Current Call For Papers
The Cost of Living Under Capitalism: Crisis and Inequality in Everyday Life
Conference + Special Issue Call For Papers
JUNE 8–10, 2027 | POMPEU FABRA UNIVERSITY, BARCELONA, SPAIN
The cost-of-living crisis is not simply a temporary inflationary shock but the product of longer-term transformations in housing, labour markets, welfare states, finance and systems of social reproduction. While rising living costs have intensified economic insecurity, its effects are unevenly distributed across class, race, gender, age, citizenship, disability and geography. Widening inequality has fuelled renewed debates about work, social policy, democracy and economic organization, while contributing to political polarization and the growth of populist and far-right movements. These developments are inseparable from a broader context of war, militarization and geopolitical rivalry, whose economic costs are often borne most heavily by working-class and marginalized populations.
This conference invites researchers and activists to examine the causes, consequences and contestations surrounding the contemporary cost-of-living crisis. Rather than treating current hardships as a temporary disruption, we encourage contributors to situate them within broader processes of capitalist restructuring, including financialization, austerity, labour market transformation, privatization, commodity speculation and the concentration of wealth and corporate power. At the same time, the crisis has generated new forms of resistance, organizing and political mobilization, prompting critical reflection on alternative economic and social futures.
Alternate Routes invites submissions that deepen our understanding of the relationship between the cost-of-living crisis and entrenched inequalities, while exploring collective responses, policy alternatives and transformative visions of social and economic justice. We are particularly interested in how these dynamics are experienced and contested in everyday life: in the arithmetic of rent, bills and groceries; in the pressures of debt, precarious work and unpaid care; and in the solidarities, struggles and alternatives that emerge in response to mounting insecurity. We also ask how these conditions are being politicized: how progressive movements are translating demands for housing, food, energy and economic security into political action, and how the far right is seeking to channel the same grievances toward exclusionary, nationalist and authoritarian ends. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Housing rent and displacement
- Work, wages and precarity
- Inequality, exclusion and social stratification
- Care work, social reproduction and families
- Social policy, austerity and welfare states
- Finance, inflation and capitalist restructuring
- Climate, environmental and energy justice
- Labour organizing, social movements and collective resistance
- Democracy, governance and political contestation
- War, colonialism and dispossession
Organizing Committee: Clara Serra, BAU College of Arts and Design of Barcelona; Carlo Fanelli, York University; Salvatore Prinzi, National Research Council of Italy; Heather Whiteside, University of Waterloo
To submit your proposal, click HERE. A selection of articles will be considered for publication. Conference Registration Fees: Permanent Researchers $300(CAD); Contract Faculty and Graduate Students: $200(CAD). Inquiries can be sent to: editor@alternateroutes.ca.The DEADLINE for conference submissions is December 31, 2026.
