To Boycott or Boynott?

After a bad start to the day, I shamelessly ordered the lovely shoes from Beyond Skin which I totally cannot afford at the moment. Who says material possessions can't sheer you up?

A group meeting I had on a totally unrelated topic got me thinking today about the fashion industry and ethics. More precisely, the use of 'child labour' on sewing garments. The discussion was around whether research should be used to support, and not direct, advocacy strategy. Such advocacy strategies, often essentialist in nature can undermine more wide-reaching (broader in scope) research. An example from the literature was a case of American 'soccer moms' concerned with child-labour in Pakistan around football stitching. Their campaign against this one issue completed ignored the greater complexities in the area, for example the fact that children were working in incredibly hazardous conditions in the medical surgical tools industry. Such narrowing can be dangerous.

My thoughts then turned to the wider 'ethical fashion' debate. Are refusals to shop at say, Primark and H&M (two stores which out-source to child-workers) ethical in the wider sense? Child labour and child work are two very different things... and in certain contexts, children often want to work and help provide for their families, particularly when living in chronic or persistent poverty. If we refuse to shop at such places, children (and adults) may lose a form of livelihood. Is it ethical to boycott a clothing line that uses child labour or child workers, meaning children are unable to escape the poverty around them?

Obviously, a better solution is to change trading regulations and employment policies to ensure better pay, safer working conditions and the opportunity to combine a livelihood with education- to hopefully secure a better paid job in the future. In an ideal world, children wouldn't have to work at all. 

Despite 'childhood' itself being a Western construct, psychology and various child developmental studies indicate that emotional and physical development is hugely affected by experiences as a child.

What does everyone think? Personally, I think that we only have limited money (unfortunately) to spend on clothes and shoes and I like to think that mine is being spent supporting companies with more ethical policies than say, Primark and H&M, who pay their employers a fairer wage and offer safer working conditions.