Queer, Feminist & Migrant Ecologies
I’m organizing a new working group! Our meetings will be hybrid so please be in touch if you or a colleague are interested in joining us!
For more about the goals of the collaboration:
This working group explores the philosophical, historical, and political dimensions of environmental issues through the lenses of gender, sexuality, and citizenship. Situated at the intersection of queer theory, feminist studies, and critical migrant studies, it examines how dominant environmental frameworks reproduce normative assumptions about nature, belonging, reproduction, and the nation-state. By foregrounding the experiences and intellectual contributions of women, migrants, and LGBTQ communities, the group seeks to expand the conceptual and political horizons of environmental thought.
Mainstream environmental discourse often relies on binary logics—nature/culture, human/nonhuman, native/invasive—that mirror and sustain heteronormative, patriarchal, and nationalist structures. Conservation practices, border regimes, and climate governance frequently presume stable populations, fixed territories, and biologically reproductive futures, sidelining queer lives, migrant precarity, and alternative forms of kinship and care. This working group critically interrogates these assumptions and considers how environmental politics might be reimagined through queer, feminist, and migrant perspectives.
Participants will engage a set of guiding questions: How do transnational feminist environmental analyses reveal the entanglement of ecological degradation with colonial histories, racial capitalism, and gendered labor regimes? In what ways do conservation projects reinforce or unsettle exclusionary notions of citizenship and belonging? What forms of ecological solidarity emerge when borders are understood as fluid, contextual, and ecological rather than fixed and national? What might environmental ethics look like if grounded in queer kinship networks, migrant mobilities, and feminist practices of care? And how can these perspectives help reimagine multispecies relations and human responsibilities to non-human animals within shared environments?
By bringing together scholars and practitioners across disciplines, this working group cultivates a collaborative space for rethinking ecology beyond heteronormative, nationalist, and patriarchal paradigms. It aims not only to critique dominant models but also to articulate transformative approaches to environmentalism rooted in queer, feminist, and migrant ecologies.
