The 2025 Annual IIPPE Conference – “Immigration: Crisis of the World Capitalist System, Crisis for the World Capitalist System”
Date: September 17 – 20, 2025
Venue: Middle Eastern Technical University, Ankara, Türkiye
Call for Papers
Political Economy and Law Working Group
Immigration is at the forefront of capitalist policies both to encourage certain types of immigration and discourage other types. There are capitalist interests in the privatisation of immigration regimes, the bribes that European countries have given those in the Global South to brutally prevent migrants from reaching the Global North while Global North capitalism requires immigration to continue.
With this call for papers for the IIPPE Working Group on Political Economy and Law, we invite submissions for this year’s IIPPE conference with a special focus on immigration, political economy and law, to consider the following:
- What is the role of law in the political economy of immigration, and vice versa?
- What are the legal and institutional changes bolstering the apparent shift towards increased protectionism and direction of the economy and how does this interact with immigration?
- How have the struggles of immigrants and other social movements challenged hegemonic patterns of law and political economy of immigration, the family and employment?
- What are the implications of the aforementioned shifts for globalisation, neoliberalism and neoliberal legality?
- What are the legal implications of technological advancements in the fields of AI and human biotechnology and how do these interact with the political economy of immigration?
- How do law and political economy address climate change, politics of land, and environmental challenges coupled with immigration?
- How does law intertwine with imperialism, as a global project of the past and present, as well as its actually existing varieties and local specificities?
- What is/can be the role of law in contexts of war and genocide which may cause emigration/immigration, as well as other manifestations of imperial violence as currently being perpetuated against Gaza?
- How do differentiated conceptualisations of law / lawlessness emerge and how are they used in the context of immigration, imperialism and neocolonialism, with what implications for marginalised social groups in the Global North and South?
This call aims to provide a space within the IIPPE conference for both theoretical and empirical papers on all aspects of the interaction between law and political economy, across all sectors and geographical contexts. We are particularly interested in papers pertinent to this year’s conference theme on Immigration: Crisis of the World Capitalist System, Crisis for the World Capitalist System. We also encourage submissions that move beyond US/western European-centric law and political economy to consider Political Economy and Law in Indigenous and customary laws, Global South and non-western contexts, including the role of political economy in the decolonisation and/of law, and South-South comparative research.
We seek to combine perspectives from (but not limited to) critical political economy, critical legal studies, law and society, the anthropology of law, (original) institutional economics, Marxist legal theory, cultural studies and other pertinent fields and traditions.
The deadline for proposals’ submission is 15 February 2025.
Submissions may be made as: (a) proposals for individual papers (which IIPPE will group into panels), (b) proposals for panels or streams of panels, (c) proposals on activism.
To submit a proposal, please go to the following link, and carefully follow the instructions there: https://whova.com/portal/registration/iippe_202409/t2674tb7
The above link will take you to the submission page on our conference platform, Whova, which administers the proposals in the form of issuing a ‘ticket’. On the first page, please change the quantity of ticket to 1 and then click ‘next’ to proceed. On the second page, fill in the required information and submit your abstract/proposal. You will receive a confirmation email as soon as completed.
IMPORTANT: Please indicate Political Economy and Law when you complete the electronic form.
New participants committed to political economy, interdisciplinarity, history of economic thought, pluralism in economic and social thinking, and/or their application to policy analysis and activism are strongly encouraged to submit an abstract.
For information on this call or the Political Economy and Law WG, please email the WG co-ordinators, or visit: https://whova.com/portal/registration/ZTmSq0l3L-g@F6Ygitku/x2vkm08p
Christina Sakali christina.sakali@gmail.com
Mnqobi Ngubane ngubanemnqobi@gmail.com
Angela Daly angelacdaly@gmail.comJoão Telésforo mf.telesforo@gmail.com