Delgado Beresi, Natalia Iris (2022) Normative antinomy: a critical analysis of the relationship between the International Labour Organization and the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.
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Abstract
From the beginning of the 20th century to the 1970s, the issue of labour in international law was largely framed by the work of the International Labour Organization. However, since the 1970s, the international economic institutions have been challenging the normative framework of the ILO –directly, through structural adjustment programs, or indirectly, by liberalising trade and thereby disrupting countries’ industrial policy. International labour law scholarship tends to emphasise the need for greater coherence. In this context, this thesis critically examines the possibilities and the limitations for coherence in the area of labour policy between the ILO and the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. I do this, first, by inquiring empirically into the international economic institutions’ understanding of labour policy and labour regulation between the 1980s and the 2010s and by providing a nuanced account of their discourse on labour. Second, by contrasting their discourses on labour with the international labour standards of the ILO, I identify specific areas of coherence: on migrant workers, skills and unemployment; as well as areas of conflict: on the employment contract, working time and wages. On that basis, I argue that the three economic institutions’ coherence with the ILO in those areas is due to their adherence to the universalising logic of capital accumulation and the corresponding requirement for a readily available, flexible, mobile, and cheap global labour supply. Regarding the contradictory positions between the institutions, I argue that these are due to the ILO’s role of facilitating social reproduction, through a floor of rights for workers to secure their living, that sets it against the WTO, WB, and IMF’s tendency to undermine the role of social reproduction in favour of short-term accumulation of capital. It is the normative antinomy of the international economic institutions, the thesis concludes, that also accounts for the antagonisms between the institutions under study.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Thesis |
|---|---|
| Copyright Holders: | The copyright of this thesis rests with the author, who asserts his/her right to be known as such according to the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. No dealing with the thesis contrary to the copyright or moral rights of the author is permitted. |
| Depositing User: | Acquisitions And Metadata |
| Date Deposited: | 25 Aug 2022 14:50 |
| Last Modified: | 18 Jul 2024 00:10 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/48995 |
| DOI: | https://doi.org/10.18743/PUB.00048995 |
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