February 18, 2026 | Noon to 1:00 pm ET
Jose Atiles (University of Illinois)
Islands of Exception examines the colonial foundations and legal design of offshore finance, arguing that offshore financial centers or tax havens are not peripheral distortions but central legal formations of global capitalism. Centering the Caribbean and Puerto Rico, the book manuscript examines how colonial legality, geopolitical subordination, and racialized governance have produced spaces of exception organized through a logic of inclusive exclusion. That is, jurisdictions that are formally embedded within legal and constitutional orders, yet selectively excluded from such legal regimes in ways that normalize secrecy, regulatory arbitrage, tax avoidance/evasion, and other forms of lack of democratic accountability.
Methodologically, the book manuscript combines historical legal analysis and sociolegal inquiry, drawing on archival research, policy analysis, and engagement with civil society actors across the Caribbean. Theoretically, it bridges Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) and Law and Political Economy (LPE) to develop two key concepts, the colonial state of exception and the corporate citizen, which together illuminate how colonial legal arrangements simultaneously constrain colonial populations while enabling the hyper-inclusion of corporations and financial elites.
Chapters 4 and 5, which will be the focus of this talk, examine contemporary transformations of the offshore world, including the incorporation of crypto-assets and blockchain technologies into existing secrecy regimes, as well as global tax governance initiatives such as the OECD’s Pillar Two and the proposed UN Tax Convention. These regulatory responses, the book manuscript argues, often reproduce colonial legal hierarchies and asymmetries under the language of global reforms.
Ultimately, Islands of Exception calls for an abolitionist approach to offshore finance and foregrounds Caribbean-based grassroots struggles that demand transparency, tax justice, and sovereignty.