This book reflects the outcome of a long-term involvement in issues of child labour, non-formal education and formal school enrolment. It documents research findings and practical experiences on social, economic and cultural causes of child labour and various pragmatic and theory-guided methods as well as legal instruments to combat child labour. The tenet that quality schooling prevents child labour implies a shift in child labour monitoring from a conventional controlling approach at workplaces to a community based enabling approach at schools. Child labour and school enrolment are not isolated phenomena that can be strategically resolved under controlled conditions in the human lifeworld but are rather positioned, reflected and acted upon in the context of a handed down and existing system. Universal human rights instruments including educational rights offer directives to resolve problematic settings that prevailed over time; however, they require an unequivocal commitment, which is not always the case in the ground reality of pluralistic stakeholders divided by conflicting group interests.

Horst Friedrich Rolly is Professor of Comparative Education at the Theologische Hochschule Friedensau (Germany).