Conference

CINETS 2026: Crimmigration in an Age of Authoritarian Drift

Date

Sunday 5 July 2026 - Tuesday 7 July 2026

Address

Kamerlingh Onnes Building
Steenschuur 25
2311 ES Leiden

Organized in collaboration with Border Criminologies
The Crimmigration Control International Network of Studies (CINETS) invites paper and panel proposals for its seventh bi-annual conference, hosted at Leiden Law School. The 2026 edition centers on the theme:

“Crimmigration in an Age of Authoritarian Drift”
In recent years, the fusion of criminal law and immigration enforcement—commonly termed crimmigration—has intensified across the globe. Amid rising authoritarianism, democratic erosion, and far-right populism, migration has become both a symbolic and material battleground for nationalist politics.
 

From the detention and deportation drives in El Salvador and Tunisia, to the carceral deterrence strategies of Australia and the United Kingdom, to the Trump administration’s family separation policies and the hardline border regimes of Hungary, Italy, and Poland, punitive migration control is increasingly deployed as a means of political legitimation. Across both the Global North and the Global South, authoritarian logics of mobility governance are used to surveil, marginalise, and contain targeted populations—often along racialised, ethnic, and class lines.

This conference explores how crimmigration operates as a tool of governance and political performance in democratic, hybrid, and authoritarian settings. We welcome interdisciplinary submissions from legal, social, political, and cultural perspectives, including but not limited to: migration and asylum law, criminal law, criminology, political science, sociology, anthropology, international relations, socio-legal studies, history, human geography, and critical race/postcolonial theory. We also encourage contributions that engage with arts-based research, activist scholarship, Indigenous epistemologies, and community-based knowledge production.

Confirmed Keynote Speakers

• Prof. Vanessa Barker, Stockholm University, Sweden
• Professor Leti Volpp, UC Berkeley, USA
• Professor Witold Klaus, Institute of Law Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences / Centre of Migration Studies at Warsaw University, Poland
• Professor Eduardo Domenech, Cordoba National University
• Professor Nadera Shalboub Kevorkian, Chair in Global Law, Queen Mary University of London, UK / Global South Visiting Scholar, Princeton University, USA
• Dr. Jasmin Lilian Diab, Assistant Professor of Migration Studies, Lebanese American University
• Tendai John Mutambu, writer, editor, and curator
• Dr. Amalia Campos Delgado, Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance and Society, Leiden Law School, the Netherlands
• Dr. Mieke Kox, Erasmus School of Law, Criminology, the Netherlands​​​​​​​

Key Themes:

• Trump-era legacies: Family separation, criminal prosecution of asylum seekers, Title 42 expulsions
• European rightward shift: Pushbacks, detention expansion, and externalization deals (e.g., Libya, Tunisia)
• Digital authoritarianism: Surveillance tech, algorithmic bias, and biometric regimes across regions
• Penal border regimes: Carceral deterrence strategies in Australia, UK, El Salvador
• Colonial continuities: Race, empire, and settler-colonial logics in modern crimmigration
• Law and resistance: Courts, lawyers, and grassroots resistance to deportation and border violence
• Comparative authoritarianism: Crimmigration in hybrid/autocratic states (Turkey, Russia)

We encourage:

• Comparative case studies spanning Global North and Global South
• Empirical research (e.g., ethnography, policy analysis, data-based studies)
• Legal analyses of constitutional challenges, jurisprudential shifts, and international obligations
• Artistic methodologies and/or outputs: photography, installations, documentary film, etc.

Program Highlights:

It is no longer possible to submit abstracts, but it is possible to attend the conference as a non-presenting attendee. Registration for the conference can take place via this link.

We are currently putting together the final program, which we intend to publish on this page before the end of March. 

We warmly invite you to join us in Leiden for a dynamic, critical, and timely gathering of crimmigration scholars and practitioners from across the globe.

For inquiries, please contact the CINETS network by sending an email to Prof. Maartje van der Woude (Leiden Law School, the Netherlands) via [e-mail]