The Cold War was in full swing when the moral right to work for all had to be legally guaranteed in a covenant on human rights. The Communist East interpreted this as a duty of governments to help everyone to a job. The liberal West, concerned that this would mean citizens being forced to work, focused on free choice. A compromise was formulated: the duty of states to ensure economic growth that would favour employment. In practice, this formulation meant that a legal avenue remained open to deny certain groups access to the labour market, especially asylum seekers, refugees, undocumented migrants and family members of migrant workers.
In my doctoral research ‘On Foreign Grounds’, I focus on the legal vacuum that arises when moral rights from the Universal Declaration are incompletely translated into legal obligations. These gaps become particularly evident when non-citizens are placed in the position of the rights holders. I examine the ways in which they are treated in actual contexts in a manner that gives them a legitimate reason to feel humiliated. I position non-humiliation as the minimum threshold of what human dignity means. Mechanisms of exclusion and rejection are addressed, as well as situations in which people lose control over the basic necessities of life.
People's ability to work is a capacity that belongs to them and no one else. It is this idea that underlies the ban on forced labour. From an ontological perspective, it is not even possible to separate ourselves from our knowledge and skills; this is a capacity that we carry with us wherever we go. When people are denied access to the labour market, they are prevented from interacting socially and economically with others on the basis of reciprocity. People experience this form of exclusion as mental torture. It keeps them trapped in the role of a child. I therefore argue for the addition of a legal right for people not to be prohibited to work: a negatively worded right to freedom that deserves a place in the Political and Civil Rights area of the human rights discourse alongside the ban on forced labour.
Nina van Egmond