Container ports as local-global legal actors: a comparative socio-legal analysis of five of the largest container ports in the world at the time of pandemic, climatic, and social challenges.

Globalized trade depends on the possibilities for companies, people and countries to be connect with each other and constantly exchange goods. In 2019, 811 million Tons Equivalent Units of containers were handled in ports worldwide. This represented a global growth of 2 per cent compared to the previous year, confirming the expansionist trend of the last two decades. Container ports are essential knots of the global economy and have been the object of academic studies from different perspectives (global value chain management, technological innovation, business development, tax law). What is often forgotten, is that container ports not only forge global connections, but also local and material connections with urban spaces, sites of production, land use, air quality, workers' lives, etc. Moving from shore to land, this proposal departs from existing legal literature on container ports as global actors and casts light on container ports as local-global socio-legal constructions with a significant local and global impact. Through a combination of desk-based research and the empirical study of five of the largest ports in the world (Shanghai, Antwerp, Buenaventura, Tanger and Los Angeles), the research will generate a unique qualitative and quantitative understanding of the ports as complex socio-legal spaces whose governance structure, regulatory frameworks, sustainability commitments and political processes may have significant implications on multiple localities.

Keywords:ENVIRONMENT, PORT CITIES, HUMAN RIGHTS, LOGISTICS

Disciplines:Comparative law, International trade law, Legal theory, jurisprudence and legal interpretation, Social law, Sociology of law

Project type:Collaboration project