Building imperial youth? Reflections on labour and the construction of working-class childhood in late Victorian England

摘要

This article looks at the philanthropic practice of juvenile emigration which resulted in the relocation of over 100,000 children from England to the colonies for insights into changing ideas of childhood and labour. After providing a brief introduction to juvenile emigration and the social benefits associated with childhood, this paper demonstrates how philanthropists between 1874 and 1900 increasingly divided children into two cohorts defined by age and work responsibilities. When philanthropists promoted emigration for children under the age of eight, they claimed it provided healthy domestic environments in which innocent “little ones” would be nurtured by adoptive families. For these children, labour ceased to be associated with emigration. Instead, because of their young age, they were entitled to a condition of complete socioeconomic dependency. However, for children above school age, who were increasingly identified as “youth”, emigration was understood to be an avenue to economic independence; in an age of anxiety about international competition, creating independent workers became a vital consideration. For these “at risk” youth, emigration was progressively designed to be an educative experience preparing them to contribute to the economic strength of Britain.