This book brings an inclusive and transnational perspective to the history of labour organisations and activism in the twentieth century. Together, the essays demonstrate how connections, interactions, and competition between different movements, networks, and organisations impacted the historical development of international, regional, and local labour activisms. Authors take up more informal—even transgressive—activist networks and repertoires, spotlight the work of once-marginalised figures, and address the 'nested' nature of local, national, inter-imperial, and postcolonial spaces in and across world regions. Alongside themes such as migration policies, gender (in)equality, peace movements, and anti-racist activism that have been absent from or sidelined in labour history, classic themes of transnational labour activism, such as labour rights, occupational safety, and workplace discrimination appear in a new light.

Chapter 4 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.  

Francesca Piana is a historian of European and international history and the author of Humanitarian Protection for Prisoners of War and Refugees in the Long Aftermath of the First World War (2024). Her research and teaching interests include the history of international organisations, transnationalism, humanitarian aid, missionary, social work, migration, and women and gender in twentieth-century Europe.

Donald Weber is a historian and research coordinator at the Amsab-Institute of Social History in Belgium, having previously studied at Ghent University. He is a board member of several social history research networks, such as the International Association of Labour History Institutions (IALHI). He has published on trade union history, mobility history, and the history of social movements.

Susan Zimmermann is a distinguished professor at Central European University in Austria. She is a historian of labour, gender, and social movements internationally and across Central and Eastern Europe. Her most recent publication is the co-authored monograph Women’s Labour Activism in Eastern Europe and Beyond: A New Transnational History (2025).