The award-winning author of Undoing Border Imperialism, Dr. Harsha Walia, will be delivering one of three virtual keynote addresses at the upcoming Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies 24.5 Annual Student Research Symposium. Walia has been an activist and writer for over two decades, and her talk will explore how borders around the world consolidate imperial, capitalist, ruling class, and racist nationalist rule.

Photograph of Dr. Harsha Walia
Dr. Harsha Walia

Walia’s newest book, Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism, was released in February 2021. In this book Walia considers the current migrant and refugee crises within the context of borders that work across political, social, cultural, and economic systems. Bringing together discussions of how conquest, capitalist globalization, and climate change are displacing people worldwide, she maps the lucrative connections between state violence, capitalism, and right-wing nationalism around the world. 

Milner Library is committed to providing access to electronic resources that support scholarship, analysis of current events, and the thoughtful exchange of ideas. Both of Walia’s books, Undoing Border Imperialism and Border and Rule are available as e-books through the library. 

The ideas discussed in these books, and in particular those presented in Border and Rule, will form the basis for Dr. Walia’s upcoming lecture. In this lecture Walia will deliver an unflinching examination of migration as a pillar of global governance and gendered racial class formation. More information about her talk is available on the WGSS symposium website.

About Dr. Harsha Walia

Harsha Walia is the author of the new book, Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism. She is also the award-winning author of Undoing Border Imperialism, co-author of Never Home: Legislating Discrimination in Canadian Immigration as well as Red Women Rising: Indigenous Women Survivors in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. She has organized in migrant justice, anti-capitalist, feminist, abolitionist, and anti-imperialist movements for the past two decades.

Abolish Borders, Abolish ICE

Dr. Harsha Walia
7 p.m., Wednesday, April 14
Register here to receive the Zoom link 

WGSS 24.5 Annual Student Research Symposium
The symposium is sponsored by the Sage Trust, the Fell Trust, the Latin American and Latino Studies Program (LALS), Milner Library, and the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program (WGSS). The full program of events is available here