The Rise of the Right-Against-Rights and Global (Dis)Order in Latin America and Beyond

A new global social order emerged with the millennium: an expansion of rights to those excluded historically, culturally, socially, economically, and politically.

Women, BIPOC groups, LGBT+ communities, immigrants, the economically-disadvantaged, environmentally vulnerable populations, and victim-survivors of human rights violations won rights on the books, if not always in practice. Yet this veritable rights revolution unleashed a right-wing backlash to roll back rights, undermining the new social order, and replacing it with polarized and often violent conflict around the world. To explore who is behind the disorder provoked by the right-against-rights, where and why, and with what impact, this project crosses disciplinary (social sciences-humanities) and geographic (global north-global south) knowledge frontiers. It overcomes narrow political-institutional and global north approaches.

By combining history, law, sociology, gender, and area studies, it broadens knowledge of, and develops strategies to reduce, the right-against-rights’ threat of disorder on fragile democracies in Latin America and beyond. This project is conducted in collaboration with Dr Sandra Botero (Universidad del Rosario), Dr Simón Escoffier (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), and Dr Gabriel Pereira (Universidad Nacional de Tucumán/CONICET).

Principal Investigator: Professor Leigh Payne, University of Oxford