Short Abstract

How is law mobilised beyond its intended purposes? This workshop explores strategic, improvised and contested uses of legal forms, procedures and institutions, asking how they move people, redistribute power, and produce affects, materialities and political effects.

Long Abstract

Law is not only applied according to its stated purposes. People mobilise legal categories, procedures, documents and institutions in ways that may exceed, redirect or transform what law was designed to do. Building on the idea of “off-label” uses of law, this workshop invites ethnographic and interdisciplinary work on such practices of legal mobilisation.

We are interested in how people use law strategically in disputes, relationships and struggles over resources, recognition and authority: from criminal complaints and protective legislation to strategic litigation, administrative procedures, documentation, evidence-making, mediation or regulatory mechanisms. Rather than treating such practices simply as abuse, misuse or legal failure, we ask what they reveal about the social life of law and about the ways legal infrastructures become resources for action.

The workshop foregrounds the conference themes of affects, materialities and politics. Legal mobilisations can generate fear, hope, anger, anticipation or distrust; they depend on material forms such as files, documents, bodies, technologies and institutional infrastructures; and they redistribute or contest power. We particularly welcome contributions examining how the legitimacy, credibility and effects of legal claims are produced and contested, including cases in which actors describe legal actions as fabricated, strategic or “fake.”