Cities as spaces of human rights: Children’s right to clothing in Nottingham

This project has benefited from funding from the Centre for Policy, Citizenship and Society.

This project seeks to redefine and reorientate human rights through the lens of urban space and the lived experience of its inhabitants, by putting human rights in conversation with Henri Lefebvre’s concept of the right to the city. While a link between the right to the city and human right has already been established, the theoretical and methodological implications of a right-to-the-city perspective on human rights have not been systematically appreciated, especially around what we understand by human rights and the state-centred mechanisms designed to ‘respect, protect, and fulfil’ them. In times where international law is under threat from right-wing politics and inequalities continue to limit different social groups’ engagement with rights, the question of placing human rights at the centre of a new conception of social justice and progressive politics is more urgent than ever.

We decided to test this idea in partnership with Sharewear, a Nottingham-based charity that provides clothing to vulnerable households in the Nottingham area and has campaigned nationally for the right to clothing. Two groups of children aged 8-10 and 11-14 met at Sharewear’s premises to reflect on the significance of clothing in their everyday spaces and situations (using an item of clothing of their choice) and on clothing as a human right. Our findings show children’s diverse experiences of clothing in their material and social environments, schools included, where needs and choices around clothing become intertwined and a human right to clothing emerges that exceeds its limited consideration in human rights law. Equally significant is the project’s potential for expanding conventional understandings of human rights implementation, in light of both state-driven austerity as well as community-centred, spatial practices of decommodification and reuse of clothing that are openly critical of ‘fast fashion’.

• Dr Michele Grigolo (Principal Investigator), Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Nottingham Trent University.
• Prof. Geraldine Brady, Professor of Sociology and Social Work, Nottingham Trent University.
• Jay Chester, PhD candidate, Lecturer (Hourly Paid), Nottingham Trent University.
• Rachel Harding, PhD candidate, Research Fellow for the Nottingham Centre for Children, Young People and Families, Nottingham Trent University.
• Dr Yesmean Khalil, Lecturer in Sociology, Nottingham Trent University.