IAC Culture Talks 2026 #3: Fire Dragon Feminism: Asian migrant women’s tales of migration, colonial and racial capitalism by Associate Professor Quah Ee Ling

Date: Thursday 26 November 2026

Time: 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm (webinar)

Zoom webinar. Please RSVP HERE

Abstract

Featuring stories of early settler and contemporary Asian migrant women in Asia-Pacific region, Fire Dragon Feminism discusses Asian migrant women’s encounters with coloniality and racial capitalism at their workplace and in their everyday life.

Centring anti-colonial feminist philosophies and strategies, the author introduces 'fire dragon feminism' - a migrant feminist strand that aims to blow flames at colonial, racial capitalist and neoliberal structures and build solidarities for more just and sustainable futures.

Based on in-depth interviews with 40 Asian migrant employees in Australian universities, the book examines how Asian migrant women are implicated and complicit in white race-making projects while being subjected to racialisation and marginalisation simultaneously. Fire Dragon Feminism presents a historicised and sociological discussion of the contradictions, trade-offs, complicities and refusals in the Asian migrant women’s tales of migration, coloniality and racial capitalism. The author ends the book with a celebration of anti-colonial grassroots feminist activisms.

About the Speaker

Associate Professor Quah Ee Ling is a fire dragon feminist and Singaporean of Chinese Hokkien and Indonesian Peranakan heritage. Ee Ling works on unceded lands of Indigenous peoples as an Associate Professor in Culture & Society at Western Sydney University. She developed fire dragon feminism to blow flames at colonialism, imperialism and racial capitalism and build solidarities for more sustainable and just futures. She is the author of three books - Fire Dragon Feminism: Asian Migrant Women’s Tales of Migration, Coloniality and Racial Capitalism (Bloomsbury 2025), Transnational Divorce: Understanding Intimacies and Inequalities from Singapore (Routledge 2020) and Perspectives on Marital Dissolution: Divorce Biographies in Singapore (Springer 2015). She holds a PhD in Sociology (University of Sydney), Master of Social Sciences (National University of Singapore) and Bachelor of Arts (National University of Singapore).

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