The Anti-gender & Anti-migration Connection
A Nordic dialogue-based conference
April 15 2026
A Nordic dialogue-based conference 2026
15 april 2026
Venue: Mångkulturellt Centrum, Fittja, Stockholm
Date and time: April 15, 9:00-17:45 (Dinner from 18 hrs)
The conference has recieved funding from the Nordic Gender Fund.
The conference is designed as a one-day event with approximately 40–70 participants. It encompasses three modalities: academic paper sessions, interactive dialogue sessions/roundtables and artistic exchanges. Participants are encouraged to actively engage with each other, across the different sectors and thematic focus areas.
The conference is free of charge for presenters in any of the three modalities. Other attendees pay 200 SEK including coffee and lunch.
Keynote speakers: Elżbieta Korolczuk & Stella Nyanzi
Elżbieta Korolczuk
Researcher at Södertörn University and associate professor in sociology at University of Warsaw. Her work focuses on social movements, civil society, reproductive politics, and anti-gender mobilizations. Co-author of Anti-gender Politics in the Populist Moment with Agnieszka Graff (Routledge, 2022).
Stella Nyanzi
Gender scholar, medical anthropologist, poet, and human rights defender whose work focuses on the rights of women, young people, and LGBTI+ communities. She was suspended from her position at Makerere University in 2016 and was arrested in 2017 after criticizing Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on social media. Her recent publications include State-led homophobia threatens African academic freedom (2023), Troubling Anti-Gender Attacks: Transnational Activist and Academic Perspectives (2024), and Deception and Evidence for Queer Exodus from Uganda: Reflexive Autoethnography (2026).
Register here
Background and aim
Across the Nordic region and beyond, anti-gender and anti-migration mobilizations and politics are increasingly intertwined. Campaigns against feminism, trans- and LGBTQ+ rights, and sexuality education are often articulated alongside exclusionary migration politics, racialized boundary-making, and appeals to religion, nation, and “family values.” These mobilizations unfold in a Nordic context shaped by homonationalism, femonationalism, and narratives of Nordic exceptionalism, where claims to gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights are sometimes mobilized to legitimize racialized exclusion.
This conference seeks to bring together researchers, activists, civil society organisations and religious actors to explore how anti-gender and anti-migration politics intersect, what consequences they produce, and which shared strategies of resistance are possible. Rather than siloed discussions, the conference emphasizes dialogue across different fields of knowledge and practice. Various kinds of participation are envisioned, including presentation of academic papers, artistic interventions and the sharing of organizational, activist and personal experiences during interactive sessions.
Conference Programme
8.30 Cofee/tea
9.00 Keynote: Elżbieta Korolczuk
9.45 Panel 1:
Anti-gender meets anti-Muslim racism in the humorous visual cultures of the Scandinavian far-right Maja Brandt Andreasen, University of Stavanger
Risky reading: envisioning the child in conflicts around LGBTQ+ children’s literature and reading Emil Edenborg, Fanny Ambjörnsson, Elin Bengtsson Stockholm University
Battles over gender, race and biological determinism in 1990s Sweden Annika Berg, Stockholm University
Digital Populism as Affective Infrastructure: Anti-Gender and Anti-Migration Convergence Beyond the Turkish Case Liv Izgi, Södertörn University
11.15 Cofee/tea
11.30 Roundtable/interactive session
a. Global outlook (with Eva Zillén and Charlotte dos Santos Pruth, Kvinna till kvinna)
b. Anti-gender rhetorics in the Nordics (with Christine Marie Jentoft-Teigland, Dodo Karsay, Nico Miskow Friborg)
12.30 LUNCH
13.15 Keynote: Stella Nyanzi
13.45 Cofee/tea
14.00 Roundtable/interactive session
a. Faith-based capacitation (with Charlene Van Der Walt, Johanna Lilja, Act Church of Sweden)
b. Intersectional feminist solidarity & alliance building (with Carolina Poggio, Seinab Hilowle, Aron Lindblom m.fl. RFSU)
15.00 Panel 2
Discourses on women’s fertility & child-bearing Sarah Bodelson, Lund University & Malmö University
Family separation & reproductive racism in Sweden
Ethnonationalist demographic anxiety: Femonationalism and Anti-Gender as Dual Sexual Politics Toward ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ — Insights from Sweden Soheyla Yazdanpanah, Södertörn University
Care as control: Affective Discourse as Legitimation in the Restrictive Turn in Swedish Migration Policy Magdalena Domeradzka SWPS University, Warsaw
16.30 “To be and to become: Crafting a Plural Kinship along tradition”
Fadhel Mourali. Presentation of art intervention
16.50 Break
17.00 Closing reflections
18.00 Dinner
All day: From Pater Familias, “Hemma är wherever me da la regalada gana” and the Myth of the good immigrant.
feat. La Dekoloniala! en Gozaderas*
More details will be added and minor changes regarding order and presenters may occur.
More information
Organizing Committee
Åsa Eriksson
Researcher at Mångkulturellt centrum. She is also co-editor of the recent anthology Striden om genus - politik, vetenskap & social kamp, which explores anti-gender politics and broader resistance to gender with examples from Sweden and other contexts.
Maria Brock
Researcher at Södertörn University whose work focuses on gender and sexuality, digital media, and questions of nationhood, culture, and representation.
Ramona Dima
Senior Lecturer at Södertörn University and researcher in queer and gender studies, with a focus on sexuality and migration, LGBTQ+ activism, and anti-gender politics in Europe.
Jenny Gunnarsson Payne
Professor at Södertörn University whose research engages feminist movements, culture, media, and social change.
Elżbieta Korolczuk
Researcher at Södertörn University and associate professor in sociology at University of Warsaw. Her work focuses on social movements, civil society, reproductive politics, and anti-gender mobilizations. Co-author of Anti-gender Politics in the Populist Moment with Agnieszka Graff (Routledge, 2022).
René León Rosales
Researcher at Mångkulturellt centrum whose work examines racism, segregation, identity, and social justice in contemporary society.
Edda Manga
Historian of ideas and Head of research at the Multicultural Centre. Her work focuses on coloniality, racism, democracy, and the political imaginaries of modernity.
Diana Mulinari
Professor of Gender Studies at Lund University, with longstanding expertise in racism, migration, intersectionality, and struggles for gender justice.
Maja Sager
Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies at Lund University. Her research centres on migration, citizenship, asylum, and global inequalities from an intersectional feminist perspective.
Claudia Tazreiter
Professor at REMESO, Linköping University, Campus Norrköping. Her research focuses on migration, displacement, refugees, and social justice in transnational perspective.
Kirill Polkov
Postdoctoral researcher at Södertörn University whose work focuses on LGBTQ migration and the intersections of sexuality, politics, and belonging.
Practical information
Read more about language, sponsorship and accessibility below. More practcal information will be available as the conference approaches.
Language
The main language for the conference is English. If an intervention is made in another language, we do our best to accommodate interpretation to English.
Sponsorship
The conference offers the possibility of sponsoring transportation and/or accommodation costs for a limited number of activists or artists who may not otherwise be able to participate. Please indicate when submitting your proposal if you would want to apply for this support. (Deadline has passed)
Accessibility
Below is a brief summary of accessibility provisions at MKC. Please indicate when submitting your proposal if you have any additional requests.
- Free parking. Visitor parking with spaces reserved for holders of parking permits for people with disabilities is available in the courtyard. Please note! Temporary parking permits will be filled out on site.
The conference will take place in the main building of MKC. Here you will find:
- Electronic door openers at the entrances and contrast markings on the doors.
- A lift and a toilet spacious enough for electric wheelchairs.
- Tactile signs at the toilets.
- A hearing loop in the auditorium.
- There is a loud evacuation alarm.
- Pets, except for guide dogs, are not allowed indoors.
For any additional questions, please contact tatiana.vega@mkcentrum.se