Bridging the human rights divide: Transnational advocacy on labor and economic rights in the 1990s (Mexico, Bangladesh)

This dissertation explores the struggle to define labor and economic rights as human rights and to defend them in the 1990s. In theoretical terms, the dissertation advances the discussion of why and how normative understandings change over time. Empirically, it develops three case studies of transnational advocacy campaigns or protests in which questions over how to define human rights were central—specifically, questions over whether to include labor and economic rights as core human rights concerns. One case focuses on a campaign to prevent child labor in Bangladesh; another on a campaign to prevent gender discrimination in the Mexican workplace; and a third on protests at the World Trade Organization's 1999 ministerial meeting at Seattle.; Two mechanisms—blocking and backdoor moves—are central to explaining how the human rights message of a campaign or protest changes over time. The dissertation explains how to identify, measure and compare these mechanisms. It explores factors that influence decisions to block or make backdoor moves. These decisions are integrally related to whether and how the message of a campaign is framed and changes over time—and how normative understandings evolve.; This dissertation also explores a wider range of motivations (both material and altruistic) for why actors on the “sending” and “receiving ends” of campaigns wrestle over definitions of human rights. It contributes to a fuller discussion of norms change by examining the micro-analytics of the process. It enriches the discussion of framing in social movements by connecting it to analyses of transnational advocacy and norms change. And it adds to a burgeoning human rights literature on the interdependence of different types of rights and the challenge of promoting them effectively.