Michael is 15 and works as a milkman three nights a week. 13 year old Giovanni serves coffee eight hours a day. 13 year old Juliana works out in the fields ten hours a day. They are in England, Italy, Bulgaria.
Child labour isn’t confined to developing countries. Since the economic crisis struck, it has also become Europe’s harsh reality.
Every day after school, Michael, Giovanni, and Juliana work adult jobs for hours on end. Worse yet, some leave school all together to enable their families to make ends meet.
How did we get here?
After the recession, many European countries resigned to drastically cutting down social aid funds. As unemployment soars and families find themselves penniless, many have found no other solution than putting their children to work.
From Italy, where child labour is seen as profitable to the nation’s collapsed economy, to Bulgaria, which pays a high price for its entry into the European Union, and England, where the middle class has lapsed into general indifference, we investigate a shocking phenomenon: the re-emergence of child labour.