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We live in a
paradoxical era. On the one hand, the world has become unprecedentedly
mobile. Capital, data, goods, and ideas flow across the globe with
increasing velocity, while human beings are on the move as never
before—as tourists, students, laborers, digital nomads, and, most
urgently, as refugees and asylum seekers displaced by conflict, climate
change, and economic precarity.
On the other hand,
this hyper-mobility encounters an equally powerful counterforce: the
hardening of boundaries. Around the world, wall-building has resurged,
border surveillance has expanded, and complex legal architectures have
proliferated to filter, channel, and restrict movement. In this struggle,
law occupies a central position, often invisibly. It draws the lines,
creates the categories, and ultimately determines who can move, where
they can go, and on what terms.
The conference
theme, Law in Motion:
Reimagining Mobility, Boundaries, and Belonging, directly confronts this tension. Emblematic of law and
society scholarship, the conference urges researchers to examine law as a
dynamic force that is both constituted by and constitutive of movement
and to question the concepts that underpin our legal world. What
constitutes a “boundary” in the 21st century, when digital borders and
biometric databases are as formidable as physical walls? How is
“mobility” itself stratified, creating hierarchies of travelers and
migrants? And how does law construct “belonging”—not just through formal
citizenship, but in the interstitial spaces of temporary visas,
precarious statuses, and transnational communities?
We invite scholars
from law, sociology, anthropology, political science, geography, history,
and beyond to investigate the intricate interplays among official law,
social norms, and the mobile human experience. At the same time, we
welcome submissions that do not speak to the conference theme but
nevertheless forge interdisciplinary dialogues about law from all corners
of the world. We look forward to welcoming you to Hong Kong!
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