Quaderns de Psicologia | 2014, Vol. 16, No 1, 85-95 ISNN: 0211-3481 http://dx.doi.org/10.5565/rev/qpsicologia.1216 Practicing Intersectionality in Spain Practicando la interseccionalidad en España Pilar Goñalons Pons Myra Marx Ferree University of Wisconsin-Madison Abstract Intersectionality has become a very popular term in academic, policy and activist circles. We understand intersectionality as a theoretical project concerned with elucidating the re- lationships between different principles of inequality and oppression. We identify three conceptual moves that distinguish intersectionality from other theoretical frameworks about inequality and power: a movement from additive to interactive models, a movement from categorical to process-based frameworks, and a movement from autonomous individu- als to embedded social relations as foundations for social theory. We deploy examples re- lated to the paid domestic work in Spain to demonstrate the usefulness of these conceptual moves. Keywords: Intersectionality; Gender; Class; Migration; Race Abstract El término interseccionalidad se ha vuelto muy popular en círculos académicos, políticos y activistas. Las autoras entienden la interseccionalidad como un proyecto teórico que busca analizar el modo en que distintas formas de desigualdad y opresión social se relacionan en- tre si. Las autoras identifican tres movimientos conceptuales que marcan este proyecto: sustituir modelos aditivos por modelos interactivos, reemplazar marcos teóricos que se ba- san en categorías sociales por modelos teóricos basados en procesos sociales, y tomar las relaciones sociales —y no la idea del individuo autónomo— como la unidad de análisis básica para construir teoría social. Las autoras ilustran el proyecto teórico y las implicaciones de los movimientos conceptuales a partir del análisis del trabajo doméstico en España. Palabras clave: Interseccionalidad; Género; Clase; Migración; Raza Introduction ferent contexts. Academics are intensively debating the appropriate uses of the concept, Intersectionality, a term coined by Kimberlé defining its boundaries as well as its contribu- Crenshaw in 1989, has quickly travelled tions, and discussing how the concept can be around the world and has become very popu- deployed in various research and policy mak- lar in academic, policy and activist circles ing contexts (e.g. Cho, Crenshaw & McCall, (Crenshaw, 1989). In fact, Kathy Davis (2008) 2013). Within this ongoing discussion, our in- notably declared that intersectionality has tervention seeks to advance a particular un- become a buzzword that is used in very dif- derstanding of intersectionality that we argue ferent ways and for different purposes in dif- 86 Goñalons Pons, Pilar & Ferree, Myra Marx can be usefully applied in the Spanish con- Davis, 1997). From this perspective, those text. who are assigned more marginal positions in multiple categories then fall through the We understand intersectionality as a theoreti- cracks between the group identities being cal approach concerned with elucidating the constructed. For example, as black women relationships between different forms of op- are neither seen as central to the category pression based in social processes associated black nor to the category women, they be- with salient social categories like gender, come invisible both theoretically and politi- sexuality, race, class or age. Intersectionality cally. This understanding of the exclusionary furthermore signals a commitment to move working of theories focused on a normative beyond theoretical frameworks that assign standard type has been central to the devel- each of these forms of inequality to inde- opment of intersectional theories, even be- pendent and separated conceptual boxes. In- fore the term itself was coined, in the writ- tersectionality theories differ from frame- ings of black feminists in the US and UK works that assign specific social categories (Anthias & Yuval-Davis, 1983; hooks, 1984). In more and less relevance solely according to emphasizing such relations, intersectionality the institution being considered (thus making offers a unique framework to interrogate un- class alone a feature of the economy, gender marked categories – the male in gender, the alone a feature of the family or nationality heterosexual in heteronormativity, or the solely a feature of states). Instead, intersec- white/native-born in racism – and unravel tionality theories attempt to incorporate how these are constructed in relation to and crosscutting sociopolitical processes that give dependent upon problematized and marked salience to positions in relation to multiple categories – the woman in gender, the homo- categories in specific contexts and times. As sexual in heteronormativity, or the Sylvia Walby and others have argued, this as- black/immigrant in racism. pect of the theory implies recognizing that “one set of social relations rarely saturates a Other theorists stress the multiple processes given institutional domain or territory (…) dif- that generate inequalities and how they in- ferent regimes of inequality coexist within in- flect each other within the multi-institutional stitutions and within countries” (Walby, 2009, contexts in which they operate. This tradition p. 68). For instance, gender is always pro- also has a history in so-called “dual systems duced and reproduced in institutions other theories” in which feminists struggled to ex- than the family, and all families are organized plain the ways that “patriarchal capitalism” by relations of power other than gender. This organized inequalities not merely as the sum multi-institutional perspective suggests mak- of patriarchal and capitalist oppressions but ing the relative salience of particular catego- as an inseparable mix of both (Brenner & ries to the organization of inequalities in spe- Ramas, 1984; Hartmann, 1976; Walby, 1990). cific institutions at any given place and time a From this theoretical perspective, the issue is matter of inquiry rather than an a priori less finding the categories of invisibility gen- commitment. erated by this duality than identifying the ways institutions interact through history in A central claim made by scholars using inter- ways that generate both reinforcing and con- sectionality theories is that social processes tradictory forms of power and privilege. For that construct and reproduce relations along example, the workings of globalized patriar- any axis of inequality are inherently entwined chal capitalism “feminize” ever more workers with processes that construct and reproduce by placing them in the informal sector, with inequalities on other axes. This theoretical below subsistence wages, while “masculiniz- principle does not translate clearly into any ing” both male and female managers with one specific understanding of how these rela- wages that allow them to outsource their do- tions of power and axes of inequality have mestic labor, decreasing the opportunity for consequences on each other, leading to theo- such feminized and masculinized workers to retical debates that foreground different per- share the same household, and increasing spectives of where and how power operates. demands on the state to replace informal fa- Some theorists emphasize the social categori- milial redistribution of income with more zation processes that generate diverse cate- formalized policies. gories for identities (Crenshaw, 1991; Yuval- http://quadernsdepsicologia.cat Practicing Intersectionality in Spain 87 Finally, some theorists are concerned with at- from Spanish Social Security records (Seguri- tempting to bring the social constructionist dad Social, 2014) indicates that the number emphasis in the perspectives on race-gender of domestic workers doubled from 120,000 in intersectionality together with the historical 2001 to 300,000 in 2009. A different govern- materialist emphasis on the intersections of mental data source based on survey ques- capitalism, patriarchy, imperialism and na- tions, the Labor Force Survey retrieved from tionalism as macro-institutional processes. the National Statistics Institute microdata Evelyn Nakano Glenn (1992, 1999), for exam- (INE, 2014), includes more uninsured and in- ple, stresses both the cultural power working formal workers; it reports 221,500 domestic in the co-construction of race and gender in workers in 1996, rising to 512,000 in 2009. specific categorical labels, identities and im- This same data reveals that until the mid ages as well as the economic, political and 1990s the percentage of international mi- legal foundations of material advantage and grants among domestic workers was negligi- marginalization that are embedded in the his- ble. For instance, only 6.9 percent of domes- torical development of specific communities, tic workers were foreigners in 1996, but 62.5 corporations, states and transnational institu- percent in 2009 were non-citizens. This phe- tions. From this perspective, the “controlling nomenon occurred in a context of economic images” (Collins, 2005) associated with the expansion, growing levels of Spanish women’s “other”, as well as hegemonic discourses as employment in the formal economy, declining the “heterosexual imaginary” (Ingraham, fertility and an increasingly aging population, 1994) are forms of cultural power that config- and a growing normalization of international ure, constrain and complicate the operations investment and labor migration. We employ of material advantages. As Joan Acker (2006), our three-step model of intersectionality