Paper short abstract:

Looking at the ILO’s engagement with the so-called “native labour question”, we analyse the influence of different networks (labour activists versus imperial interests) as well as the emerging conflicts and the underlying power structures within the ILO.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the ILO’s engagement with the so-called ‘native labour questions’ between 1919 and 1930. We choose to look at the personal entanglements between ILO staff and philanthropic activist groups on the one hand, and imperial actors representing the interests of colonial powers on the other hand. Following Kott (2018), we understand international organisations as “spaces in which one can reveal the existence of networks of relationships and systems of circulation” (33). Consequently, this paper argues that the newly founded ILO section was regarded as an important forum for advocacy of their interests by a diverse group of actors.

During the first years, some of the philanthropic groups could already count on their personal connections into the international sphere of the organization and exerted their influence through these networks. More marginalized actors, such as the pan-African movement around W.E.B. Du Bois, argued for the need of direct representation on the expert committee based on factors of race and gender. When the ILO’s efforts culminated in the 1927 foundation of a so-called ‘Committee of Experts for Native Labour’, however, most of the expert seats were filled by former colonial politicians, representing the interests of the imperial powers and not those of activists. Comparing these different modes of networking during the early study of ‘Native Labour’ in the ILO therefore allows us to understand the contested discourse within the ILO and the workings of the power structures in which the imperial networks mostly took precedence.