The Criminalisation of Resistance and Movement In Turbulent Times: Un-Silencing Democratic Struggles Against Authoritarianism and for Global Solidarity

This session focuses on legal-political (‘law enforced’) forms of silencing international and transnational solidarity movements, e.g. targeting indigenous movements fighting extractivism, or protest demonstrations in support of Palestinians. Equally, the session attends to the criminalisation of migrants and asylum seekers through what scholars term ‘crimmigration’, i.e. the convergence of criminal and immigration law that renders the very act of seeking refuge or crossing borders a punishable offence. The detention, deportation, and penalisation of those fleeing persecution represent a further domain in which state power silences the most vulnerable, foreclosing both legal protection and political voice.

Apart from contextualising different national chapters targeting political opposition and visible minorities, who support global human rights, we seek papers aimed at investigating transnational forms of solidarity and resistance to late capitalist forms of colonialisation and necropolitics (Mbembe, 2019) as well as papers examining how migration control, asylum law, and crimmigration policies function as extensions of these same authoritarian and necropolitical logics. We particularly welcome contributions that situate the border as a site of criminalisation, analyse the penalisation of refuge and solidarity with migrants, and explore how affected communities and human rights advocates organise resistance across national boundaries.