From Demanding Exclusion to Joining the Human Rights Community: Labour, Human Rights, and Immigration Policy in 1940s Canada

Resource type
Authors/contributors
Title
From Demanding Exclusion to Joining the Human Rights Community: Labour, Human Rights, and Immigration Policy in 1940s Canada
Abstract
The author explores the influence of human rights campaigns on Canadian labour leaders' views of immigration in the 1940s. From the start of the labour movement from 1870s to the 1930s, unionists were among the most vocal and energetic opponents to large-scale immigration to Canada. By the 1940s, labour leaders abandoned most of this opposition and especially their racist and exclusionary rhetoric. Goutor shows that human rights activists - many of whom came from within the labour movement itself in the new wave of organizing during the Second World War - played a key role in driving this change. In particular, human rights campaigns convinced labour leaders that racism and anti-immigrant sentiment were social forces that mostly benefited conservatives and would empower social and political forces hostile to the mass unions emerging during the 1940s. --From editors' introduction
Book Title
Revisiting Human Rights in Canadian History
Series
Human rights and social justice series
Place
Winnipeg
Publisher
University of Manitoba Press
Date
2025
Pages
201-31
Language
English
ISBN
978-1-77284-127-5
Extra
OCLC: 1504264322
Notes

Through insightful essays, Revisiting Human Rights in Canadian History challenges the national myths that celebrate Canada’s inclusivity, frame this country as a global human rights leader, and minimize persistent inequalities at home. Contributors to this volume critically examine how Canadian citizens and governments have historically understood and mobilized human rights, as well as who has fought for, benefited from, and been excluded from them. Spanning topics such as incarceration and criminalization, women’s rights, labour movements, Indigenous sovereignty, grassroots activism, immigration, and foreign policy, this collection reflects the diversity of research driving the rapidly developing field of human rights. Both a timely intervention and call to mobilize for social justice, Revisiting Human Rights in Canadian History offers a nuanced reassessment of Canada’s history and historiography of human rights. -- Publisher’s description

Citation
Goutor, D. (2025). From Demanding Exclusion to Joining the Human Rights Community: Labour, Human Rights, and Immigration Policy in 1940s Canada. In J. Tunnicliffe & S. D. Bangarth (Eds.), Revisiting Human Rights in Canadian History (pp. 201–231). University of Manitoba Press. https://uofmpress.ca/books/revisiting-human-rights-in-canadian-history