The ILO propagated a European-administered moral order that normalised colonial wage labour

Evidence

A founding premise of the ILO was that the failure of any one country to adopt ‘accepted international minimum standards’ was an obstacle to the promotion of such standards in all other countries. As an ‘avant-garde of global governance’, the ILO helped to shape a moral discourse and a vision of global order to be administered from Europe. It aimed to stabilise the colonies and normalise wage labour through the extension of minimum standards of welfare and labour regulation. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 241

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s human-rights discourse reading — the ILO as the template for the international human-rights institution whose norms are developed in the metropole. — connects to: The ILO framed social justice as a defense against unrest threatening empire and peace. — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 188; French colonial forced labor abuses helped trigger the ILO’s anti-forced-labor treaty; ILO labour standards embedded a Western normative vision of the family — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 241 (+4 more)
• SEED: Angle: the international-labor-standards regime as a continuation of colonial administration under the guise of humanitarian governance.

Broader Connections

• French colonial forced labor abuses helped trigger the ILO’s anti-forced-labor treaty #complicates (0.85)
• Colonial powers impose a double moral standard demanding restraint only from the colonized #corroborates (0.85)
• ILO labour standards embedded a Western normative vision of the family #corroborates (0.82) — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, 241
• Colonial administrators reframed occupation as moral uplift of backward peoples #corroborates (0.80) — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 116
• French interest in forced labor arose only under ILO scrutiny in 1926 #contradicts (0.78)
• External ILO scrutiny alone first prompted France to examine its forced labor #contradicts (0.72) — Alice L. Conklin, A Mission to Civilize_ The Republican…, 1408