Session at the III Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes Congress
Hosted by Manuela Camargo, Raquel Sirotti
Colonial and postcolonial infrastructures in Africa were informed by legal and labor regimes, while functioning as an active arena where legal norms were shaped, contested, and redefined through everyday interactions and power struggles. Factories, plantations, compounds, administrative offices, courts and prisons operated as sites of legal and social translation, where abstract norms were not only imposed, but also negotiated and challenged. Likewise, labor regimes were not merely dictated through legal prescriptions; but continually reshaped by the lived experiences of Africans and the socio-material environments in which they operated. This panel explores the entanglements of law, labor and architecture in Africa, considering both colonial histories and their postcolonial legacies. Rather than understanding law merely as a system of state-based rules – legislation, codes, and regulations – we seek to understand the role played by domestic and international legal frameworks in architectural spaces and how these spaces, in turn, shaped legal and labor dynamics. Moving beyond disciplinary isolation, entangling different fields and perspectives allows for a broader understanding of the interplay between discourses, techniques and actors participating in the organization and control of labor and space. By taking architecture and built environments as a medium through which law and labor are shaped, this panel seeks to open discussions on possibilities emerging from intersections between different fields and approaches. Is it possible to think about architecture and labor without thinking about law? How do spaces become legible to law, and how are workers not only rendered as legal subjects but also actively subvert and transform these spaces? We encourage novel and interdisciplinary contributions reading architecture, labor and law through one another and as entangled formations. In doing so, we aim to foster more comprehensive and multifaceted
considerations on the connections between the role of law and architecture in organizing colonial and postcolonial realities.
III Colonial and Post-Colonial Landscapes Congress
11–13 February 2026
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon