Analysis of poverty in child laborers from socio-economic perspective: The case of Antalya Kadriye

This thesis study aims to investigate the poverty indicators among children engaged in agricultural labor. Specifically, it explores how these children define child poverty, perceive its causes, suggest ways to overcome it, and their reasons for starting child labor. Additionally, it examines their thoughts on child labor and their future expectations. The goal is to understand how children experience poverty, the nature of child poverty, and the relationship between child poverty and child labor. The study adopts a socioeconomic perspective with a child-focused and rights-based approach to analyze child poverty through the experiences of child workers. This qualitative field study employs a phenomenological method, using data obtained from in-depth interviews with 15 child workers involved in strawberry picking in the Antalya-Kadriye District. The findings from the study indicate that child poverty is multidimensional. Poverty drives children who grow up in impoverished conditions to become workers, thereby increasing child labor. Conversely, child labor hinders children's educational and skill development, perpetuating their poverty. Thus, poverty not only leads to more poverty through child labor but also represents a painful experience that jeopardizes the future of children. This thesis aims to contribute to the literature by presenting the reality of child poverty from the perspective of the children who experience it, rather than reducing child poverty to mere statistics or an adult-oriented viewpoint. It also demonstrates the applicability of qualitative research methods, which are rarely used in the field of economics. In this context, the study addresses the "methodological narrowness" identified by Lenger (2019), caused by the dominant mathematical paradigm in economics. Additionally, the unique value of this study is highlighted by the fact that no prior studies have analyzed child poverty in Antalya-Kadriye. Key Words: Child Poverty, Child Labor, Working Children, Socio Economic Perspective, Antalya-Kadriye