Call for Papers – 1st Annual Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change Conference ‘From Enforced Disappearance to Border Violence. New Directions in the Study of Necropolitics’
*Submission Deadline Friday 15 May 2026*
Conference to be held 7-9 September 2026 in Bilbao, Spain
Across the world, escalating border violence, enforced disappearances, systematic neglect, and state-sanctioned killing continue to shape the lived realities of millions. These intertwined forms of structural, political, and symbolic violence demand new analytical tools and collaborative responses capable of addressing their complexity.
Building on the growing body of scholarship on necropolitics, this conference seeks to examine how contemporary regimes of power decide who may live and who must die, how these decisions are legitimised, and how communities resist, remember, and seek justice in their aftermath.
The First International Conference ‘From Enforced Disappearance to Border Violence: New Directions in the Study of Necropolitics’ invites researchers, practitioners, and activists to come together in Bilbao to explore emerging approaches to the study of death, disappearance, and mass violence across global contexts. By convening scholars from sociology, anthropology, law, political science, history, forensic science, and critical theory, the meeting aims to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue capable of illuminating both the mechanisms of contemporary necropolitical governance and the diverse strategies of survival, resistance, and denunciation that challenge it.
Spearheaded by the ISA RC48 Network on Necropolitics and Mass Violence, the conference will serve as a space for intellectual exchange, methodological innovation, and international collaboration. Participants will engage with cutting-edge debates on state violence, borders and migration, structural abandonment, memory and justice movements, and decolonial and feminist perspectives on human rights.
We welcome contributions that push the boundaries of current scholarship, centre voices from the Global South, and advance transformative understandings of violence, accountability, and collective resilience. Submissions may be theoretical, empirical, or methodological in nature.
KEY THEMES
This conference invites contributions that examine the diverse ways necropolitics is produced, sustained,
and contested across global contexts. We particularly welcome papers engaging with (but not limited to) the following themes:
- Mass Death and Enforced Disappearance – analyses of mass graves, forensic interventions, contested identification processes, and struggles for recognition, dignity, and truth.
- Border Regimes and Migration – studies on deaths at militarised borders, detention infrastructures, pushback practices, and new technologies of mobility governance.
- Genocide and Authoritarian Violence – examinations of state-sponsored atrocities, repression, and the long-term political, social, and affective afterlives of mass violence.
- Neglect and Structural Violence – investigations into how marginalised communities are exposed to systemic abandonment, social disposability, and conditions of premature death.
- Resistance, Memory, and Justice Practices – research on survivor-led initiatives, memory activism, community-based justice efforts, and the role of social movements in challenging necropolitical regimes.
- Critical Theoretical Perspectives – contributions engaging decolonial, feminist, Indigenous, queer, anti-racist, and abolitionist critiques of human rights, transitional justice, and state violence.
Find more information and submit your proposal here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-eLE3o539bStNjEUjAT2CTk58Vf8n5jH/view