Urbanization Processes and Child Breadwinner in Lagos Metropolis

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explain how increasing urbanization is changing family lifestyles in the city. This paper was first presented as a seminar paper in urban sociology (sociology of development postgraduate class of 2015/2016 session) in the department of sociology, University of Ibadan. Increasing population growth, high unemployment rate, low income, poor working condition, a high cost of living have all put heavy pressures on the family. This has consequently made most families engage their children in child employment and labour in order to survive the economic pressures. The demands of life in the city of Lagos make children active participants in the economic fortunes of families majorly among the poor. The cases of child labour in Lagos are high in spite of efforts by the government to reduce drastically child employment and labour. This paper, therefore, seeks to examine the changing lifestyles and family structures of the cities using the city of Lagos as a microcosm.  The city of Lagos has a large population size of more than 20 million people. The younger generation dominates the economic control of the state both in the formal and informal sectors. Children cope better with urbanization pressures and stress of Lagos megacity than the parents. This study is anchored on Oscar Lewis’s theory of culture of poverty. The thesis of the theory explains children breadwinners from the point of view of poverty and a response to the social and economic hardships. This culture is transmitted from one generation to another and they have strongly embraced the culture to be a coping mechanism and also the major solution to their problems. Consequently, children becoming breadwinners for their families have exposed a lot of them to hazardous works and make them more vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse. The definition of what child labour is most times is equivalent to the cultural definition of child work which is part of the socialization process of a child. Based on this conflicting ideology, this paper recommends that the concept of child labour should be defined from society to society.

Keywords: child breadwinner, child work, urbanization processes, Lagos, child employment and labour