{"title":"How Qatar’s migrant workers became FIFA’s Problem: a transnational struggle for responsibility","authors":"A. Duval","doi":"10.1080/20414005.2022.2030633","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Since 2012, and the attribution of the organisation of its crown jewel (and cash cow) – the FIFA World Cup – to Qatar, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) has been facing public outrage. It has been accused of being linked to labour rights abuses suffered by the people who are literally building the World Cup in Qatar. This paper studies the transnational struggle aimed at forcing FIFA, a non-profit Swiss association, to take responsibility for these abuses and to use its leverage to remedy them. In particular, it highlights the legal and non-legal strategies used to turn the abuses faced by Qatar’s migrant workers into FIFA’s problem, it shows how FIFA used the UNGPs as a blueprint to frame its (limited) responsibility vis-à-vis those workers, and it assesses the (limited) impact of this acknowledgment of responsibility by FIFA.","PeriodicalId":37728,"journal":{"name":"Transnational Legal Theory","volume":"12 1","pages":"473 - 500"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2021-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"2","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Transnational Legal Theory","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/20414005.2022.2030633","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"Social Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 2
Abstract
ABSTRACT Since 2012, and the attribution of the organisation of its crown jewel (and cash cow) – the FIFA World Cup – to Qatar, the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) has been facing public outrage. It has been accused of being linked to labour rights abuses suffered by the people who are literally building the World Cup in Qatar. This paper studies the transnational struggle aimed at forcing FIFA, a non-profit Swiss association, to take responsibility for these abuses and to use its leverage to remedy them. In particular, it highlights the legal and non-legal strategies used to turn the abuses faced by Qatar’s migrant workers into FIFA’s problem, it shows how FIFA used the UNGPs as a blueprint to frame its (limited) responsibility vis-à-vis those workers, and it assesses the (limited) impact of this acknowledgment of responsibility by FIFA.
期刊介绍:
The objective of Transnational Legal Theory is to publish high-quality theoretical scholarship that addresses transnational dimensions of law and legal dimensions of transnational fields and activity. Central to Transnational Legal Theory''s mandate is publication of work that explores whether and how transnational contexts, forces and ideations affect debates within existing traditions or schools of legal thought. Similarly, the journal aspires to encourage scholars debating general theories about law to consider the relevance of transnational contexts and dimensions for their work. With respect to particular jurisprudence, the journal welcomes not only submissions that involve theoretical explorations of fields commonly constructed as transnational in nature (such as commercial law, maritime law, or cyberlaw) but also explorations of transnational aspects of fields less commonly understood in this way (for example, criminal law, family law, company law, tort law, evidence law, and so on). Submissions of work exploring process-oriented approaches to law as transnational (from transjurisdictional litigation to delocalized arbitration to multi-level governance) are also encouraged. Equally central to Transnational Legal Theory''s mandate is theoretical work that explores fresh (or revived) understandings of international law and comparative law ''beyond the state'' (and the interstate). The journal has a special interest in submissions that explore the interfaces, intersections, and mutual embeddedness of public international law, private international law, and comparative law, notably in terms of whether such inter-relationships are reshaping these sub-disciplines in directions that are, in important respects, transnational in nature.