ABSTRACT
Over the last few years children’s work has received growing attention within both the social sciences and society at large. There is today a theoretically and methodologically sophisticated body of knowledge of young people’s work experiences, often combined with a serious social commitment to addressing the implications of this for children. The present situation is enviable compared to that of two decades ago when I discovered working children on the coast of northern Norway, and took on the task of bringing them into sociology. At that time ‘work’ and ‘adulthood’ were almost synonymous. Correspondingly, ‘play’ and ‘socialisation’ defined ‘childhood’. Those studying former times and distant people were by and large the only scholars to connect ‘work’ with ‘childhood’.
