The network will explore the following starter questions. These questions are ‘living’, evolving and co-created.
1. In contexts where being ‘othered’ (e.g. through gender, race, nationality, religion, as LGBTQI, as poor, as non-working, as migrant/ refugee) and made to be ‘out of place’, is becoming an increasingly dominant political strategy (in the UK, the US, in Turkey, in Brazil, etc.): What embodied strategies are intersectional feminists using to resist? How are feminists and activist re-appropriating and re-signifying spaces and/ or creating alternative spaces and practices and ways of living?
In other words: Spaces can feel very unsafe and hostile to us, as women, as people identifying as LGBTQI, as people of colour, as people with disabilities or as people crossing borders and seeking refuge. How do we cope? Can we change these spaces to make them feel safer? Can we use spaces differently or create new spaces that feel safe for us?
2. How can activist/ academic groups at very different intersections of ‘otherness’ and in different geographical contexts connect and learn from one another?
In other words: We all have very different experiences of feeling unsafe or unwelcome in spaces – but can we learn from one another’s experiences? Can we share practices that work for us or plans and strategies to make spaces feel safer?
3. Given that the global mobility of people and ideas is so structured and restricted by dominant relations of power (borders, securitization, the digital divide, neoliberal/ neo-colonial circuits of policy, aid and research funding!) what channels and methods are there for other, mutually beneficial global solidarities?
In other words: The spread of ideas around the world is dominated by the interests of the powerful – creating walls and strengthening borders, making profit and exploiting workers, seeking to re-colonise other countries and peoples and damage environments. Can we spread ideas around the world in ways that help the women and girls everywhere live safer lives? How might we do that?
4. Is there anything that we have missed here?
Feminist Spaces 