Towards Scam Capitalism: The New Geographies of Globalized Cybercrime

Conference by Gabriel Fauveaud
Wednesday, March 11, 2026, from 11:45 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Room C-2059, Pavillon Lionel-Groulx, Université de Montréal and on Zoom

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Summary

Economic globalization is undergoing a paradoxical evolution. Alongside the return of state capitalism and the apparent contraction of free trade, the digital economy and its tools are fostering a form of underground economic globalization emerging from liminal spaces of globalization. Some cities in the Global South are becoming strategic hubs for anchoring and relaying new criminal practices with harmful effects on territories and populations. Drawing on the recent industrialization of the online scam economy in Southeast Asia, this conference will present the operating logics, organizational dynamics, and original spatialities of this new “scam capitalism.”

Biography

Gabriel Fauveaud is a geographer whose work examines the concurrent transformations of globalized capitalism and urban processes. He is particularly interested in the effects of financialization on the exacerbation of spatial inequalities. His current research focuses on the underground dynamics of urban production linked to the criminal economy.