FROM HELP TO WORK – CHILDREN’S LABOR IN TOURISM IN A BLACK SEA TOWN
FROM HELP TO WORK – CHILDREN’S LABOR IN TOURISM IN A BLACK SEA TOWN

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the different forms of labor that children in their teenage years perform in family-owned businesses and as hired labor within the tourist sector of Sozopol during the summer vacation. In addition to tracking the economically productive activities in which youth and teenagers participate, I analyze the local perceptions of child labor, and review the labor practices of older generations in Sozopol from the time they were children, to trace the continuity and change in the local meanings and practices of children’s labor. Through the dichotomy help – work with which locals distinguish between the activities performed for the household and family without pay and the paid labor activities outside home, I show that with the expansion of tourism in the city and the engagement of older children in family businesses for pay, the traditional distinction between work and help begins to fade. For children, but also for their grandparents—who are their employers—child labor in family-owned hotels and restaurants is increasingly viewed as help but also as work. At the same time, the children who practice activities as chambermaids, waiters and vendors outside family-owned businesses for pay are considered as “working” people who perform “work” – the highest status assigned to labor by local actors. While this position comes with some privileges for the “working” children within their families, their la bor is positioned in the low end of the labor market in the tourist industry in the city.

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