We see a continuous line between informal and unrecorded practices all the way up to illegal and criminal ones

After all, what is legal in a state is not always illegal in another. And what is considered “moral” in an environment, is not necessarily moral everywhere, or elsewhere.

The border between the legal, the licit, the moral, the legit, the acceptable is fluid and dynamic. It is the result of a negotiation between an entity (often a state) and the people carrying out activities within and for that entity (often its citizens)

This endless effort, started very long ago and bringing together 3 editors and 26 authors, is (to my limited knowledge) one of the most comprehensive collection on the topic…18 chapters is a lot for a XXI century book…so much that we had to negotiate with the series to keep everyone in.

A huge thank you to Alessandra Russo who has patiently and meticolously managed the project from the beginning, dealing with all the authors, their moods and pluses and minuses of the production process at Palgrave Macmillan

A grateful thanks to the series editor Tim Shaw for his support over many years of work together, to Francesco Strazzari and to all the authors who devoted time and effort to the volume!

…The volume studies how the informal and the extra-legal unfold transnationally and, in particular, how and why they have been/are being progressively criminalized and integrated into the construction of global and local dangerhoods; how the above-mentioned phenomena are embedded into a post-liberal security order; and whether they shape new states of exception and generate moral panic whose ultimate function is regulatory, disciplinary and one of crafting practices of political ordering.