Paper details

Paper authors	Laure Humbert
In panel on	Key Humanitarian Concepts in Historical Perspective
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

There is currently a debate about how to reform the present ‘broken refugee system’, both in terms of equipping refugees with meaningful education opportunities and empowering them economically. I aim to contribute to discussion surrounding refugee jobs and labour rights by examining the tensions between exploitation and protection, low-wage labour and the guarantee of socio-economic rights within an historical perspective. By illuminating the confidence that post-WWII occupation officials and humanitarian workers had in the therapeutic effects of manual work, I aim to shed new lights onto the tensions between ‘compulsion to work’ and the new international embrace of social and economic rights. What emerges is a cautionary tale about how some ‘humanitarian’ enterprises can undermine labour rights and result in the development of low-waged or unpaid jobs in economically devastated societies.

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