Container ports as local-global legal actors

The present proposal recognizes that container ports play a central and unique role in the construction of the world economy and plans to generate original and ground-breaking knowledge that can help understanding (and potentially addressing) the main socio-environmental challenges that they face and they create. The hypothesis that animates this research is that container ports are complex socio-legal spaces whose boundaries are not defined by their gates and fences but rather by the multiplicity of local and transnational interactions that take place on a daily basis. Ports are not only gated hubs for seaborne trade, they have life in their own that depends on their global character but is closely linked to the space where they are located. They are spaces of governance, special economic zones, points of attraction for international investments, stocking sites for hazardous materials, theatres for a variety of labour relations, for workers’ organization and repression, neighbours that pollute and release waste, hubs for illegal trafficking of goods and people, spaces of public and private violence and opportunity for economic growth and prosperity (Jenss 2020). Thus, only a socio-legal analysis of the multi-territorial and multi-legal nature of ports can provide us with a clear understanding of the challenges that they are facing, the problems that they are creating, the impact that they are having, the way in which power is exercised and value produced and distributed.