The article focuses on issues related to the academic discussion on child and adolescent labour and its consequences for the "school failure" of disadvantaged children, seeking to identify socially centred ideological positions and methodological flaws that lead to a reduction in the complexity of the problem. Evidence of this reduction is to be found in two false assumptions: a) a linear relation between the variables, ignoring the mediations involved; and b) a homogenisation of those categories, disregarding the vast array of internal variations. Research supporting this questioning is presented, indicating some of the consequences of those reductionist postures on school practices and on the cognitive and affective development of underage workers. Among those factors that need to be considered in the discussion of the relations between early work and school trajectory, the following are stressed: the mediations represented by the diverse instances of exclusion that perpetuate poverty, the heterogeneity of child and adolescent work, and the role attributed to poor families with regard to "school failure" and to early insertion of their children in the world of work.
school failure; child and adolescent work; family; social representations