Labour and Constitutionalism-from-Below: On the Effective Potential of Legal Strategy

The central aim of my research is to comprehend how labour movements engage strategically with law as a means to realise their political demands. I investigate the characteristics of effective strategic engagements with legal instruments, from concrete legislative provisions to more abstract constitutional values, and evaluate the types of legal strategies that can facilitate labour's democratic ambitions. Today, labour faces significant political, legal, and economic challenges which makes it a key subject of socio-legal inquiry. My research responds to labour's socio-economic and legal context and is committed to describing and critically evaluating how movements have used legal mechanisms to re-balance the present relation between labour and capital.
During the Fellowship I will engage with academic debates about the agency of social struggles in constitutional democracies and the ways that contemporary labour movements, such as 'gig economy' workers, have used law as a tool of social emancipation. To do so, I will establish a proven publication record by consolidating my PhD research into three journal articles that shape a distinctive research field connecting socio-legal inquiry with pressing concerns in labour law and constitutional theory. This will represent a significant contribution to constitutional theory because it contests the present focus on top-down governmental processes and encourages an innovative methodological approach 'from-below'. In the socio-legal and labour law fields, my research returns to a dormant yet fundamental stream of socio-legal analysis- legal mobilisation scholarship. Drawing on both theoretical and empirical analysis, I provide evaluative criteria from which to assess the opportunities and limitations of law as a tool of political struggle and a rigorous account of legal mobilisation by the factory recuperation movement in Argentina.
My research is motivated by the challenge of comprehending contemporary labour's heterogenous experience of legal and political structures, and the extent to which labour can be understood as a societal and political force within constitutional frameworks. Under contemporary conditions labour is confronted with the fragmentation of work, the hollowing-out of legally permissible forms of industrial action, and the deregulation of labour protections. To comprehend the context of labour and to draw generalisable conclusions about its potentially productive relation with legal structures, I will extend my commitment to empirical analysis of legal struggles. Through case studies of labour's legal struggles in the U.K., Greece, and Spain I will provide comparative analysis of the contextual factors that shape labour's strategic engagements with law.
In order to further uncover the specificity and changing nature of labour's legal challenge, it is necessary to develop a collaborative network of researchers and research users. I will organise a workshop that facilitates collaborations between academic and non-academic audiences, contributes to current academic conceptions of labour and legal struggle, and catalyse a rigorous field of future research. These meetings aim to produce practical guidance about effective strategies for labour movements, a policy report, and work towards an edited collection documenting labour's practical experiences of struggle.
The Fellowship is an outstanding opportunity to achieve aims and objectives that will significantly contribute to my future research career. A postdoctoral position will provide the conditions under which I can establish a publication record, contribute new research to current academic debates, build networks, gain new teaching experience, improve my professional and academic skills through training opportunities, and develop funding applications. This programme of activities is focused toward and will be critical in supporting my career ambitions as an academic in the U.K. higher education sector.