Call for Abstracts (and papers) Article Collection: Eurasian Section of, Cogent Social Sciences<https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/oass20> Cogent Social Sciences is a new Open Access Series from Taylor and Francis (Routledge), discount and waivers are available and can be checked here https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/choose-open/publishing-open-access/requesting-an-apc-waiver/eligible-countries/#discounts Title: Informality in Eurasia: Between Moralities, Mobilities, and Everyday Governance Guest editors: Abel Polese, Gian Marco Moise, Binazirbonu Yusupova Deadline: July 31st, 2025 Email submissions to: Gianmarco.moise@dcu.ie Notification of Acceptance: Mid-August 2025 Instructions: Send an abstract (300 words) and 2-3 lines biography About the Collection This article collection explores how informal practices shape everyday life, governance, and morality in Eurasia and beyond. From borderland economies to urban survival strategies, we ask how informality functions not only as necessity but as political expression, ethical negotiation, and creative agency. We invite contributions that unpack the normative dissonance between official policies and lived realities, showcasing how individuals and communities navigate, adapt, resist—or reinvent—governance in the margins and interstices of state structures. Building on concepts like infrapolitics (Scott), moral economies, and non-compliance, we aim to foreground the agency and complexity of actors in informal spaces. Topics of Interest Papers may explore—but are not limited to—the following themes: * Everyday Practices: Informal work, taxation, smuggling, subsistence economies * Governance from Below: Neighbourhood politics, non-state authority, solidarity networks * Normative Dissonance: Contestation of legality, informal entrepreneurship, moral justifications * Mobility and Precarity: Migrant strategies, border regimes, gendered or racialized vulnerabilities * Ecologies and Resistance: Space appropriation, waste economies, environmental informality We welcome grounded, empirically rich case studies, particularly those based on long-term fieldwork, as well as comparative and multi-scalar approaches. Interdisciplinary perspectives are encouraged. Blurb Summary – Flavours of Informality Drawing from rich empirical case studies across Eurasia—from the Caucasus and Eastern Europe to Central Asia—Flavours of Informality explores how legality and illegality are not always opposites but often co-produce each other in everyday life. At its core, this collection investigates how informal practices emerge when state and individual moralities clash, diverge, or are renegotiated, especially in contexts shaped by migration, crisis, or transnational mobility. Rather than treating informality as marginal or transitional, the volume foregrounds it as a persistent, creative, and morally complex force. Authors examine how individuals and communities "cook and savour" informality in daily routines—whether in resistance, compliance, or adaptation to state structures—emphasizing what James Scott calls infrapolitics: mundane acts of negotiation that become politically meaningful over time. This special issue shifts the analytical gaze beyond binary distinctions of formal/informal or legal/illegal. It adopts a multiscalar lens—from individual survival tactics to global mobility regimes—demonstrating how informal practices shape labor, governance, identity, and belonging across borders. Key Contributions of the Volume 1. Empirical Depth – Each contribution is grounded in long-term, field-based research by authors with deep local knowledge. 2. Theory-Informed Analysis – Articles link on-the-ground practices with broader conceptual frameworks on (im)mobility, morality, and governance. 3. Multiscalar Perspective – The issue moves beyond state-centered analyses, considering how informality plays out across local, national, and transnational contexts. 4. Global Comparisons – By bringing Eurasian cases into dialogue with broader global debates, the volume contributes to comparative understandings of informality, resistance, and everyday political life. Conceptual Approach Informality is approached not simply as economic survival or illegality, but as a form of social creativity, moral reasoning, and political engagement. It operates both in spite of and beyond the state: resisting when the state fails or imposes alien norms, and filling gaps where no regulation exists. By challenging the idea that informal practices are inherently deviant or temporary, this collection invites a rethinking of state-society relations—suggesting that informality is often central to the way people imagine fairness, authority, and belonging in their everyday lives. Approach of the Article Collection Building on the earlier volume Governance Beyond the Law (Polese, Russo, Strazzari 2019), this collection expands the analysis of informality, illegality, and criminality as a continuum of governance practices. Rather than viewing these practices through simplistic legal/illegal or moral/immoral binaries, the project proposes to explore how they operate as alternative or subversive forms of governance, often coexisting with or challenging formal structures. The focus is on the positionality of actors: who engages in informality, under what conditions, and with what consequences? For instance, how do we distinguish between a migrant using informal routes to seek safety and a trafficker profiting from their vulnerability? Or between casual users of informal digital currencies and those laundering money? These questions challenge us to rethink moral responsibility and agency across the informal-legal spectrum. This approach invites a more inclusive understanding of governance—not just as the purview of formal institutions but as a network of overlapping agents, interests, and informal practices. It seeks to shift the debate from how governance ought to function to how it actually operates in real-life contexts, especially for those on the margins. Contributors are asked to provide empirically grounded research that confirms, complicates, or contests existing theories of informality. The goal is also to generate policy-relevant insights for better addressing the realities of informal, precarious, and vulnerable populations. Core Thematic Axes 1. Everyday Informality and Non-Compliance Investigates how people bypass or reinterpret state rules—through informal labor, tax evasion, smuggling, shadow economies, or illegal markets. It includes moral economies, invisible labor, and examines informality through gendered, racialized, and borderland lenses. 2. (In)formal Entrepreneurship and Solidarity Economies Explores how informal businesses operate across legal boundaries—like ethnic networks, politically protected ventures, or industries whose legality varies by location (e.g. marijuana, sex work). Attention is given to contextual definitions of legality and legitimacy. 3. Political Informality and Everyday Governance Looks at how power is negotiated and enacted beyond formal institutions—through neighborhood politics, mid-level actors, and ecological activism. It includes bottom-up, grassroots challenges to state authority and explores how citizens reclaim spaces for more humane, sustainable governance.