International Workshop on ‘The Labour and Social Security Rights of Captive Workers’

On 3-4 July 2023, we hosted an international workshop on ‘The Labour and Social Security Rights of Captive Workers’, organised by Professor Virginia Mantouvalou. The purpose of this workshop was to examine the labour and social security rights of working prisoners, offenders engaged in unpaid work requirements as a community sentence and immigration detainees. This is an area that is increasingly important but under-researched in legal scholarship. The workshop’s focus was on prison labour and other work in captivity in several European legal orders, as well as international and European human rights and labour standards in the field. Its aim was to start a European and international dialogue between legal scholars and scholars from other disciplines. This workshop was funded by a UCL Global Engagement Grant and a Modern Law Review Seminar Fund. 

Speakers were Miriam Azinović (European University Viadrina), Dr Katie Bales (Bristol University), Professor Hugh Collins (LSE), Mario Guido (UCL), Professor Petra Herzfeld Olsson (Stockholm University), Dr Marija Jovanovic (University of Essex), Dr Rory Kelly (UCL), Professor Virginia Mantouvalou (UCL), Dr Faina Milman-Sivan (University of Haifa), Dr Hadassa Noorda (University of Amsterdam), Professor Frantzeska Papadopoulou Skarp (Stockholm University), Professor Sophie Robin-Olivier (La Sorbonne) and Dr Yair Sagy (University of Haifa). The speakers were joined by Andrea Coomber KC (Hon), CEO of the Howard League for Penal Reform, Dr Greg Davies (Liverpool University), Catherine Heard (Birkbeck), Dr Robert Jones (Cardiff University) and Professor Amir Paz-Fuchs (Sussex University) as Chairs.

The papers of the workshop will be published in 2024.