A person holding a book titled 'Good Kids' with a subtitle 'The Politics of Child Labor in the Global South' and author Isabel Lion Jijon, featuring silhouettes of children and adults holding signs and banners, with a library shelf in the background.
Photograph of a young woman with brown hair, smiling, wearing a navy blazer and a polka dot shirt, standing against a brick wall background.
Photograph of a young woman with brown hair, smiling, wearing a navy blazer and a polka dot shirt, standing against a brick wall background.

Isabel Jijón

Lecturer on sociology at Harvard University

I am a cultural sociologist who studies work, childhood, and the intersection of morality and markets. I am interested in how people draw moral boundaries in markets and how this impacts vulnerable actors, especially families and children. My research is comparative, qualitative, and focused on Latin America and the global South. It focuses on two main topics: 

  1. Contested commodities: How do people decide which goods, services, or labor should or shouldn’t be for sale? How do we create, transform, or challenge the moral limits of a market? 

  2. Childhood and children’s rights: How does global inequality affect children? And how do children, even the most marginalized or vulnerable, “talk back,” finding meaning in conditions not of their own choosing? 

I explore these two interests in my book, Good Kids: The Politics of Child Labor in the Global South (Stanford University Press, 2025). In this book, I analyze why working children often defend the value of their labor and why some even join social movements that demand the “right to work.” This book won the American Sociological Association's Economic Sociology Section’s Viviana Zelizer Best Book Award (2026). I am now starting a new project on another group trying to stretch market boundaries: Using archival research, I am reconstructing the successes and failures of the International Wages for Housework movement. I have also published on childhood, globalization, collective memory, and sport. See my research page for more details. 

At Harvard, I teach courses on morality and markets, consumption, stigma, children’s rights, and the sociology of sport. I am also a Data Consultant at the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), in the Child Protection and Development Team. I have a Ph.D. with distinction in sociology from Yale University and a B.A. Magna Cum Laude from Yale College.

Contact me at ijijon at fas dot harvard dot edu