This call for abstracts invites scholars from diverse disciplines to critically examine extra-legal urban governance as a durable, persistent and inherent dimension of urban power, to explore its interactions with formal institutions, markets and actors, and to study the ways in which it contributes to shaping urban transformations and redefining urban experiences today.
Although the vast scale of global illicit markets (e.g., drug trafficking, arms smuggling, contraband, prostitution) is widely recognized, the processes and mechanisms through which their accumulated wealth is converted into territorial and urban assets remain insufficiently understood. In an era marked by the transnational flow of illicit capital, key questions demand closer examination: What borders—social, institutional, and spatial—must be crossed to transform illicit goods and services into urban power? How are the boundaries between legality and illegality enforced, negotiated, or blurred, and how do these boundaries shape the governance of urban spaces? How do they enable the public – and academic – invisibilization of the illicit?
IJURR welcomes particularly submissions of empirical research, case studies, and comparative analyses that advance a clearer understanding of the mechanisms through which illicit economies and their organized actors become embedded in urban fabric and influence urban transformations.
The editors will review the abstracts soon after the deadline and notify the author if a full paper is invited. Full papers invited in response to calls for papers will be subject to external peer review. These papers may result in the publication of a themed issue with an editorial introduction, or individual articles published in the journal.
Deadline for submissions: 1st June 2025
Abstracts should be submitted to the IJURR Office, subject heading: Extra-Legal Governance.