Abstract

Purpose
Critiques of the anti-DEI (diversity, equality/equity and inclusion) movement have focused predominantly on the consequences it poses to the United States. This article considers how backlash against DEI is manifesting in other parts of the world, analysing it as locally mediated practices that undermine women's and LGBTQIA+ rights through distinct political, legal, cultural and material arrangements.

Design/methodology/approach
Applying social practice theory to illustrative cases from Europe, Africa and Asia, we conceptualise backlash against DEI as emerging through context-specific practices rather than as a uniform global phenomenon.

Findings
This article finds that backlash against DEI emerges from and through local configurations of practices: economic precarity and status anxiety in some European contexts, colonial legacies and transnational conservative networks in some African contexts and coercive state practices amid war and institutional collapse in some Asian contexts. These examples demonstrate that exclusion is enacted differently depending on how practices are organised locally.

Social implications
This article advances an understanding of the societal importance of DEI, and draws attention to the need for localised action and solutions.

Originality/value
This article reconceptualises context as a historically sedimented nexus of practices rather than something that is static or immutable, and offers guiding questions for designing contextually embedded and practice-sensitive DEI interventions.