Grantees

Francesca Barp, University of Bern, Institute of Sociology, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, Switzerland

Mobilizing Economic and Social Rights from the Margins: Migrant Domestic Workers’

Legal Activism

This dissertation examines how domestic workers mobilize economic and social rights in contexts of legal precarity and informal labor. Unlike traditional unions employing tactics like strikes, domestic worker’s activism centers the law. Using a socio-legal and law-and-political-economy framework, the project analyzes litigation, formalization strategies, legal counselling and education as tools to advance economic and social rights, make them accessible, and foster accountability, pushing for a rights-based economy under conditions of structural precarity. Existing research covers the legal mobilization of social movements and the exclusion of domestic workers from legal protections. However, it often lacks a comparative, empirical approach to examine how informality and migration status structure the workforce, and how resources influence the (legal) mobilization of this precarious group. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Argentina, Germany, and the United States this study asks: When, how and why do migrant domestic workers engage in legal activism? Methodologically, qualitative interviews are combined with ethnographical participant observations.

Gonzalo Galindo-Delgado, Arizona State University, School of Social Transformation, USA

Socioeconomic Rights and Legal Mobilization: Colombian Left Turn in the Latin American Context

Amid persistent inequality and the resurgence of progressive governments in Latin America, socio-economic rights (SER) have remained a central terrain of political struggle. While scholarship has examined rights litigation and judicial empowerment in the region, important questions remain about how ideological realignments within the state reshape the processes of legal mobilization for socio-economic rights. This project asks: How have political and ideological transitions in state leadership differentially shaped disputes and outcomes over socio-economic rights in the legal field in Latin America? Focusing on Colombia within the broader “Pink Tide,” the study integrates historical-comparative analysis, qualitative interviews with advocates and public officials, discourse analysis, and a case study of the Vereda Granizal community’s efforts to enforce a structural ruling. By tracing interactions among social movements, courts, and executive actors, the project advances socio-legal theory by reconceptualizing legal mobilization as a dynamic political process shaped by shifting state ideology.

Leonard Chimanda Joseph, University of Sussex, Law School, UK 

The Role of the Global Compact on Refugees: Towards the Identification of Durable Solutions for Refugees in Kigoma Villages in Tanzania

This study examines the enjoyment of economic and social rights by refugees in Kigoma villages, Tanzania, under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Despite Tanzania's ratification of ICESCR and refugee conventions, these refugees, present since 1972, lack access to formal employment, education, and healthcare. The research question for this study is: To what extent can international law advance economic and social rights of these refugees in Tanzania? Using the second phase of Third World Approaches to International law (TWAIL 2) as a framework, the study explores the impact of the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) as a contemporary instrument seeking refugee solutions, by making a critique of international law's relevance in advancing economic and social rights by refugees in Kigoma villages. By doing so, the study addresses a gap in literature, applying TWAIL 2 to examine international law's impact on marginalized populations in the Global South. Informed by the participatory approach of TWAIL 2, the methodology of this study integrated capacity-building with data collection to enhance participation, especially in relation to Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with refugees and local government leaders. Each FGD was preceded by training on refugee economic and social rights, durable solutions and the GCR. FGDs were then complemented by elite interviews with government officials and civil society leaders. 

Jade Kosché, University of Oxford, Faculty of Law, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, UK

Behind the Seams: Realizing Labour and Gender Equality Rights in Lesotho’s Garment

Industry

Enforcement of labor and gender equality protections in multinational corporations’ global supply chains is increasingly mediated through private governance mechanisms rather than state institutions. This raises a central question for economic and social rights scholarship: What happens to rights realization when rights-holders must seek protection and remedies through private programs instead of public authorities? This dissertation examines how women garment workers in Lesotho navigate this privatization of rights enforcement through the Lesotho Agreement, a non-state initiative addressing workplace gender-based violence (GBV) in factories producing for Levi Strauss & Co. Drawing on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork, the study evaluates how privatized enforcement (re)shapes access to remedies for GBV and workplace abuse. It finds that privatized enforcement simultaneously expands and constrains workers’ access to remedies, lowering barriers to redress, yet fragmenting rights claims across multiple and sometimes contradictory pathways that complicate workers’ navigation of the process.

Uchenna Hillprieston Okwara, University of Central Florida, School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs, USA

Authority, Access, and Rights Realization in Armed Conflict

Social and economic rights are formally non-derogable during armed conflict, yet their realization depends heavily on access to humanitarian and human rights institutions operating in contested environments. Existing scholarship on social and economic rights emphasizes legal frameworks and international norms but pays less attention to how armed actors condition the practical implementation of these rights. This dissertation examines how armed actors’ authority claims and strategic incentives shape access to humanitarian organizations and human rights monitors, thereby influencing the delivery and observation of core social and economic rights, including food, healthcare, and civilian protection. The central research question is: under what conditions do armed actors permit, restrict, or instrumentalize humanitarian access, with consequences for rights realization? The project employs a mixed-methods design combining archival analysis of humanitarian and human rights documentation, survey experiments with military personnel, and spatially disaggregated conflict data to trace variation in access and humanitarian risk across conflict settings.

Ayalnesh Alayu Belete, Addis Ababa University, Centre for Human Rights, Ethiopia

Policy-Based Realization of the Right to Adequate Housing in Ethiopia: Analysis of the Implementation of post-1995 Housing Policy in Addis Ababa

Shortage of housing is one of the most serious problems in Addis Ababa, both in terms of serious deprivation of the right to adequate housing and of being one of the country’s development challenges. Grounded in the emerging literature, my research questions include: What are the gaps in Ethiopia’s housing policy, programs, and housing budget in terms of reflecting the government’s obligation to fulfill the international right to housing? Are the housing policy, the budget, and the enjoyment of the right to housing gender responsive? To address these questions, data will be collected through analysis of key documents such as the 2012 urban housing policy and housing related laws; interviews with policymakers and representatives of monitoring bodies; budget analysis; structured questionnaires administered to a representative sample of residents who have lived experience of the housing problem across the three selected sub-cities; and field observation, mainly on the availability of essential services within selected condominium blocks. The study aims to influence inclusive and gender-responsive housing policy and budget.

Isabela Hümmelgen, Central European University, Legal Studies Department, Austria

Power and Resistance in State Institutions: Feminist Mobilization for Abortion Rights in Brazil

This research explores the influence of institutional power dynamics in feminist legal mobilization for abortion rights in Brazil. Since these rights are frequently undermined by conservative actors in state institutions, feminist organizations incorporate legal strategies into their repertoires to resist the advance of the conservative agenda and articulate their demands. This project discusses the potential dialogues and pushbacks between movements and institutions, the tensions of institutionalization, and the obstacles and opportunities for the advancement of human rights. The research question centres how feminist organizations mobilize for abortion rights in state institutions, considering the limitations imposed by conservative power holders. The project draws on literature on legal mobilization and social movements and on the field of sexual and reproductive health and rights, understanding access to abortion as a human right. The methodological approach combines semi-structured interviews with feminist activists and participant observation of feminist events with analysis of legal documents and media reports.

Vandita Khanna, University of Cambridge, Faculty of Law, UK

Racialised Poverty and Equality Law

Racialised minorities disproportionately live in poverty in Europe, but European human rights law struggles to address the intersectional, cyclical, and structural phenomenon of racialised poverty. Typically framed under individual rights in the European Convention on Human Rights, poverty is often cast as a matter of chance or choice. In contrast, the promise of equality law to redress the socio-economic rights concerns of racialised minorities remains untapped in scholarship and jurisprudence. By blending sociological literature and legal-doctrinal methodology, my research foregrounds racialised poverty as an issue of equality law. It analyses what conceptual and doctrinal challenges prevent the European Court of Human Rights from admitting racialised poverty under the right to non-discrimination, and how the Court’s equality doctrine can strengthen socio-economic rights protection for poor racialised minorities. It thus highlights the understudied yet persisting issue of racialised poverty and harnesses the potential of integrating equality with socio-economic rights protection in Europe.

Cory Runstedler, University of Connecticut, Department of Political Science, USA

It’s About the People, Not the Package: Lessons from the Warehousing Sector

This dissertation investigates why labor rights violations persist within the warehousing sector of the United States and Canada, despite existing international, national, and subnational laws. The warehousing sector is central to global supply chains yet is relatively under-analyzed in political science literature. Through a comparative case study design, this dissertation explores four variables hypothesized to impact labor rights outcomes in this sector: the influence of international treaties (specifically, ILO conventions), the nature of enforcement mechanisms, the severity of punishment, and the level of union density. An original “Labor Hardship Index” is a central contribution of the dissertation, derived by coding primary source government labor reports and legal statutes; the dataset behind the index is the main quantitative foundation for the project. Additionally, semi-structured interviews with union representatives and government officials in both countries help contextualize the quantitative analysis and offer insights into how enforcement practices and union activities affect real-world labor rights experiences.

Prisca Tarimo, University of Massachusetts Boston, School for Global Inclusion and Social Development, USA

Exploring Barriers to Utilization and Provision of Skilled and Emergency Obstetric Care in Rural Tanzania through a Right-to-Health Lens

Maternal mortality remains unacceptably high in Tanzania at 238 deaths per 100,000 live births. Despite Tanzania’s ratification of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1976, recognizing the right of everyone to health — many women, especially those in rural areas, continue to lack appropriate care during birth. The right to health, however, imposes upon States the obligation to ensure the availability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality of services that women need. Using a right-to-health lens, I explore barriers to the utilization and provision of skilled birth care and emergency obstetric care in rural Ngorongoro district, in Tanzania, where maternal mortality is particularly high. I use qualitative methods — document analysis of international and domestic law and policy and interviews with 32 women with birth experience and 28 health professionals. Barriers identified will inform rights-based, context-specific solutions to strengthen healthcare delivery and increase women’s utilization to effectively reduce maternal mortality.

Asmita Aasaavari, PhD Candidate, University of Connecticut, Department of Sociology, USA

Graying Matters, Aging Bodies: Economic and Social Rights among Seniors in Rural Connecticut, USA

The stigma associated with aging impacts rights enjoyment, especially when social institutions reinforce it through policies and structural practices. Given the gap between de jure rights and de facto enjoyment, I ask what strategies seniors employ to make sense of and claim their social and economic rights. Building on scholarship in economic and social rights, the sociology of aging, and feminist gerontology, I use the case of seniors in rural Connecticut to explore the disjuncture between rights-bearing and rights-accessing seniors. I employ in-depth interviews, photovoice, ethnography in institutional settings, and rights-based policy analysis to capture the rights granted to seniors, their subjective understanding, and ability to access these rights. These qualitative methods allow me to capture the nuances of how social location shapes elders’ ability to enjoy rights to health, decent work, and an adequate standard of living and document the complexities of the bureaucracy that structures experiences of accessing rights. 

Daniela Campos Ugaz, PhD Candidate, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Sociology, USA

Securing the Rights to Decent Work in the Knowledge Economy: Possibilities and Challenges for States under Globalization

The knowledge economy is crucial for developed countries to maintain their competitiveness and for developing nations to create decent work opportunities, rather than engaging in a race to the bottom. How can states acquire the necessary labor to build and strengthen this increasingly important knowledge economy? The dissertation focuses on the employment, immigration, and training institutions that are adapting to benefit from these growing sectors and evaluates their ability to provide decent work opportunities. This interdisciplinary comparative case study examines skilled labor migration programs in Germany and the United States and assesses Costa Rica and Ireland's experiences in attracting foreign investment and training their workforce. The data for this project includes interviews with policymakers, employers, academics, unions, and other experts. It also involves documentary research, such as parliamentary debates, official reports, and newspapers, observations of recruitment and informational events, and consultation of secondary data and literature, as well as sectoral and employment statistics from national-level surveys. The ultimate aim of the research project is to develop understanding of the challenges of securing decent work rights, specifically related to the ILO Decent Work Agenda pillars of job creation and rights at work.

Barbara Kitui, PhD Candidate, University of Pretoria, Faculty of Law, South Africa

The Land Governance Architecture and Women’s Land Rights in Uganda

This thesis examines the land governance architecture in a bid to secure women’s land rights in Uganda. It specifically scrutinises parliament, the judiciary and implementing institutions of the executive arm of government within the context of land governance. The thesis reflects on the historical and socio-legal context including precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial societal perspectives and reviews global, regional, sub-regional and domestic legislation. The study analyses Uganda’s land governance architecture including statutory and non-statutory entities. The thesis also questions the extent to which customs deliver women’s land rights in Uganda and introduces a theoretical perspective of lifting or piercing the cultural veil as an equitable remedy to address negative customs for the advancement of women’s land rights in Uganda. Finally, the thesis concludes with recommendations on how the land governance architecture, customs and legislation can be harnessed to secure women’s land rights in Uganda.

Cristian J. Padilla Romero, PhD Candidate, Yale University, Department of History, USA

‘Soñando en un Futuro Mejor’: U.S. Empire, Racial Capitalism, and Black Radicalism in Caribbean Honduras

My dissertation explores how Black Hondurans experienced and challenged the daily realities of poverty, racism, and economic marginalization in 1950s and 60s Honduras. My primary research questions ask: how did the Honduran state address, or not, the social and economic issues brought forth by Black communities, and in turn, how did Black activists organize to hold the state accountable? Using US and Honduran government documents, oral histories, and Honduran ephemera, I trace how Black activists, specifically after WWII, fought to reaffirm the social and economic rights guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 within Honduras. These efforts provided the precedent for future generations of Black and Indigenous leaders demanding that their rights be respected and codified by the State. These histories encourage scholars to expand and rethink our understanding of how grassroots sectors more-often-than-not fought for social and economic rights.

Almas Shaikh, DPhil Candidate, University of Oxford, Faculty of Law, UK

Promise of Equality: Imbuing Intersectionality into India’s Affirmative Action Laws on Education and Employment

This thesis aims to develop the theory and practical applicability of intersectionality in the context of affirmative action by considering one jurisdiction in which affirmative action is well established, namely the law of reservations in India. Reservation, a specific form of Indian affirmative action, is where a proportion of seats in the legislature, public employment and education are reserved for members of marginalised groups. In this thesis, I focus on education and employment as they contain a transformative potential for development. By examining the existing constitutional and other provisions for reservation, as well as current jurisprudence, in the context of intersectionality theory, I aim to illuminate the challenges raised by affirmative action for intersectionality theory and vice versa. Through this, the thesis will be able to sharpen the theoretical tools as well as begin to sketch potential legal and policy reforms for equal access to education and work.

Achalie Monaliza Kumarage, PhD Candidate, The Australian National University, School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), Australia

Collective Voice without Collective Bargaining: Women Workers and Labour Regulation in Sri Lanka’s Apparel Industry and its Globalized Supply Chains 

Workers bear the heaviest toll in globalized apparel supply chains due to concentrated corporate power and systemic failures to appropriately manage risk. Women workers, forming an overwhelming majority of this workforce, are considered passive participants and contributors to ‘industrial peace.’ Transcending the conventional labor law approach to worker representation and collective bargaining, this dissertation explores how women workers exercise voice to negotiate their rights in Sri Lanka’s apparel industry and its associated global supply chain. The research is executed as a qualitative study examining three multi-level case studies, with women workers’ experience at the center. It engages with critical labor law, regulatory theory, and transnational feminist movements. Among ineffective formal bargaining mechanisms, for women workers specifically, the dissertation explores what legal and normative framings, human rights and labor standards on worker representation and voice offer them the most leverage in influencing labor regulation in the industry. Gendered understandings of rights on worker representation and voice, and how they translate in precarious conditions will offer insights to re-imagine worker representation and rights negotiation, advantageous for women workers. 

Carolina Braglia Aloise Bertazolli, SJD Candidate, Central European University, Austria

Limitations on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in the Global and Regional Human Rights Systems

Economic crises and COVID-19 have brought a wide variety of restrictions upon human rights, and (quasi)judicial bodies were called upon to decide on whether these restrictions violate human rights law. My research explores the international bodies’ criteria to accept as lawful a restriction upon ESCR. It analyzes the limitations of ESCR with attention to states’ obligations. Limitations has been theorized for the obligations to respect and protect but not for the obligation to fulfill. In addition, states must observe the progressive realization, non-retrogression, non-discrimination, and minimum core obligations. My thesis analyzes how the fulfillment of, having in mind other obligations, ESCR interacts with limitations in the adjudication process. My four jurisdictions are the UN and regional human rights systems. I chose three forms of violations that necessitate ESCR limitations: forced evictions, austerity measures, and access to health. Together, they help determine how international bodies construe limitations in ESCR adjudication.

David L. Evans, PhD Candidate, University of Connecticut, Department of History, USA 

Hunger for Rights: Establishing the Human Right to Food, 1930 – 1988 

This project explores the origins of the human right to adequate food and its development as part of the global human rights movement. It relies on the analysis of documents produced by the US government, inter-governmental organizations, and non-governmental entities to examine how a diverse cast of international actors envisioned and enacted the right to food in the Twentieth Century. From the 1940s onward, food loomed large in the concerns of both the United Nations and the wealthy West for raising global standards of living. US political leaders and agro-corporations believed that the right to food could become a practical reality by means of economic deregulation and enhanced food production. UN officials and non-governmental activists contested this orthodoxy and argued that the right to food had to be achieved through global economic and social equality. By the 1970s, a new generation of non-governmental activists embraced food as a key component of improving social justice in the face of ascendant neoliberal economic policies that ignored and undermined economic, social, and cultural human rights. 

Gaurav Mukherjee, SJD Candidate, Department of Legal Studies, Central European University, Austria 

Complex Remedies in Social Rights Litigation: A View from the Global South

Socioeconomic rights disputes pose a unique set of challenges for the judiciary. Claims arising from social rights are complex, polycentric, and involve parties who may not usually be before the court. They also implicate resource allocation, and questions persist about the judiciary’s institutional fit to decide these issues relative to the representative branches of government. How do judges get around these concerns, ensure their decisions are seen as legitimate, and avoid executive backlash? In an age of democratic backsliding, how can courts safeguard their institutional capital while delivering effective social rights remedies? The central way that judges get around these concerns is by using complex remedies. Complex remedies involve a range of stakeholders beyond the litigants to respond to some of these concerns – by incorporating civil society, government authorities, and other affected parties within the judicial process. These actors help frame the legal issues, suggest remedies, and oversee implementation. Remedies of this kind disrupt our traditional understanding of litigation and are undertheorized in the comparative constitutional law literature. My work fills this gap by advancing normative constitutional theory through a study of judicial doctrine and identifies the kinds of complex remedies seen in the so-called Global South, while also setting out the factors that can and should guide judicial decision-making and civil society strategy.

Juan I. Wilson Coddou, PhD Candidate, The University of Chicago, Department of History, USA

The Many Foundations: Reform, Revolution and the Transformation of Law in Mexico, 1876–1940 

In 1917, six years after an uprising ousted dictator Porfirio Díaz and after four years of civil war, the victorious revolutionary faction enacted a new constitution for Mexico. It included, for the first time in world history, constitutional provisions granting collective property to rural communities and social rights for urban workers. Yet, despite its radical novelty, we know little about how Mexicans made sense of these provisions in the years immediately following the writing of the new constitution: how they interpreted them, what types of claims they filed, and how these claims evolved and transformed Mexicans’ relation to the state and to each other, their understanding of citizenship. Using a rich set of legal cases from before and after the revolution, I will describe how these new rights changed the framing of politics in Mexico. The research reveals the potential and limits of legal instruments to affect social change. 

Thalia Viveros Uehara, PhD Candidate, University of Massachusetts Boston, School for Global Inclusion and Social Development, USA

Addressing Health Crises through Courts? Climate Litigation in Latin America, the Right to Health and Vulnerable Populations 

As the climate crisis disproportionately imperils the health of Latin America’s populations experiencing poverty and social exclusion, the need to realize the most vulnerable’s right to health becomes ever more pressing. While the region’s new constitutionalism has advanced the protection of this right, such a transformative approach is just beginning to intersect with climate change law as rights-based climate litigation proliferates. This dissertation applies a transdisciplinary multi-methods research approach to analyze the body of climate cases filed through 2022 in Latin American jurisdictions, studying the urgent coupling of two pressing issues—the severity of climate change and the region’s pervasive poverty and social exclusion—a confluence that manifests as “health crises.” Particularly, it answers the following question: How do these health crises emerge within, and how are they tackled by courts through, domestic climate litigation in Latin America? In doing so, it explores the legal and socio-political factors influencing how health concerns of vulnerable populations are raised and addressed in climate litigation, with the goal of identifying how the profiles, motives, and resources of claimants and judges influence their approach to protecting these population groups’ right to health. This knowledge illuminates the strategic and interpretative potential for litigants and courts to better use climate litigation in alignment with climate justice, thus offering a pathway to mitigate health crises emerging in contexts characterized by deep socioeconomic inequalities. 

Angel Gabriel Cabrera Silva, SJD Candidate, Harvard Law School, USA 

Infiltrating the State: Social Movements and the Transformative Politics of Economic and Social Rights

My dissertation explores the role that Economic and Social Rights (ESR) mobilization has in processes of institutional transformation. Most specifically, it theorizes the role of ESR strategies after a social movement infiltrates the State. This dynamic of infiltration will complement theories that conceive ESRs as tools to “judicialize”, “deliberate” or “vernacularize” a movement’s claims. Drawing from Bourdieu’s fields theory, I argue that ESR function as a particular form of juridical capital that enables social actors to go in and out the State to assume two particular subject-positions: “governing activists” (activists with bureaucratic roles) and “sympathetic bureaucrats” (officials willing to break institutional inertias). My dissertation conceptualizes the interactions between these two subject-positions as driving factors within processes of institutional transformation. The project is grounded on sixteen months of fieldwork in Mexico, during which I followed indigenous activists that assumed bureaucratic roles in “Community Councils”, new local government bodies created through mobilization.

Emily Kathryn Linnemeier, PhD Candidate, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict, George Mason University, USA

Building Egalitarian and Equitable Schools through Youth Participatory Action Research

This dissertation research consists of using and documenting the process of youth participatory action research (YPAR) to address the social right of education, specifically, as it relates to equity, in a United States high school setting. I’m working with a coresearcher team of students and educators from a socioeconomically, racially and home language diverse suburban school to analyze and address a co-determined issue around equity and the school culture. This research looks at how both the outcomes and the process of YPAR may lead to strengthening of the social right of educational equity on a specific high school campus. Therefore, not only is the research focused on ways to exercise the social right of equitable education, the study also utilizes a methodology that allows people who should receive that right to engage in a collaborative process to determine what it looks like.

Madri Hall-Faul, PhD Candidate, School of Social Work, University of Connecticut, USA

The Role of the Devolved Policy Implementation in Social and Economic Rights Fulfillment: The Case of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families in Connecticut

The devolved model of social welfare policy in the United States leads to inequality in benefit access and adequacy, as exemplified by the implementation of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). This inequality between states has been studied extensively, but has not been analyzed in depth as a violation of social and economic rights of families in poverty. My dissertation will examine how this inequality is created in one state through a case study of TANF in Connecticut. Using a framework of participation, nondiscrimination, equality, human dignity, transparency, accountability, and adequacy, I will evaluate TANF and its impact on social and economic rights in Connecticut. I will conduct interviews with decision-makers and advocates, and review budgets and public documents. This dissertation will contribute a human rights-based analysis of TANF to social welfare policy literature and provides a novel focus on public administration decision-making, which is limited in social work literature.