Abolitionist Futures Digest: March 26
A selection of recent and forthcoming resources. Want to bring one to our attention? Drop us a line on social media or by e-mail.
Events
Love, creativity and abolition in and beyond academia
Date: 13 – 14 March, 26 (In person and online)
SG1, Alison Richard Building, 7 West Rd, Cambridge CB3 9DP
Join artists, academics and activists to explore portals to collective liberation through love politics, visionary storytelling and cultural worldbuilding across community and academia.
This two-day gathering will explore the radical yet fraught relationship of love as a creative politically-engaged practice, with the revitalised turn to abolition in the wake of contemporary social and student freedom movements.
Abolitionist organising and teaching is more than resisting the unworlding of the world under racialised capitalist systemic oppression; it is a creative collective experiment of lovingly making Just Worlds we all want to live in.
Sign up here: https://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/48045/
How migrants are reimagining human rights - and why it matters
Migrant activism is key in today’s world, where countries in the Global North employ border regimes to reinforce racial hierarchies, limit freedom of movement, and exploit migrant labour. But how do migrant-led movements engage with human rights - do they see them as limited tools, or as frameworks that can be reimagined in the fight for border justice?
The recently published “Migration and Mobile Rights” shows that migrants elaborate mobile rights—concepts of rights beyond legal notions and state sovereignty, which underpin the international human rights system. These concepts include, for example, unrestricted freedom of movement, the right to stay and the opposition to all deportations.
Drawing on rich ethnographic research in Berlin, the book offers a fresh and provocative perspective on the intersections of migrant activism, human rights, and racial and border justice. It argues that human rights from below are abolitionist as they challenge to the core the mechanisms of oppression and differential inclusion that borders reproduce.
To know more about the book, please attend the book event scheduled on 20th March at 6:30 pm at Housmans bookshop. If you can attend, please sign up here:https://www.easy-rsvp.com/G3uqJ0-book-launch-migration-and-mobile-rights
✨Reading and Practising Abolition✨
Join us for this pilot project on creative methods and abolitionist scholarship in collaboration with the Centre for Communities and Social Justice (University of Greenwich).
The project consists of three in-person reading group sessions (one was last month) at the University of Greenwich. You are welcome to attend either one, or both of the remaining sessions. In each session, we will discuss short abolitionist texts and engage with creative activities such as mapping, drawing and collage making. No prior knowledge of abolitionist theory or artistic skills is required.
Open School, Brussels
Date: Sat 21/03
Location: Care Club Open School @ Literair Salon S1, Brussels, Be
PROGRAMME - Open School
How do we take care of each other in a world that often fails to care for us? The Open School is a collective learning space where we dive deep into care, conflict, and repair. This a place for practice, reflection, and concrete tools.
Free entrance - mandatory registration
Here is what's on the programme:
12:00 – 14:30 | Feminist Reading Session: We Take Care of Us (FR/ENG/NL) • Includes lunch for participants
15:30 – 17:30 | Workshop: Navigating Community & Repair (NL) • Includes dessert for participants
https://muntpunt.be/careclub - EN
Call for Papers
Call for papers: Practicing Abolition
In what ways do we practice abolition, and how can we establish an abolitionist practice?
Abolition is often positioned as an abstract or theoretical project, one that can feel difficult to engage with outside of specialised academic or activist spaces. Yet the possibility of abolition exists in the actions of individuals and in the collaborations forged within communities. It is implicated in everyday life, made practical through daily practices, observations, embodied actions, and conversations that work to break down, refuse, or move against systems of oppression. This commitment is evidenced time and again, notably and recently in the inimitable call to action from Mariame Kaba: “We do this ’til we free us.” We welcome papers, essays, prose, art and research in any field engaging with abolition practices.
We welcome submissions from researchers, academics, educators, artists, activists, and anyone engaged in practices aimed at dismantling archaic institutions that brutalise and do not serve us.
Proposals not to exceed 300 words. Final pieces not to exceed 5000 words (including references)
Proposal submission by June 15th, 2026 to: Abolitionistnotabookclub@gmail.com
Coming Soon
2026 Abolitionist Futures Reading Group Returns.
We are currently at the planning stage for the 2026 Reading Group. Details and dates will be announced (hopefully) in next month's digest.
Unsafe: The Carceral Roots of the Anti-Trans Backlash by Sarah Lamble.
The twenty-first century “gender wars” have been driven by a powerful and seductive narrative: that safety can be secured through exclusion, surveillance, and the policing of difference. These punitive logics have gained momentum across the political spectrum, fuelling an anti-trans backlash and distorting the meaning of safety itself.
Articles
A Cry for Life and Political Care; From Beneath the Ashes Fallen Upon Us
Neda Naji, a left feminist writes about the ongoing repression in Iran and argues for an abolitionist response grounded in care. [Please note this was published before the attack on Iran by Israel and the United States]
A Cry for Life and Political Care; From Beneath the Ashes Fallen Upon Us
Articles from the Abolition Futures GBV Series
Lizzie on Whipping up fear.
So when anti-trans narratives talk about the women’s being made unsafe, they mean it is being made unsafe for a particular set of women who are worthy of protection: those who are in close proximity with the idealised form of woman. Lizzie on Whipping up fear.
Máiréad on Gender and ‘Historical’ Injustice Inquiries: Irish Reflections.
Participants in Irish inquiries have not been silenced or ignored in any simple sense. Instead, they have been drawn into inquiry processes which offer them some public recognition, but carefully restrict their political agency Máiréad on ‘Historical’ Injustice Inquiries
Francesca on Domestic work, care, and gender-based violence: Towards a non-carceral approach to migrant domestic workers’ rights
The carceral approach put forward by the ‘modern-day slavery industrial complex’ focuses on punishing the perpetrator rather than being centred on what migrant domestic workers actually want and need for a life of safety and dignity: the right to work and settle in the UK Francesca on migrant domestic workers’ rights
Vee on Sex work and the abolition of capitalism
Sex workers want real, viable economic alternatives, not more policing. Feminists of colour have long criticized radical feminists (and broader anti-violence work) for its focus on interpersonal violence at the cost of institutional violence. Vee on sex work and the abolition of capitalism
Tanya on A Just Hearing for Survivors: Feminist Activism and Political Listening
Focusing political attention on the politics of listening helps to avoid an individualist politics that leaves survivors isolated and vulnerable in an ‘economy of believability’ that is stacked against them, and leaves them open to excessive scrutiny, including from feminists Tanya on Political Listening
Resources & Reports
Political Prisoner Letter Writing Guide By: Nijjor Manush
Really useful guide to writing to prisoners.
Read here: https://nijjormanush.com/political-prisoner-letter-writing/
Know Your Rights on Palestine Action’s Proscription
By: CAGE International
Palestine Action has been proscribed, what does it mean and what can you do? This new guide will give you a greater understanding of what there is to know about the law and how you can continue standing for Palestine.
Read here: https://www.cage.ngo/articles/know-your-rights-palestine-action-proscription
Report: Policing the Playground, A New Model for Schools Policing By: Liberty
Liberty's new report examines a pilot in Hackney, London, where traditional Safer Schools Officers were removed from regular school duty, evaluating whether this new model can better protect student wellbeing without criminalising them.
Read here: https://www.libertyhumanrights.org.uk/issue/policing-the-playground-a-new-model-for-schools-policing/
Podcasts
Death Panel: Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Craig Gilmore on the anti-state state - Listen here
Solidarity Support
Nejma:
We are helping those with no support in prison, their families who are often unable to support their loved ones, and prison leavers.
Nejma Collective CIC is re-launching its Ramadan fundraiser because we realise how the so-called justice system continues to mete out harsh sentences, punishment, and treatment of those on the inside, those who leave prison, and the loved ones who try to support them.
Donate here - https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/nejma-collective-ramadan-2026
This is not an exhaustive list of upcoming abolitionist resources or activities and many more exist beyond this short digest. We will continue to share as many resources on our social media as we can - please get in touch if you have something to share.