The Legal Pluralism Lab

The Legal Pluralism Lab is an online forum for debate and exchange among scholars and practitioners interested in legal pluralism hosted by the Commission on Legal Pluralism (CLP).

A platform to test new ideas, experiment with new formats of knowledge-sharing and learning and forge cross-regional and crossthematic networks and collaborations.

Connect with a CLP member to propose and convene sessions. Sessions should ideally bring together speakers from different regional and academic contexts, career stages, and professional background.

UPCOMING SESSION

LEGAL PLURALISM IN LIVED MIGRATION ORDERS

Roundtable

17 November 2025, 8:30 a.m. (CET)

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With: Sophie Andreetta (ULiége), Iker Barbero (University of the Basque Country), Ellen Desmet (Ghent University), Gulseren Kozak-Isik (Sciences Po), Kirsten McConnachie (University of East Anglia), Sophie Nakueira (University of Cape Town / University of Duisburg Essen) and Larissa Vetters (MPI for Social Anthropology)

This roundtable will explore how the empirical and doctrinal study of migration law and lived migration orders can benefit from an analytical perspective of legal pluralism. It aims to create a conversation between two strands of research: one focusing on how migrants navigate state and non-state legal systems to obtain access to justice and realize their rights, and one focusing on how state actors implement and develop (migration) law and how they take into account plural normative constellations in their interactions with migrants.

Contributions will cover a broad range of migration trajectories, experiences and encounters, questioning established paradigms and categorizations of migration law and aiming for an empirically-informed new conceptual vocabulary to speak to and intervene in current debates about migration governance. Audience participation and dialogue is welcomed.