Biography

KM Rakibul Islam is an accomplished interdisciplinary researcher, legal practitioner, and academic enrolled as a PhD candidate in Sociology of State, Law, and Justice at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. His ongoing doctoral research project investigates how legal frameworks, populist discourse, and governance practices shape South Asian agricultural migrant workers' experiences in Portugal's peripheral regions, examining legal exclusion, informal labor, and the dehumanization of vulnerable migrants. His research has been recognized through competitive selection for two prestigious Portuguese scholarships: the FCT Doctoral Scholarship (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia) and the Fundação Oriente Doctoral Scholarship, both awarded in 2025, underscoring his work's significance on migration governance and peripheral labor exploitation in Southern Europe. Islam's academic training spans Europe and South Asia. He holds an M.A. in Sociology of Law from Lund University, Sweden (thesis on Bangladeshi student migrants' survival tactics), an LL.M. in Constitutional Law and Human Rights from Umeå University, Sweden (thesis on gender discrimination in Bangladesh's employment), and dual law degrees (LL.B. and LL.M.) from University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, where he received the Dean's Award. Studies at the University of London and Stockholm University in International Environmental Law provide a decolonial, comparative framework. Professionally, he brings over a decade of experience as an educator and lawyer. He has served as Senior Lecturer of Law at Green University of Bangladesh since 2015 and taught as visiting faculty at Manarat International University and International Islamic University of Chittagong. Since 2014, he has worked as Advocate of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, representing marginalized clients in labor exploitation, constitutional rights, gender-based violence, and trafficking cases, positioning him as a scholar-practitioner embedded in theory and praxis. He has led several funded research projects. As Co-Principal Investigator for the 2025 BFSAI-funded "Reintegrating Dignity" initiative, he led research on Bangladeshi women returnee migrants from the UAE. As a PhD Student Fellow on "Beyond Borders Beneath Roofs" (2024), he explored racialized housing discrimination against South Asian migrants in Portugal. His current doctoral research employs ethnographic fieldwork, surveys, interviews, and critical discourse analysis, investigating systemic exclusion in Portugal's peripheral agricultural migration regime in Odemira and Almeirim. Islam has delivered presentations at conferences and universities in Bangladesh, Sweden, Portugal, and the United Kingdom on gender discrimination, refugee policy, the Rohingya crisis, returnee migrants, and AI in legal education. He peer reviews for Journal of International Migration and Integration (Springer) and has published in top-tier journals, including submissions to Gender, Work & Organization and Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Fluent in seven languages-Bangla, English (C2), Swedish (B2), Hindi (B2/C1), Urdu (C1/B1), Nepali, Assamese-he conducts multilingual, culturally sensitive fieldwork. His language skills and cross-cultural insight as a Global South researcher in European contexts uniquely equip him to engage underrepresented migrant communities in Portugal's rural peripheries through participatory, decolonial methodologies centering migrant voices as knowledge co-producers. Overall, Islam's trajectory exemplifies a synthesis of legal expertise, sociological theory, and community-engaged research contributing to debates on migration, human rights, and labor justice while influencing policy for protecting migrant communities. His FCT and Fundação Oriente scholarships, teaching experience, legal advocacy, multilingual capabilities, and decolonial commitment position him as an emerging scholar of promise in critical migration studies and sociology of law.