Date: 5 - 7 July 2022 Location: University of Lille, France Deadline for proposals: 2nd November 2021 Dear all, Please, submit your paper proposal to in join us in Lille in July 2022! The 16th AFSP Congress (Association Française de Science Politique, the French Association of Political Science) is scheduled to be held July 5-7, 2022 in Lille, North of France. We are organizing the thematic section 41 “Optimization Practices and Tax Policies”. If you are interested to participate, please, send us your work-in-progress in English or in French, before November, the 2nd. Here are the full information about the congress https://www.afsp.info/congres-lille-2022-aac-58-st/ <https://www.afsp.info/congres-lille-2022-aac-58-st/> Feel free to transmit this email! Best regards, Maïlys GANTOIS & Antoine VION 16th AFSP Congress Lille 5 - 7 July 2022 Thematic Section 41 Optimization practices and Tax policies Organizers: Dr. Maïlys GANTOIS (PhD in political science and in sociology CESSP/CRPS University Paris I - Panthéon Sorbonne) (mailys.gantois@malix.univ-paris1.fr <mailto:mailys.gantois@malix.univ-paris1.fr> / mailysgantois@yahoo.fr) Pr. Antoine VION (Professor in sociology CENS University of Nantes) (antoine.vion@univ-nantes.fr <mailto:antoine.vion@univ-nantes.fr>) This thematic section aims at bringing together scholars who investigate tax policies and/or tax optimization practices by firms and self-employed persons in their fieldwork in order to share results. Axis 1. Qualification and codification of tax optimization in firms The first axis will question the social making of fiscal lawfulness from historical enquiries on both the qualification and codification of optimization practices. From Katharina Pistor’s work (2019), contributors will highlight the evolution of tax practices by self-employed persons and industrial, commercial and financial business leaders for decades. Participants will also point how tax deductions have been negotiated and legalized (about certain assets, through tax loopholes and tax heavens, from European directive on parent company-subsidiaries, accounting rule evolution…). Moreover, communications can focus on how tax authorities control or contribute to leave in the shadow transnational optimization practices (through transfer pricing, optimization plans within holdings, tax avoidance schemes). In social sciences, scholars often studied what concerns legal standards (Liger-Belair 2018) from political and moral normativity on the social construction of tax inequalities (Spire 2012) or illegalisms (Lascoumes, Nagel 2014; Angeletti 2019). Here, the focus will concretely analyze qualification mechanisms and fights against company tax optimization before and after 2008. The goal is to confront a variety of studies to understand similarities and differences according to firm sizes, areas, countries and locations. Avoiding a priori judgments or homogeneity of employer interests (Offerlé 2021), this will allow to reinvestigate political domination forms. This will also permit to highlight a well studied phenomenon in other arenas dealing with the social transformation of political domination ways (Dudouet, Grémont 2010; France, Vauchez, 2017). Axe 2. Optimization and professional expertise The second axis will analyze the social construction of knowledge and practices about tax optimization in a variety of professional areas. The goal is to understand how some kind of professionals (audit firms, legal advisors, asset managers, business lawyers and so on) shape and transmit knowledge, practices and tricks of the job (Vion 2021) to play on legal rules. The goal is also to explain how professionals fight on this market by establishing new hierarchies and a kind of expertise, and so transform professional boundaries. Contributions on the genesis of these professions, quantitative approach and statistics, sociological, historical or ethnographical approach are welcome. Communication proposals (500 words maximum) will justify theoretical and methodological approach, sources and tools used for the fieldwork and analyzes. References ANGELETTI Thomas. 2019. The Differential Management of Financial Illegalisms: Assigning Responsibilities in the Libor Scandal. Law & Society Review, 53(4), 1233-1265. DUDOUET François-Xavier, GREMONT Eric. 2010. Les grands patrons en France. Du capitalisme d'Etat à la fianciarisation, Paris Lignes de repères. FRANCE Pierre, VAUCHEZ Antoine 2017. Sphère publique, intérêts privés: enquête sur un grand brouillage. Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. LASCOUMES Pierre, NAGELS Carla. 2018. Sociologie des élites délinquantes-2e éd.: De la criminalité en col blanc à la corruption politique. Armand Colin. LIGER-BELAIR Philippe (2018). Fabrique et subtilité de la norme de l’évitement de l’impôt chez les spécialistes de l’optimisation fiscale. Déviance et société, 42(2), 325-349. OFFERLE Michel (2021) Ce qu’un patron peut faire. Une sociologie politique des patronats, Gallimard, coll. Essais. PISTOR, Katharina. The code of capital. Princeton University Press, 2019. SPIRE Alexis (2012) Faibles et puissants face à l’impôt, Raisons d’agir, Paris VION Antoine (2021) « Identifying relevant patterns in a huge graph of open data. A semantic exploration of the Panama papers », Proceedings of the Graph Technologies in the Digital Humanities 2019 and 2020 Conferences, CEUR.ws.org <http://ceur.ws.org/> Key words: taxation, tax optimization, companies, professions, codification, consulting market