Date: 5 March 2026-6 March 2026
Location: Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niteroi, Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Subject Fields:Labor History / Studies
The term “illegal” to refer to a person’s official status was introduced in the Western hemisphere in the 1930s and is closely tied to the regulation of international (labor) migration, but processes of illegalization have much deeper roots. For centuries, people have found themselves undocumented, illegalized, or unable to prove that they were in a place in accordance with the law.
This workshop aims to explore how workers were dragged from legality into illegality, and the other way around. Who found themselves in conditions of illegality and undocumentedness, when, how, and why? How could they get out? We invite scholars from all disciplines who engage the past to answer these questions. For example, they might study how the state of technological development informed ways of identification. They might analyze processes of illegalization that took place with or without State sanction. They might look into the underlying motivations or consequences of il/legalization, such as social exclusion, forced mobility, susceptibility to exploitation, vulnerability to policing, restricted access to the legal justice system, and many more.
The workshop explores processes of il/legalization and their relation to labor in a variety of historical contexts. The intention is to relativize the importance of international movements, passports, and borders; to complicate the claim that illegality is a recent phenomenon; and to shed light on the variety of political and social institutions involved in creating, upholding, condoning, or ignoring illegalization.
Themes include, but are not limited, to:
- Methods to think about illegality before 1930
- The relation between illegality and labor coercion / exploitation
- The impact of illegal workers on the larger working population
- The role of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality in the il/legalization of workers
- Illegal workers as consumers
- Local economies’ dependence on illegal workers
- Undocumented workers and citizenship / belonging
- Criminalization and punishment
- Illegal labor as a legacy of slavery
- Normativities in conceptualizing the il/legality of workers
Please submit a paper proposal of 250 words and a short bio to Viola Müller (viola.muller@wur.nl) and Paulo Cruz Terra (paulocruzterra@id.uff.br) by August 15, 2025. If included in the workshop, you will be asked to submit a short paper of ca. 3,000 words in advance.
Please reach out to the organizers if you have any questions.
Contact Information:
Viola Müller (Wageningen University, Netherlands)
Paulo Cruz Terra (Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil)
Contact Email: