On April 25th, UC Berkeley hosted Bordered Life and the Right to Move, an international conference co-sponsored by the Center for Interdisciplinary Critical Inquiry, UC Berkeley Arts and Humanities, the Center for Race and Gender, UC Berkeley English, the Institute of European Studies, and the Jean Monnet European Union Center of Excellence, with co-funding from the European Union. The first day brought together approximately 45 attendees for a series of panels and lectures featuring artists, activists, and scholars engaging with critical questions at the intersection of borders, race, and migration. The conference sought to explore new frameworks for belonging in the context of an escalating global refugee crisis.
Panel 1, titled Writing Rights: Intersections of Law, Literature, and Policy, offered interdisciplinary perspectives on migration through legal theory, literary analysis, and cultural studies. The panel ran from 12:15 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
The session opened with Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge (University of Birmingham), who reflected on the ideas of tenderness and touch in relation to border lines. Professor Robert Barsky (Vanderbilt University) followed with a discussion on the role of infrastructure, particularly railways, in shaping immigration policy. He advocated for greater justice for multilingual communities, emphasizing that literary histories are essential to reimagining migration beyond legal reforms alone. Finally, Professor Leti Volpp (Berkeley Law) addressed the "crisis of vision" in contemporary migration discourse. She cited the now-defunct freeway signs along California’s I-5, once warning drivers about migrants crossing on foot, as symbols of the fear-based narratives surrounding undocumented individuals.
Together, the speakers used literature, history, and law to challenge dominant migration frameworks grounded in rigid borders and exclusionary definitions of citizenship.