Lecture économique sur le travail des enfants en Algérie : causes, évolution et état des lieux

Abstract EN

Child labor is the work that disregards national and international standards on children's rights.

The effective elimination of child labor requires policies to combat persistent poverty and the vulnerability of families to economic shocks.

These policies include education, social protection and actions to promote decent work for adults.

The links between child labor and education are obvious - children who do not have access to school have little choice to enter the labor market where they are often forced to work in school in a dangerous and abusive conditions.

Therefore, expanding access to free and compulsory education is critical to reducing child labor, as is quality education.

A new ILO report (2017) states that improving legal protections, labor market governance, social protections, access to quality education and social dialogue between governments, social partners and other relevant actors is essential to combat child labor.

Global estimates for 2016 point to 152 million child laborers, 73 million of whom are engaged in hazardous work.

In Algeria, the debate on development issues focused for a long time on the most prominent issues: underdevelopment, poverty, human development, schooling and school dropout, social development.

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But the fact remains that child labor is a central issue that has been largely neglected in the debate, it has always been a " taboo " for politicians, and an " economic study field " arduous to investigate for economists because of the great difficulties in carrying out field surveys.

Our objective through this study is a review of the conditions for the expansion of child labor in Algeria, given the fact that the scarcity of work of this kind, where the interest must be oriented towards understanding the history of the phenomenon before its actual measure today.

We use a descriptive and analytical method that focuses on three main sections which are the growth and expansion of the phenomenon generated by the consequences of the colonial era, but also by the fragility of the " post-independence " economic model.

The second section of our paper is the volume of child labor by reviewing the studies available in this area.

As for the third section of our study, it deals with the state of the art of this phenomenon by presenting the results of the cluster survey conducted by the Ministry of Health (2015).

The results of our research reveal that child labor in Algeria is the result of a variety of social, economic and political causes, and that its officially declared volume does not reflect the reality experienced and observed every day, because criteria taken in its quantification, namely formal employment in enterprises, while it feeds and develops in the bedrock of the informal economy.

L'objectif de cet article est l'étude économique du phénomène du travail des enfants en Algérie, par le biais d'une analyse rétrospective visant à retracer les genèses et les causes de propagation du phénomène, ainsi que l'état des lieux et les spécificités du cas Algérien.

Nous suivons une méthode descriptive et analytique qui se focalise sur trois axes principaux qui sont l'essor et l'expansion du phénomène générés par les retombées de l'époque coloniale, mais aussi par la fragilité du modèle économique « post indépendance ».

Le deuxième axe de notre papier est le volume du travail des enfants en passant en revue les études disponibles en la matière.

Quant au troisième axe de notre étude, il traite de l'état des lieux de ce phénomène par la présentation des résultats de l'enquête par grappes menée par le ministère de la santé (2015).

Les résultats de notre recherche révèlent que le travail des enfants en Algérie est la résultante d'une panoplie de causes sociales, économiques et politiques, et que son volume déclaré officiellement ne reflète pas la réalité vécue et constatée au quotidien, et ce à cause des critères pris dans sa quantification, à savoir l'emploi formel dans les entreprises, alors qu'il se nourrit et se développe dans le socle de l'économie informelle.