Introduction to the volume

This introductory chapter frames Quaderni V as a collective editorial project designed to carve out a shared space for reflection, critique, and “conscious subversion” against the bureaucratic pressures of contemporary academia. Bringing together fourteen chapters by PhD candidates and early-career scholars, the volume showcases empirically grounded research that combines theoretical rigor with close attention to social and political contexts. Published entirely in English for the first time, the Issue aims to engage a broader international community while remaining attentive to the specificity of the cases explored, which span Italy, France, Europe, and transnational migratory settings. The editors highlight an internal blind peer-review process based on reciprocal reviewing among contributors, conceived as a horizontal practice of collective learning and responsibility. Substantively, the volume investigates “geometries of control” by tracing how power is distributed and legitimized through institutions, norms, bodies, and subjectivities, and by foregrounding fractures, counter-conducts, and practices of resistance across domains such as defense policy, migration governance, healthcare and trans care, mental health, sexual violence, education, media campaigns, rural labor, and sexual regulation.