On September 25th, 1919, Max di Collalto and Giuseppe Pizzuto sailed for Italy on the steamship “Sicilia.” They had been expelled from Egypt by the British, in agreement with the Italian authorities. Collalto, Italian owner of the Cairene newspaper Roma and leader of the International Society of Employees of Cairo, was accused “of being in contact with the nationalist Egyptian circles, whom he excites against Britain,” while Pizzuto, president of the syndicate of typographers and the Secretary of the Chamber of Labor, was considered “an open and dangerous revolutionary […] fomenting strikes and organizing syndicates.” In the late 19th and early 20th century, migrants crossed the Mediterranean southwards from Greece, Italy, Malta, Syria and other parts of the Ottoman empire. Much of the literature has acknowledged the presence in Egypt of these trans-Mediterranean workers, problematically defined as “foreigners,” but the roots of their politicization, its implications for local labor militancy, the relationship between this nonindigenous proletariat and the Egyptian working class, and female labor are understudied. Based on documents of the British Foreign Office and of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, my paper explores the moments in Egyptian history when foreign and Egyptian workers cooperated. It focuses on the Egyptian nationalist revolution of 1919, when foreign and in particular Italian “agitators” were targeted by the British authorities for their support in favor of Egyptian workers and their nationalist aspirations. This focus on the trans-Mediterranean and Egyptian working-class and to events of inter-ethnic cooperation elicits new questions on foreignness and belonging, cosmopolitanism and nationalism. Class is reintegrated as a category of investigation and used to describe the “working-class cosmopolitanism” of those foreigners and Egyptians who set aside their ethnic solidarities, thus deifying essentialist notions of identity. As shown by the archival evidence, the interplay between the two dynamics of class and ethnicity cannot be oversimplified at the expense of one force over the other, but it needs to be analyzed in the historical complexity of its Mediterranean context. On the whole, while the historiography of Egypt and the eastern Mediterranean has often described cosmopolitanism as an elitist movement, with varying nuances of nostalgia and regret for the world that has been “lost” with the advent of populist nationalism, this paper attempts to unearth a seldom told story, also raising questions within broader debates about cosmopolitanism, migration, and nationalism.

On three separate occasions in post-revolutionary Iran (October 2008, July 2010, and October 2012) striking merchants shuttered bazaars across the country in protest against state economic policies. Do the strikes against the Ahmadinejad government, and their relative success for the bazaaris, signify the Bazaar moving away from the overarching Islamic Republic regime it helped usher into power? This paper will analyze the Iranian Bazaar as a micro-culture wielding both economic and political clout in the era of the Islamic Republic. I focus on the bazaari reaction to the seismic political shift begun in 1979 and the ensuing transformation of the Bazaar, which remains at once a merchant class, a political actor, and a cultural unit unto itself. The purpose of this inquiry is to evaluate the Bazaar’s collective political efficacy following regime consolidation (1979-1983) to the present day. The Bazaar’s relevancy as a cohesive political force has declined during the period in question, resulting from a multitude of factors, which include (a) macro-level trade developments (e.g. globalization, the rise of Dubai), (b) the ascension of competing entities domestically, namely the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and (c) the atomization of the bazaari class, which has rendered the Bazaar a shadow of its former self, politically-speaking. I draw from the scholarship of Arang Keshavarzian, who shows that bazaaris flourished under Mohammad Reza Shah and maintained vast political autonomy, whereas in the Islamic Republic, they have become fractured and politically weakened. Benjamin Smith’s work, which challenges widely-held perceptions of an immutable “bazaar-mosque” alliance, and depicts bazaaris foremost as pragmatists, also informs this paper. While powerful bazaaris still exist, and some are reinforcing pillars for the Iranian clerical elite, collectively they have declined in power. Moreover, political organizations and trade unions, such as the Islamic Coalition Party and the Society of Islamic Associations of Guilds and Bazaars of Tehran (SIABGT), which ostensibly exist to promote the interests of the Bazaar, are led by co-opted elites disconnected from the concerns of bazaaris at ground level. Overall the political outlook for the Bazaar as a collectivity is bleak due to its disunity. The October 2012 bazaar shutdown, which SIABGT leadership condemned as a product of “treacherous actions” is just one example of such discord. Finally, this paper will analyze current Bazaar trends using Tehran-based Western and Iranian media reports to assess the future collective political prospects of Iranian bazaaris, which I conclude will continue to diminish.

Two important processes that took place at the global level have yielded contradictory and unintended consequences in Turkey for the development of labor rights in the post-1980 period. On the one hand, neoliberal policies aimed at implementing a business friendly agenda which prioritized economic freedoms, such as property rights and mobility, over labor rights; and flexible labor (temporary or subcontracted work, often with no benefits or welfare safety nets) over labor security (including workplace safety, job security and social security). On the other hand, courts started taking a more proactive role in settling important policy decisions, specifically those regarding individual rights, and taking up an increasing role in law making as well. Specifically at a time when states relinquish their duty to protect labor rights, and labor movements give up on their socialistic ideals, the new position of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) raises interesting questions about addressing labor rights as human rights in Turkey. What is the role of judicial activism and human rights framework in addressing precarious labor conditions and in mobilizing activism around labor issues in Turkey during the post-1980 era? This research aims to explore the complex ways in which law— including but not limited to changing rights discourses, as well as organizational opportunities and institutional resources for social movements—can be mobilized for social change by analyzing the legal mobilization of labor activists from Turkey at the ECtHR. My analysis will be twofold: from above and from below. First, I will conceptualize the ECtHR’s approach to labor rights by specifically by analyzing the case law on labor. Second, I will analyze the local dynamics of legal mobilization in Turkey. The results of this research will contribute to understanding the precarious labor conditions in Turkey as well as the new opportunities and constraints for claiming labor rights as human rights.