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**Apololgies for cross-posting**


*Call for Abstracts - Deadline 20 January 2019*

RC21 – 2019 – Delhi - « In and Beyond the City. Emerging Ontologies,
Persistent Challenges and Hopeful Futures »



*Stream Proposal : Governing Urban Illegalities. Government, Risk
Management and Collective Action in the Global North and Global South*



*Convenors : *

Thomas Aguilera (Sciences Po Rennes – ARENES); Walter Nicholls (Department
of Urban Planning and Public Policy, University of California Irvine)



*Proposal: *

Illegalities have been studied through many different lenses in the social
sciences. Some have examined how the modern state has employed
institutions, bureaucracies and policy instruments to produce a range of
illegalities (Heyman & Smart, 1999; Godefroy & Lascoumes, 2004; Briquet &
Favarel-Garrigues, 2010; Lascoumes, 2011). The issue of illegality is also
at the core of the study of migration (De Genova, 2005; Heyman, 2013;
Menjivar & Kanstroom 2013). Urban illegality has been considered as a point
of departure to question the governability of large metropolises (Fernandes
& Varley, 1998; Borraz & Le Galès, 2010; Aguilera, 2017). In the Global
South, scholars have used the concept of *informality*to describe practices
that escape state regulation and knowledge (De Soto, 2000; Roy & Al Sayyad,
2004; Hart, 2015).

These various works conceive illegality as a socio-political construction
used to govern populations (Foucault, 1975). The construction of illegality
consists of social norms that demarcate the boundaries between licit and
illicit conduct *and*laws that institutionalize and naturalize such
distinctions by rendering them legal or illegal (Van Schendel et Abraham,
2005; Menjivar & Kanstroom 2013; Smart & Zerilli, 2014).

This stream aims to explore the two sides – normative and institutional –
of illegalities in contemporary cities. First, we are interested in how
people respond to conduct deemed illicit through collective action.
Mobilizations construct representations and moral appeals about
questionable conduct and wage battles to render such conduct illegal.
Second, governmental actors respond by developing categories to assess
whether the problematic conduct is a *risk*that can effectively be managed
or an existential *threat *that needs to be banished. Illegality is
therefore a socio-political process that entails collective mobilizations,
the construction of categories to differentiate between risk and threat,
and policy instruments (outputs) to govern illegalized populations and
practices.

We welcome papers on illegalized housing, transportation, markets, vendors,
migrants, gangs, and so on in the Global North and South.  We encourage
contributions that focus on distinct parts of the illegality process:

- mobilizations against or for illicit people and practices

- representations and framing of people and practices as licit /illicit

- pressuring and lobbying governmental actors

- the political and legal construction of government categories

- the implementation of government categories and plans

- resistance to government plan



*Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words, names, affiliations and
contact information to *

*Thomas Aguilera : [log in to unmask]*

*and Walter Nicholls : [log in to unmask]**. *



-- 
*Thomas Aguilera*
Maître de conférences en science politique
<https://sciences-po.academia.edu/ThomasAGUILERA> | Assistant Professor of
Political Science
Sciences Po Rennes | Arènes UMR 6051
Responsable du Master *Gouverner les mutations territoriales
<http://www.sciencespo-rennes.fr/fr/gouverner-les-mutations-territoriales.html>*

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