I actually had a conversation about this with my mom. We were talking about the hotel cleaners in Dubai walking around with toothbrushes to clean the shower which seemed mildly ridiculous to our European eyes.
But we came to the realisation that these folks were probably happy that they could send money back to their villages. And we left a nice tip.
I don't question your good faith. You seem to have fallen into a trap of many of good faith (and those of not-so-good faith):
For ~ the first half of the 20th century, the leading scholarly theory on US slavery was that the slaves were happy living in a civilized land, etc. You'll see the same claim about many things.
I think the trap has two sufficient components: First, it lacks empirical observations - actual fact that tethers us to reality - and therefore is very prone to drift far from the ground truth. Second, it's a much more comfortable worldview for us, and we tend to adopt such worldviews until compelled to do otherwise.
Just because there is an upside for them - sending money home - doesn't make them happy or make it good or ok. As an extreme example, some underage people go into prostitution because they need the food and shelter to survive - the fact that they get those benefits doesn't make them happy or make it good or ok.
Wow, what a way to conflate consenting adults making rational economic choices (which, btw, the finger wagging in the article and here doesn’t actually PROVIDE BETTER ECONOMIC CHOICES) with…. child prostitution?
The reality is that I’m not seeing anyone proposing actually making the situation better, or addressing why people might consider these jobs better than their alternatives.
Rather people trying to shut down these jobs - and defacto pushing other people into what those people clearly seem to consider to be worse alternatives?
Having actually seen up close and personal the alternatives many of these people are facing, while I think everyone would of course prefer the nice comfy joys of an office programming job, no one here seems to be offering those people those jobs are they? In fact, people are scrambling to keep those jobs.
Instead, those folks would end up taking a similar job elsewhere, or even more fun - something likely far worse. Which is why they are applying for those jobs in the first place.
Can we make the jobs a bit better? Likely, and we should.
Does it change the nature of those jobs? Or make the alternatives better? Not a bit.
Is this attached to the wrong comment? We weren't talking about the OP.
> I’m not seeing anyone proposing actually making the situation better, or addressing why people might consider these jobs better than their alternatives.
But we came to the realisation that these folks were probably happy that they could send money back to their villages. And we left a nice tip.