Our research will allow us to show the ideas behind contemporary social legislation. We will not only cast a spotlight on the core policy documents, but we will also reveal the voices of individuals on the ground that were crucial for creating understandings of social rights about work. We are avowedly transnational, and seek to understand how relationships between individuals as well as and international connections between organisations and countries have played crucial roles in diffusing ideas about social rights around the globe. We show that the halls of the International Labour Organisation in Geneva have as much place in this story as the Rhineland factory floor or Kenyan shamba (farm). We are particularly interested in how conversations around these rights affected women, ethnic and religious minorities, children, and the elderly, and how individuals in these (and other groups) themselves responded to discussions about rights related to work (including the right not to work, for example, because of illness, infirmity, old age, maternity and caring responsibilities).