Labor in Hard Times: Workers’ Legal Mobilization at the European Court of Human Rights
- Date
- Tuesday 28 April 2026
- Time
- Address
-
Kamerlingh Onnes Building
Steenschuur 25
2311 ES Leiden - Room
- B0.13
Filiz Kahraman will present her new book, Labor in Hard Times: Workers’ Legal Mobilization at the European Court of Human Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2026), which examines how organized labor in Turkey and the United Kingdom turned to international human rights law in response to domestic repression and neoliberal restructuring. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and an original database of labor rights cases before the European Court of Human Rights, the book analyzes how workers used international litigation not just to win legal victories, but to build political pressure, assert legitimacy, and reclaim space for collective action. Focusing on public sector unionists in Turkey and blacklisted construction workers in the UK, it explores how grassroots activists and lawyers mobilized international law as a tactical resource: Workers engaged rights discourse strategically to pursue concrete goals, while remaining rooted in class-based solidarity. The lecture will reflect on these findings to discuss the changing strategies of labor movements in an era of democratic backsliding and backlash against international institutions.
Bio:
Filiz Kahraman is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. She received her PhD at the University of Washington and held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Mortara Center for International Studies at Georgetown University. Her research on law and politics has been supported by the National Science Foundation, awarded the ISA’s Best Dissertation in Human Rights prize, and received an article award from the Law and Society Association. Her work has appeared in Annual Review of Law and Social Science, Law and Society Review, Law & Social Inquiry, and the European Journal of International Relations, and is forthcoming in Perspectives on Politics.