Ann-Dorte Christensen,
Aalborg University
4. SinoNordic Gender and Women’s Studies Conference
October 2011

1. Basic principle in the concept of intersectionality
2. Intersectionality as a travelling concept
3. Methodological challenges a) Dynamic intersecting categories b) Multilevel intersectional analyses
4. Summarizing: Examples on intersectional analysis in a Danish/Nordic context

 From identity politics → Intersectional perspectives
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From gender equality → Diversity perspectives
“It simply doesn’t make sense to look at gender equality in isolation from other kinds of equalities” (Judith Squires, UK)

 GENDER, CLASS, RACE, SEXUALITY and other categories based on differences, inequalitites and identities
 Categories can be structures, discourses, and identities.
 Categories construct, deconstruct and reconstruct each other

 Context matters
 Discipline matters

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US : Black Feminism – Race/Gender
Dominating structures towards black women
(Kimberley Crenshew; Patricia Hill Collins).
UK : Humanities and social science
Identities and discourses
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(Ann Phoenix; Nira Yuval-Davis, Judith Squires)
Nordic countries:
Postcolonial and poststructuralist feminist researcher
( Diana Mulinari, Nina Lykke, Dorte Staunæs)
Feminist researchers within sociology and political science
( Birte Siim, Anette Borchorst, Sune Qvotrup Jensen, Lise
Rolandsen Augustin, Stine Thidemann Faber )

Categories are contextualised and have different meanings. (Gudrun-Axeli Knapp and Myra Marx
Ferree)
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Contextualising race
Contextualising class
Not only the concept of intersectionality but also the different categories have been travelling around and must be contextualised and analyzed in relation to the history of ideas as well as contemporary discourses and knowledge production.

Baukje Prins – 2 approaches to intersectionality
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The systemic approach: the US approach - foregrounds the impact of system or structure upon the formation of identities.
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The constructionist approach: the UK approach – foregrounds the impact of dynamic and relational aspects of social identity
(Prins, 2006)

Main questions to intersectional analyses
 How to combine the systemic approach and the constructivist approach?
 How to develop intersectional analyses which are able to able to grasp the intersections between inequalities at a structural level and the level of constructions of identities?
 How to establish a double perspective and create an interaction between structure and actors?

a) Dynamic intersecting categories b) Multilevel intersectional analyses

 Categories to come and relations to go?? (cf. A.
Hornshied)
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 Myra Marx Ferree:
Interactive Intersectionality (combining structure and agency)
A Process-centered approach: more about racialization than race; more about gendering than gender; more about class relations than class

Nira Yuval-Davis
 Social locations/positioning
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Identities
Political values
“People who identify themselves as belonging to the same collectivity or social category can actually be positioned very differently in relation to a whole range of social locations (eg class, gender, ability, sexuality, age etc). And at the same time people with similar positionings and/or identities can have very different social and political values” (Yuval-Davis, 2005, p. 7).
Ann Phoenix – connection between microanalysis of everyday practice and the social positioning in national racialised gendered discourses.

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 The Aalborg Multilevel Model to combine different levels of analysis
(Borchorst, Christensen, Jensen og Siim)

4. Summarizing: Examples on Intersectional
Analyses in a Danish/Nordic Context
1) Macro-level: Welfare State and institutionalised inequalities
2) Micro-level: Gender, Class and Ethnicity:
Everyday Life in a a residential area in
Aalborg

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 How gender, class and ethnicity have been institutionalised in the Danish Welfare State
Class inequalities (first part of the 20th.
Century)
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Gender inequalities from the 1970s
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Last 10 years ethnicity and integration
Exclusionary discourse – strong marker of
Danishness/Danish equality model.
(Borchorst and Siim)

2) Micro-level: Gender, Class and Ethnicity. Everyday Life in a a residential area in Aalborg
Christensen and Qvotrup Jensen
 Everyday life as a melting pot. (M. Gullestad).
Intersecting categories bound together by unbreakable ties.
 Narratives – Combining the ’grand history’ and the
’small/personal life story”
Connell: ”Life histories give rich documentation of personal experience, ideology and subjectivity […] but life histories also, paradoxically, document social structures, social movements and institutions. That is to say, they give rich evidence about impersonal and collective processes as well as about subjectivity” (1995: 89).

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25 years, lived in Denmark for almost 20 years
Born in Somalia, lived with Grandmother when her mother and father were studying on European universities
Father and mother divorced
Mother fled to Denmark with Jasmina and 2 younger siblings
Family in Sweden, Canada & USA.
Speaks 5 languages and has visited many countries
Sends money back but wouldn’t like to move to Somalia
Feels at home in Denmark
Has finished high school and will study to become a teacher

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43 years, lived in Denmark for 15 years
Refugee form the Somali civil war – severe permanent physical injurires.
Single mother with 10 children
Applied for residence in Copenhagen to be closer to her
Swedish family – came to Northern Jutland.
Is feeling alone – trouble settling into the neighbourhood.
Has never chosen to live in Aalborg
Poor

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Class matters in terms of educational background and in terms of income
Class matters in terms of identity
 One thing in common: Being placed and forced to live in a specific place which they cannot influence.

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 The narratives are framed by:
The Danish discourse and the excluding positions of immigrants as unwanted guests
The exclusionary discourses institutionalized in the
Danish Welfare State
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But at the same time :
Challenging dominant Danish discourses – who is modern and who is traditional??
Not only dominating structures – but also empowerment and agency.

Thank you for listening 