the nonsense that my former drinking acquaintance, the now incarcerated, and finally dishonored Laota, foisted upon him. And then he came up with his overly simplistic view of budget tourists.
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