Browsing by Subject "International Law"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
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    Contestation and collectivies: protecting labor organizing rights in the global economy.
    (2008-06) Kang, Susan Lee
    This dissertation argues that despite the near universal levels of state ratification of treaties protecting international labor organizing rights, states do not necessary comply with these rights under the current period of economic globalization. This is because the foundational conditions of these norms--specific to the political, ethical and economic concerns of the post-war liberal order--have changed as increased economic competition, financial and trade flows have created new material and political priorities for states. However, the human rights aspects of labor organizing rights have provided useful opportunities for labor unions to promote these norms within international institutions. International institutions are empowered by law to then make recommendations to states regarding states' compliance with these labor rights norms. I investigate this interaction between states, labor unions, and international institutions in their contestations over labor organizing rights. I call this process norm contestation, as the actors involved participate in a process of contestation regarding a state's obligations to protect labor organizing rights, resulting from the softer legalization of these norms in international law. I argue that both interest and identity-based factors can lead to greater compliance, despite these changes in state incentives. Compliance is more likely to occur when three factors are present: recommendations from multiple international institutions, trade union and other activist networks, and a state's international identity or reputation ambitions. I investigate this argument through historical comparative case research on the recommendations by international institutions on labor organizing rights laws in South Korea, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
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    Migración y Derechos Humanos: Un encuentro multidisciplinario en la narrativa mexicana contemporánea
    (2009-08) Reyes Zaga, Héctor Alberto
    This dissertation pursues a new strategy for the study of contemporary Mexican narrative —particularly that which is produced on the border with the United States— using human rights as an analytical framework. By examining Mexican narrative through a human rights hermeneutics, I argue that we can better situate the intricate negotiations among legal, cultural, and political discourses of subjectivity they set in motion. This negotiation is particularly fraught in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the drastic shift in public and legal stances on immigration that followed them. The dissertation’s introduction outlines human rights theory and positions this study of resistance literature at the nexus between postcolonial, legal, and human rights theory. Chapter One examines the notion that immigrants are vulnerable subjects of human rights as recognized by intergovernmental organizations such as the International Labor Organization, the United Nations, and the Organization of American States. It then further reviews this condition as portrayed through international laws and treaties designed by the above entities to protect these subjects. Chapter Two demonstrates that immigration policies established by state and federal authorities in the United States breach international treaties and have caused the “criminalization” of Mexican immigrants. Here, I analyze ethnographic and statistical data from the perspective of cultural anthropology with the purpose of finding an explanation of the relationship between human rights violations of Mexican immigrants and the increment of border enforcement in the United States. Chapter three sets up the analytical categories derived from the framework created in the first two chapters and establishes a dialogue between human rights and Mexican narratives depicting immigrants. The following chapters then apply these categories to the study of an array of literary works created by Mexican authors such as Luis Humberto Crosthwaite, Hugo Salcedo, J. Humberto Robles Arenas, Victor Hugo Rascón Banda, and Rosario Sanmiguel. In particular, I look to examine the ways in which these works represent the effects of human rights violations of Mexican immigrants and thereby enter into salient debates within the field of human rights, mainly the debate regarding national sovereignty versus individual rights.