Child Labour Opponents and their Campaigns in Global Perspective, 1880s-1930s

As part of the Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lectures, Nina Schneider from the Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in Germany, gave a lecture that addressed two points: first, key findings from recent book on child labour opponents and their campaigns at the turn of the 20th century. Second, she revealed the difficulties faced while writing that history. The book explores a hitherto under-examined question: how and why did child labour develop into a key concern worldwide between the 1880s and 1930s? Who were the protagonists who first raised the issue as a global concern? Her study provides the first account of the history of diverse and locally grounded, but nationally and frequently globally connected, child labour opponents in the Americas, their motivations and campaigns. She argues that, for the period between the 1880s and 1930s, one can identify similar protagonists, a broadly similar time frame, common platforms, comparable campaigning mechanisms and many types of connections across regions. Nevertheless, in contrast to the global anti-slavery movement, child labour opponents formed a loosely institutionalised network which lacked an international organisation that focused specifically on child labour. A global history approach to child labour opponents helps reveal large-scale patterns across societies and highlight similarities and differences between cases. Throughout her research journey she faced a number of difficulties. Struggled with finding an adequate narrative for a global history that moves beyond a eurocentric and western diffusion model as well as national accounts, the reason why Nina Schneider decided to give her book quite an experimental structure. Bio: Nina Schneider holds a PhD in History from the University of Essex, UK, and currently serves as the Chair of Latin American History in Global Perspective at the Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany, where she also co-directs the Latin American Studies Centre (ZILAS). Previously, she was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights (ISHR, 2012), Marie-Curie Fellow at the Zukunftskolleg Konstanz (2013- 2015), Visiting Scholar the National University of Brasília (UNB, 2015), Research Group Leader at the Centre for Global Cooperation Research (2018-2024) at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, and Jean Monnet Fellow at the EUI in Florence (2024-2025). She is the author of: Child Labour Opponents in the Americas and their Campaigns in global perspective, 1880-1930s (De Gruyter, 2025); Brazilian Propaganda: Legitimizing an Authoritarian Regime (University Press of Florida, 2014); “Origins of Child Rights Governance: The Example of Early Child Labour Legislation in the United States and Brazil,” Childhood: A Journal of Global Child Research 26, no. 3 (2019): 289-303; and (with Rebecca J. Atencio); ‘Reckoning with Dictatorship in Brazil: The Double-Edged Role of cultural-artistic Production’, Latin American Perspectives 43, no. 5 (2016): 12-28 (Honorary Mention 2016, LASA Brazil Section).