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This one-day workshop, Borders in Motion: Critical Conversations on Race, Migration and Intersectionality, brings together researchers and practitioners to examine how intersecting categories such as race, gender, and class shape border politics. We explore borders not only as state boundaries but also as social, economic, and technological infrastructures that affect people's everyday lives. They shape our sense of belonging, our freedom to move across spaces, among other things. In today's world of overlapping crises—ranging from war and displacement to climate change and economic inequality—borders are crucial sites of tension, surveillance, and violence. Yet, simultaneously, they are also spaces of agency, resistance, and solidarity. We invite you to think with us about the role that borders have played and will play in the fast-changing world around us.
The workshop will feature four thematic panels:
- Borders in times of polycrisis
Examining how borders shift and change in response to overlapping global challenges, from conflict to climate change. - Capital, labour, and borders
Examining how border regimes intersect with the political economy of border governance. - Lived experiences of migration
Sharing lived accounts of displacement, belonging and everyday struggles at the border. - Gendered and racialised bodies at the border
Examining how borders mark and regulate bodies differently along intersecting gendered and racialised categories.
The workshop will conclude with a screening of DISTERRA, a documentary on the lives of Afghan migrants in Paris, followed by discussion with the filmmakers.
Event schedule
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9:00 – 9:30 AM |
Breakfast and welcome |
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9:30 – 11:00 AM |
Panel 1: Borders in times of polycrisis
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The Policy Architecture of Transnational Gentrification: Migration, Urban Regimes, and the Relative Privilege of Digital Nomads Alberto Estrada, Erasmus University of Rotterdam |
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Carceral Bordering and the Everyday Reproduction of Insecurity: Post-Coup Myanmar Migrants in Mae Sot, Thailand Tin Maung Htwe, Chiang Mai University |
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Understanding Border Dynamics in the Global South: A Case Study of the Indonesia–Papua New Guinea Border Johni R.V. Korwa, University of Southampton |
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Border gaps: linking social and environmental impacts of borders at the global scale Nabeela Ahmed, University of Sheffield |
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11:00 – 11:10 AM |
Coffee break |
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11:10 – 12:40 PM |
Panel 2: Capital, labour, and borders
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Immigration controls, capital accumulation, and racialised labour in the U.K. Lucy Gehring, King’s College London |
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‘Refugees Are Human Too’: On the Economy of Humanisation Moé Suzuki, London School of Economics and Political Science |
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Remittances as Resistance: Black Feminist Economies, Decolonial Practices, and the Migration Trajectories of Black Migrant Women Tamunodein Princewill, Loughborough University |
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Beyond the catch: exploring the gendered and migrant fish-processing workforce in North East Scotland Heather Gray, University of East Anglia |
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Asylum Contingency Hotels, Privatisation, and new Frontiers of Capital Accumulation Charlotte Sanders, SOAS University of London |
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12:40 – 1:30 PM |
Lunch break |
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1:30 – 3:00 PM |
Panel 3: Lived experiences of migration
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The Intersectional Experiences of International Students Displaced by the War in Ukraine Ezenwa Olumba, Royal Holloway, University of London |
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Postcolonial Hyphenations and Intersectional Lives: the complexities in Pakistani-Hindus migrants’ belonging in India Arunima Shandilya, University of Sussex |
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Afterlives of Decolonisation: The Racialisation of West and Central African Migrants in Contemporary Algeria Kheira Arrouche, University College Cork |
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Lived experiences of systemic racism in UK asylum policy: Criminalisation and externalisation Ben Whitham, Refugee Action and SOAS University of London |
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3:00 – 3:10 PM |
Coffee break |
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3:10 – 4:40 PM |
Panel 4: Gendered and racialised bodies at the border
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Queer Bodies at Borders Christoffer Koch Andersen, University of Cambridge |
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Sexually Well While Seeking Safety: Understanding sexual wellbeing across migration trajectories of LGBTIQ+ people from Indonesia to United Kingdom, Australia, & within Southeast Asia Satrio Nindyo Istiko, Bradford Institute for Health Research |
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Excluded Masculinities: A Critical Legal Analysis of the Racialised Construction of Migrant Men in European Case Law through an Intersectional Lens Sophie Bols, Ghent University |
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Deviant deaths: researching irregular migrant deaths at the border Myriam Fotou, University of Leicester |
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4:40 – 4:50 PM |
Coffee break |
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4:50 – 5:20 PM |
Film Screening |
DISTERRA ‘Terrains of Disappearance’ in the lives of homeless Afghani migrants in Paris (thirty-minute documentary) Orson Nava, Ravensbourne University and Nichola Khan, University of Edinburgh |
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At this event
Lecturer in International Relations
Event details
Dockrill Room (KIN 628)King's Building
Strand Campus, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS