Resistance, Refusal, Survival: Contesting Hostile Environments
International Conference | 13–14 November 2025
Across the globe, states are embedding authoritarian practices into the very infrastructures that organize daily life. From border regimes and surveillance systems to exclusionary urban design, these “hostile environments” render some lives unlivable while securing the privileges of others. They inscribe racialized, gendered, and economic hierarchies into the material and symbolic order of contemporary societies.
Yet hostile environments also generate resistance. Beyond spectacular uprisings, marginalized communities develop everyday tactics of survival and refusal: occupying abandoned spaces in European cities, cultivating land through practices like Palestinian sumud, or experimenting with democratic autonomy in Rojava. Such practices contest hierarchies, create new forms of care and solidarity, and redefine the very meaning of resistance.
This conference brings together scholars to examine how domination, resistance, and survival intersect. We ask: how do oppressed groups navigate hostile conditions while opening spaces for transformative politics? How can these practices push us to rethink sovereignty, belonging, and resistance itself?
