Gender Matters: Harsha Walia | Abolish Borders

Join Harsha Walia on October 28 at the Department of Gender Studies, Queen's University. This talk will situate the current horrors of immigration violence—including ICE raids in the US and the mass deportation machinery being built up in Canada —within an internationalist and abolitionist politics, with a transnational and global analysis of migration, gendered displacement, racial capitalism, settler colonialism, and rising fascism. Walia will emphasize the urgent necessity of abolishing border imperialism through transnational solidarities. Harsha Walia (she/her) is a Panjabi Sikh organizer, writer and parent living on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ lands, Canada. She has been involved in migrant justice, feminist, abolitionist, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist movements for over two decades, including No One Is Illegal, Defenders of the Land, Boycott Israeli Apartheid Campaign, MMIWG2S+ Memorial March Committee, Radical Desis, Downtown Eastside Housing Justice Coalition, Weaving Our Worlds and more. Walia is the award-winning author of Undoing Border Imperialism and Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism. She is also the co-author of many community-engaged works, such as "Never Home: Legislating Discrimination in Canadian Immigration," "Red Women Rising: Indigenous Women Survivors in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside," and “Colour of Violence: Race, Gender & Anti-Violence Services,” and is also the co-creator of the short film “Survival, Strength, Sisterhood: Power of Women in the Downtown Eastside.” In her day job, Walia has worked in the anti-violence non-profit sector for over twenty years, currently serving as Director of Program Support at Health Justice.