Law's new cartographies: spatialization, digital borders and spaces of vulnerability

Legal discussions over territoriality and its alleged opposite, extraterritoriality, routinely concern themselves with issues of jurisdiction, questions of applicable law and recurring contestations of forum. Such inquiries tend to arise out of instances where a nation state claims the validity of its norms beyond the confines of its jurisdiction or, for example, where plaintiffs allege liabilities of a public or private entity with its home in Country A for rights violations of populations in Country B. Meanwhile, numerous transnational spaces of vulnerability, exploitation and exclusion remain invisible on this radar. Focusing on “supply chain governance”, “modern slavery law” and “datafication” in the context of border surveillance this paper challenges existing territory-based concepts of legal-political sovereignty. It draws on transnational and postcolonial legal theory and critical cartography to offer a new approach to reappropriating and re-democratizing these spaces as ones of resistance and transformative advocacy.