Save the Date: Crimmigration in an Age of Authoritarian Drift 

The Crimmigration Network CINETS and Border Criminologies invites submissions for its upcoming conference on the theme: “Crimmigration in an Age of Authoritarian Drift.” 

Leiden Law School, the Netherlands

In recent years, the fusion of criminal law and immigration enforcement—what scholars term “crimmigration”—has intensified globally amid rising authoritarianism and far-right populism. From the Trump administration’s family separation policies and sweeping executive immigration orders, to the hardline border regimes of Hungary, Italy, and Poland, migration has become a symbolic and material battleground for nationalist politics. In Western Europe, far-right parties have mainstreamed punitive migration policies, while in the Global South, states such as India, El Salvador, and Tunisia have deployed crimmigration logics to marginalize, criminalize, and control mobile populations. 

This conference explores how crimmigration functions as a tool of authoritarian governance and political legitimation, across both democratic and non-democratic regimes, in the Global North and South. We welcome interdisciplinary submissions that bring together legal, social scientific, and empirical perspectives, including but not limited to: migration and asylum law, criminal law, criminology, political science, international relations, socio-legal studies, and critical race/postcolonial theory. 

So make sure to save these dates (July 5-7, 2026) to come to the picturesque city of Leiden, and start thinking about paper/panel/roundtable proposals. 

Key Themes May Include: 

• Trump-era legacies: Family separation, criminal prosecution of asylum seekers, Title 42 expulsions, and the rise of enforcement-first immigration policy
• European rightward shift: Pushbacks at borders, expansion of detention, and externalization deals with North African states (e.g., Libya, Tunisia)
• Digital authoritarianism: Surveillance tech, algorithmic bias, and biometric tracking from the U.S. and EU to Kenya, India, and Bangladesh
• Penal border regimes: The carceral logic of deterrence in Australia’s offshore processing, UK’s Rwanda plan, and El Salvador’s mass detentions
• Colonial continuities: How race, empire, and settler-colonial logics structure modern crimmigration policies (e.g., Canada, Australia, Israel)
• Law and resistance: Role of courts, lawyers, and grassroots networks in resisting deportation regimes and border violence
• Comparative authoritarianism: How crimmigration regimes in hybrid and autocratic states (Turkey, Russia, Brazil) mirror or diverge from liberal models 

Further details on submission format, deadlines, and keynote speakers will follow shortly.  

For inquiries at this stage, please contact the CINETS network by sending an email to Prof. Maartje van der Woude (Leiden Law School, the Netherlands) via m.a.h.vanderwoude@law.leidenuniv.nl