Carlo Inverardi-Ferri

The full-scale invasion and partial occupation of Ukraine by Russian forces in February 2022 onwards is a tragedy first and foremost for the people of Ukraine. The invasion illustrates the importance of intersecting and diverse interdisciplinary perspectives on territory, politics and governance within and beyond Ukraine and Russia. Our editorial initially addresses some of the more localised and nationalised consequences of the invasion. Thereafter, the focus shifts towards the realignment of extraterritorial flows of people, money and objects, including grain and oil. The territorialised of agency of states and non-state actors alike continues to vary revealing in turn opportunities for competitive or geopolitical advantage. Longer term, the mixed reactions to the Ukrainian crisis reveal both the potential for solidarity but also the difficulties in store for those seeking forms of climate and food justice.

This article investigates the relationship between overtime and corporate codes of conduct in the global electronics industry through a cultural political economy perspective. First, drawing on examples from China, it considers how the changing political economy of global production has contributed to the emergence of illicit overtime in the electronics industry. The article examines the endemic use of excessive working hours at the first-tier supplier level and explains it as a systemic method to sustain competitive accumulation in a sector characterized by tight production cycles. Second, the article analyzes the economic imaginary that supports the use of overtime and the accompanying mechanisms that institutionalize it as a material practice. It shows that the Responsible Business Alliance Code of Conduct plays a crucial role in reproducing illicit conditions. Conclusions explore the potential of reorienting geographic understandings of illicit practices within the mainstream economy.

As a major public health and socio-ecological crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic has raised significant challenges, arguably affecting the everyday life of most individuals on the planet. The pandemic has transformed social relationships within families, communities and nations, awakening a spirit of care and reciprocity as well as engendering new mechanisms of control and surveillance to confront the dialectic of life and death. This editorial introduces the special issue composed of nine articles that engage with themes related to the responses to the pandemic and reflects on the implications of Covid-19 for scholarly questions on the politics and governance of territorial processes.

This paper intervenes in debates on the illicit in economic geography, notably in the tensions between cultural and political economic approaches. First, it assesses critiques of political economic evaluations of the illicit. It then offers a 'trading zone', drawing upon both cultural and political economy and argues that the two economic epistemologies are complementary, not mutually exclusive. The paper instates political and ecological missing links in cultural political economy to foster multidimensional analyses of illicit practices in discursive, material and ecological registers. It concludes by discussing the broader implications of a cultural political economy of the illicit for economic geography.

Enclosure is a concept developed in Marxian political economy referring to the private appropriation of common resources under capitalism. Originally, the term defined the practice of fencing common lands into individual holdings that occurred in the Late Middle Ages in Europe. This process brought about the dispossession of peasants from their means of subsistence and contributed to the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Today, increasing numbers of scholars consider the enclosure of the commons as an ongoing process. Human geographers and other social scientists have analyzed different forms of enclosure that engender conflicting value practices and pertain to both human and nonhuman life. Examples include the privatization of public utilities and services (e.g., waste, water, and transportation systems), the appropriation of tangible and intangible resources (e.g., technologies and knowledge), the control of the human body, and the rendering for sale of living beings. This entry traces the history and different dimensions of the concept through the examination of iconic contributions in the field.

This paper investigates everyday mobilities through an account of the waste industry in Beijing. It suggests the analysis of livelihood strategies of waste traders as a productive domain of enquiry to foster our understanding of the connection between labour and mobility. Existing literature on China pays little attention to the everyday mobilities of marginal urban actors. Yet these practices tell an insightful story about the political , economic, and ecological transformations of the country. Through their analysis, this paper develops the idea of 'urban nomadism' as a tool to analyse practices that rework oppressive circumstances dictated by capital and produce new dimensions of living.

A source of political conflicts, recurrent scandals and considerable geopolitical problems, electronic waste (e-waste) is a central challenge for contemporary societies. Drawing on Polanyian economic geography, this article provides a comparative reading of the extended producer responsibility (EPR) scheme in China and France and shows that e-waste policy in China is not a replication of global north models, but rather a new hybrid outcome, where neoliberal tendencies are negotiated within the characteristics of a resilient state. In this way, it extends the variegated capitalism framework to the sphere of post-consumption.