B/ordering the Global: Transnational Feminist Critiques from Asia

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Jan 21

Written By NYSEAN

International Conference | July 9–11, 2026 | Ewha Womans University (Hybrid: In-person & Online)

Organized by the Asian Center for Women’s Studies

Borders are not merely geographical boundaries of nation-states, but critical sites where hierarchies of race, gender, sexuality, class, ability, nationality, religion, and citizenship are produced and governed across global and local scales. Bordering is simultaneously an act of ordering: a set of classificatory and regulatory practices that determine whose mobility and settlement, whose labor and care, whose reproduction and health, and whose survival and futures are recognized as legitimate, desirable, or disposable.

Amid ongoing wars, accelerating climate crisis, the rise of right-wing politics and feminist backlash, and the emergence of AI technologies that operate upon—and through—existing structures of inequality and discrimination, border regimes are being reconfigured in fundamental ways. These conditions reshape how social hierarchies are enacted and intensified through borders, raising urgent questions about whether AI-driven transformations reinforce exclusionary logics, generate new modalities of control, or open ambivalent possibilities for resistance and contestation.

Borders operate not only spatially but also temporally, shaping uneven life chances by governing whose lives are imagined as sustainable, productive, and healthy, and whose lives are rendered exhaustible and disposable. This conference examines the ecological, social, and political inequalities produced through such border/ordering regimes, with particular attention to their implications for mobility and immobility, citizenship and exclusion, care infrastructures, reproduction, illness and disability, intimacy, and bodily autonomy. In doing so, it advances decolonial and transnational feminist critiques of dominant frameworks of security, belonging, and protection.

Rather than approaching Asia primarily as a site for theory application or as a collection of comparative cases, this conference positions Asia as a generative ground for feminist critique that unsettles the universalizing assumptions of border studies itself. Examining borders from and within Asia entails tracing how gendered and racialized bordering practices are shaped by intersecting historical formations—including colonialism, militarism, Cold War divisions, developmentalism, and neoliberal restructuring—and attending to forms of power and resistance that remain obscured within dominant frameworks of the nation-state, citizenship, and sovereignty. By centering research on and from Asia, the conference seeks not to assert Asian exceptionalism, but to demonstrate how diverse geopolitical and historical contexts transform our understanding of bordering as a global process.

We invite scholars, researchers, activists, and practitioners to propose panel-based contributions that critically examine the gendered, racialized, and embodied dimensions of border regimes; the politics of mobility, immobility, and waiting; and the organization of labor, care, and reproduction across borders, including the affective, technological, and algorithmic infrastructures that govern life, health, and futurity. We particularly welcome work that rethinks migration, citizenship, and world-making through attention to human and more-than-human mobilities, drawing on queer and trans studies, critical disability studies, and critical ecofeminist perspectives to reimagine borders and movement beyond human-centered and state-centered paradigms. We also encourage contributions that explore alternative feminist imaginaries of care, survival, solidarity, and collective futures under conditions of intensified bordering.

This conference is convened as part of the Asian Center for Women’s Studies (ACWS) research initiative, “Race and Gender: Global Korea, Neo-Racialization and Intersectionality.” Since 2021, the project has explored the intersectional dynamics of neo-racialization and gender in South Korea and across broader transnational contexts. The conference offers an opportunity to reflect on the project’s major insights and contributions to date, and to collectively consider future directions for feminist scholarship in and beyond Asia.

Possible Topics Include (but are not limited to):

Border Regimes and the Politics of Movement
Labor, Care, and Reproduction Across Borders
Citizenship, Belonging, and Legal Subjectivities
Technologies of Bordering and Surveillance
Bodies, Health, and Futures
Cultures, Affects, and Representations
Feminist Futures and Alternative Imaginaries

Panel Proposals

The conference accepts panel proposals only. Individual paper submissions will not be considered.

Each panel should consist of 3–4 papers and include:

Panel title and a panel abstract (300–400 words) outlining the panel’s intellectual rationale, shared questions, and collective contribution.
3–4 individual paper titles and paper abstracts (each 250–300 words).
Names, affiliations, and contact information of all participants.
(Optional) A proposed chair or discussant.

Panels that bring together participants across institutions, disciplines, regions, or career stages are especially encouraged.

Timeline