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© 2008 Anthias Translocations | Winter 2008 | Volume 4 | Issue 1 | pp. 5-20
Translocations: Migration and Social Change
An Inter-Disciplinary Open Access E-Journal
ISSN Number: 2009-0420
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Thinking through the lens of translocational positionality: an intersectionality
frame for understanding identity and belonging
Floya Anthias
School of Business and Social Sciences, Roehampton University (Email:F.Anthias@roehampton.ac.uk)
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Abstract
This paper reflects on the understanding of contemporary forms of identity
construction within the fields of ethnicity, migration and transnational population
movements. It casts a critical eye on new forms of identity hailed by the related
notions of diaspora, hybridity and cosmopolitanism. The paper also reflects on the
concept of intersectionality which provides a more integrated analysis of identity
formation by arguing for the inter-connections between social divisions, such as those
of gender, ethnicity and class. The paper argues that the concept ‘translocational
positionality’ (see Anthias 2001, 2002a, 2002b, 2005, 2006, 2007) is a useful means
of addressing some of the difficulties identified within these approaches. This concept
addresses issues of identity in terms of locations which are not fixed but are context,
meaning and time related and which therefore involve shifts and contradictions. It
thereby provides an intersectional framing for the understanding of belonging. As an
intersectional frame it moves away from the idea of given ‘groups’ or ‘categories’ of
gender, ethnicity and class, which then intersect (a particular concern of some
intersectionality frameworks), and instead pays much more attention to social
locations and processes which are broader than those signalled by this.
Keywords: belonging, transnational, intersectionality, translocational positionality
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Introduction
In this paper I will reflect on the concepts of identity and belonging which inform
understandings of ethnicity and migration in the modern era. I will do this through the
lens of ‘translocational positionality’ (see Anthias 2001, 2002a, 2002b, 2005, 2006,
2007). This attempts to provide a way of thinking about issues of identity that avoids
some of the problems identified with the concept (see Brubaker and Cooper 2000 and
Anthias 2002), particularly in terms of treating identity as a possessive attribute of
individuals or groups (for a critique of groupism see Brubaker 2004). The concept of
translocational positionality addresses issues of identity in terms of locations which
are not fixed but are context, meaning and time related and which therefore involve
shifts and contradictions. As an intersectional frame it moves away from the idea of
given ‘groups’ or ‘categories’ of gender, ethnicity and class, which then intersect (a
particular concern of some intersectionality frameworks), and instead pays much
more attention to social locations and processes which are broader than those
signalled by this. As such, the notion of translocational positionality attempts to
address some of the difficulties found within intersectionality approaches and
attempts to push the debate forward on theorising identity and belonging.
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Translocations Winter 2008 | Volume 4 | Issue 1
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In brief, I will focus in this paper on the field of transnational population movements
which brings into focus contemporary forms of identity construction. I will cast a
critical eye on new forms of identity hailed by the related notions of diaspora,
hybridity and cosmopolitanism. I will also reflect on the concept of intersectionality
which provides a more integrated analysis of identity formation by arguing for the
theoretical and political links between social divisions, such as those of gender,
ethnicity and class. As already noted, the notion of translocational positionality
attempts to address some of the difficulties found within intersectionality approaches.
This moves radically away from essentialised notions of belonging and also avoids
the rabid deconstructionism of some post-modern approaches to belonging and
identity.
There is no doubt that ethnic and cultural ties are increasingly operating at a
transnational rather than merely national level. The critique of methodological
nationalism (Beck 2002; Wimmer and Glick Schiller 2002) has further indicated the
problem of ‘naturalising’ the nation and seeing it as the main analytical category for
exploring a range of inter-related issues in modern society around boundaries and
hierarchies of belonging. This position also mirrors developments in more
intersectional forms of social analysis (see Collins 1993, 1998; Anthias and Yuval
Davis 1992; Anthias 1998a, 2005), calling for a new paradigm for understanding
social boundaries and divisions.
Not only does migration itself challenge national borders but increasing flows of
people, commodities, cultures and economic and political interests turn our attention
to a range of social processes broadly identifiable as ‘translocational’. These not only
affect people who are themselves directly ‘on the move’ but also the locales in which
they settle, converting them to translocational spaces, thereby affecting in different
ways all who live within these spaces.
The old distinctions which constructed migrants as going from one place to another to
search for better economic opportunities, or as travellers wanting to taste and enjoy
the fruits of other lands or to plunder the exotic goods of empire, no longer
characterise our modern times. Today, there are a range of possible categories of
population involved: they include refugees and asylum seekers; new commuter
migrants; professional and skilled migrants; and undocumented migrants. These all
present us with a multiplex reality and a shifting landscape of belonging and identity.
There exist complex relations to different locales; these include networks involving
social, symbolic and material ties between homelands, destinations, and relations
between destinations. A key question is how to think of belonging and identity within
a transnational and what I have called ‘translocational’ frame which recognises that
people have multiple locations, positions and belongings, in a situated and contextual
way, but which does not end up as a thoroughgoing reification or deconstruction of
difference.
Notions of identity and belonging
Identity is a key concept in contemporary discussions of migration. This is not only
linked to the role of ethnic markers which become both visible and challenging in a
globalising world, but also to the regulatory regimes of modern states and coalitions
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of power among states. These set up new frontiers and borders which depend on
categorising desirable and undesirable persons and groupings. The impetus lies in the
threat from what are seen as ‘hostile’ identities, embodied both in the ‘war against
terror’ but also in fears of dependent migrants (‘sponging off the state’), asylum
seekers and refugees whose ‘culture’ and ‘ways of life’ are seen to be incompatible or
undesirable within Western societies, and the fear of social breakdown and unrest
attached to these. Current debates on multiculturalism and social cohesion (for
example in the UK: see Yuval Davis, Anthias and Kofman 1996) are linked to this.
Given these tendencies, how do we begin to rethink the issue of our ‘identities’: both
in terms of our individual sense of who we are but also in terms of our sense of social
place and belonging since these two are symbiotically connected? Identity is a
slippery concept, and not only contested but contestable. It may be that it has over-run
its limits not only in terms of it being over-inflated to incorporate too much - an
argument made by Brubaker and Cooper very convincingly (2000) - but it has come
to say ‘both too much and too little’ (for a development of this argument see Anthias
2002b). It says too much in the sense that there are a range of different elements of
focus that are incorporated, often rather carelessly, under its ambit. The concept of
identity can cover on the one side notions of the ‘core self’ (see for example Erikson
1968) and on the other side notions of how people are identified by objective
measures relating, for example, to country of birth or primary language. The notion
also covers identification processes (with ‘others’ or ‘groupings of others’) and
relates to the construction of collectivities and identity politics (both of which insert
the political into the arena of identity formation). From another point of view identity
can be seen as a question of claims on the one hand and attributions on the other. It
can be related to a number of dimensions which are narrational and performative
(Anthias 2002b) as well as experiential, representational and organisational (for a
more developed analysis of the latter formulation relating to social
categories/divisions of identity see Anthias 1998a).
On the other hand the concept of identity can tell us too little because it does not flag
central questions of structure, context and meaning and therefore cannot fully attend
to the conditions of existence of the production of the different component elements
under examination (assuming that they have been unpacked effectively). It also ASKS
too much: that individuals are able to demonstrate in some form ‘who they are’ and
‘who or what they identify with’ in a coherent and stable manner. The decentring of
subjectivity via postructuralist theory has provided a challenge to such projects.
Indeed research on a variety of youngsters has also shown some of the problems of
attempting to find ‘who people say they are’ (Back 1996; Rattansi and Phoenix 1997;
Anthias 2002b). Part of my argument is that the emphasis on identity sets us on a
false trail. The focus on identity has involved a retreat from issues of structure and
there is a tendency to treat it as a possessive attribute of individuals or groups rather
than a process.
It is also perhaps necessary to disentangle the notion of identity from the related one of
belonging, although they are symbiotically connected. ‘Where do I belong’ is certainly a
question that is posed by (and for) many people who have undergone migration or
translocations of different types, whether of national movement or class movement, and
is especially true for the children of such people. It is also a question that emerges out of
attributions by others and concerns by others (including institutions and public bodies)
with sorting populations for the purposes of regulation and control. It is represented in
intersubjective relations by that question so many visible ‘outsiders’ face (visible either
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through skin colour, language, accent or name) about ‘where are you really from’ and
‘where do you really belong’.
The issue of belonging emerges in relational terms: both in terms of the construction of
we-ness - i.e. those who can stand as selves - and the construction of ‘otherness’ - i.e. in
the construction of those that cannot stand as selves, or where we are not able to enter
the boundary of the ‘other’ however much we identify. This is a key issue relating to the
distinction between identity and belonging notions. Arguably the key aspect of the
former is found in articulations and stories about who we think we are (however
contextual, situational, temporal or fractured these may be) as well as associated
strategies and identifications. Arguably a key facet of belonging notions (a question of
emphasis more than analytical distinction) is found in the notions of exclusion, inclusion,
access and participation. Belonging questions often emerge because we feel that there
are a range of spaces, places, locales and identities that we feel we do not and cannot
belong to, in the sense that we cannot gain access, participate or be included within.
Collective places constructed by imaginings of belonging, however, are constructions
that disguise the fissures, the losses, the absences, the borders within them. The
imagining also refers to their role in naturalising socially produced, situational and
contextual relations, converting them to taken for granted, absolute and fixed structures
of social and personal life. They produce a ‘natural’ community of people and function
as exclusionary borders of otherness. Belonging therefore tends to become
‘naturalised’ and thus invisible in hegemonic formulations.
Belonging has a number of dimensions. There is the dimension of how subjects feel
about their location in the social world which is generated partly through experiences
of exclusion rather than being about inclusion per se. That is a notion of belonging
becomes activated when there is a sense of exclusion. The relational nature of
belonging is important here. Belonging is about both formal and informal experiences
of belonging. Belonging is not just about membership, rights and duties, as in the case
of citizenship, or just about forms of identification with groups or others, but it is also
about the social places constructed by such identifications and memberships and the
ways in which social place has resonances on stability of the self, on feelings of being
part of a larger whole and the emotional and social bonds that are related to such
places.
The two terms of identity and belonging live together but involve a different
emphasis. One could sum up the difference in emphasis of the two terms in the
following way. Identity involves individual and collective narratives of self and other,
presentation and labelling, myths of origin and myths of destiny with associated
strategies and identifications. Belonging on the other hand is more about experiences
of being part of the social fabric and the ways in which social bonds and ties are
manifested in practices, experiences and emotions of inclusion. Ethnic ties cannot be
considered in isolation as delivering ‘belonging’ given that they are intersected with
social relations of different types (such as those hailed by gender, generational and
class categories). For example, you cannot belong to the collectivity if you don’t
conform to the gender norms of this collectivity (Anthias and Yuval Davis 1989).
Here to belong is to be accepted as part of a community, to feel safe within it and to
have a stake in the future of such a community of membership. To belong is to share
values, networks and practices and not just a question of identification. It is important
to relate the notion of belonging to the different locations and contexts from which
belongings are imagined and narrated: these locations are trans-locations in terms of a
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range of social positions and social divisions and identities such as gender, class,
stage in the life cycle and so on.
Belonging, although more than, is also about rights and obligations related to
citizenship. However, as we know such rights and obligations are about meeting the
criteria of inclusion and there is differential inclusion and exclusion of so-called
citizens along the lines of gender, ethnicity, class, age and so on. Belonging is about
boundaries but it is also about hierarchies which exist both within but across
boundaries. Boundaries are shifting and changing; some are more a product of
external constraints, like political, legal, national rules relating to membership. Others
are inscribed in the body through the stigmata of absence and notions of
incapacity/deformity via gender or disability. They may also be inscribed through
body style (such as in class relations) or through colour physiognomy and the bodily
and personal style/gait associated with ethnic difference.
But boundaries are never fixed and they are forms of political practice. Constructions of
ethnic difference for example homogenise those within and bracket off differences of
class, gender, age, political persuasion, and region. Such identities always crosscut each
other and people simultaneously hold different ones and belong therefore to different
categorisations depending on context, situation and meaning. The constructed, rather
than essential or fixed nature of the boundaries is important to note. Boundaries are
imposed and also taken up by subjects themselves. These may not necessarily coincide.
Different markers may be used to define the boundaries. This is raised, for example, by
the debate on the category Black, and the shift from seeing it as incorporating both
Asians and Afro-Caribbeans, to seeing it as describing only Afro-Caribbeans (on this
point see for example Modood 1988; Anthias and Yuval Davis 1992; Brah 1996).
Alternatively, it may be used as a form of self identification, and not dependent
necessarily on ascriptive criteria, or may be used as a political identity. A group may be
defined, at different times, in terms of culture, place of origin or religion. For example.
Jews may be seen as a cultural group, as a diaspora with a reclaimed homeland (Israel),
or as a religious community. Greek Cypriots may be seen as either Cypriot or Greek.
These are labels, as well as claims, that are produced socially and enter into the realm of
assertion, contestation and negotiation over resource allocation, social positioning and
political identity.
Transcending ethnic and national belongings
Bearing these problems in mind, I will now focus on a number of different ways that
identity and belonging can be understood in relation to the increasing importance of
‘translocations’. These are not merely about movement of people from one location to
another in the spatial or cultural sense. They also denote the increasing fragmentation
of social life and the crisscrossing of borders and boundaries involved. The notion of
translocation references the idea of ‘location’ as a social space which is produced
within contextual, spatial, temporal and hierarchical relations around the
‘intersections’ of social divisions and identities of class, ethnicity and gender
(amongst others). I will develop this concept further towards the latter part of the
paper.
In this section I want to look at the complexities relating to hybridity, diaspora and
cosmopolitanism; three versions of transnational belonging that are current in the
literature on migration and population movements. These provide different ways by
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which culture and ethnic identity are seen to be affected by population movements
and set out a challenge to national exclusivity and particularisms. Partially, critiques
of notions of ethnicity and identity that are fixed, stable, monolithic and exclusionary
have led scholars and activists to embrace such terms. Cosmopolitanism, despite the
difficulties, or indeed the refusal of precise definition, is also a claim towards a
broader cultural and justice related framework, beyond national exclusivity, and a
more global liberal understanding of difference and cultural values. Cosmopolitanism
has been more an outcome recently of debates on globalisation and citizenship (e.g.
Held et al 1999) whilst debates on hybridity and diaspora have been more tied to
transnational flows of people and cultures. I will begin by commenting on hybridity
and diaspora and then turn to examining cosmopolitanism.
Hybridity and diaspora (for critiques of these concepts see also Anthias 1998b and
Anthias 2001) are used to counter the essentialism found in many traditional approaches
to ethnicity and racism. They both postulate shifting and potentially transnational and
transethnic cultural formations and identities. These new identities are seen to be tied to
a globalised and transnational social fabric rather than one bounded by the nation-state
form. They are seen as forms of cultural identity that are more fluid and synthetic.
Similarly cosmopolitanism paints a world where ethnic and national spectacles are
abandoned in favour of ‘one-world’ ones. In the following sections I will focus on each
of these in turn in order to show some of the difficulties they face in providing a worked
through alternative to the notion of ‘ethnic’ identity. I will consider hybridity and
diaspora briefly, partly because I have written on these before (Anthias 2001, 1998b)
Hybridity
The modern use of the concept of hybridity seeks to argue against a mono-culturalist
view of identity, depicting identity as syncretic and changeable rather than static and
essentialised (Bhabha 1994). It is often used alongside what may be regarded as its sister
notion, that of diaspora. Hybridity is often linked to globalisation processes (see for
example the discussion by Pieterse 1994 on how increasing globalisation leads to greater
hybridisation). These have been characterised as political, economic and cultural. It is
the latter that is most relevant to the arguments found in current formulations of diaspora
and hybridity (although diaspora has been used to denote political economy and political
processes) in the work of Cohen (1997) and others, from both a traditional sociological
and political economy framework.
The notion of hybridity emphasises the ways in which transnational processes have
involved the development of intercultural and cross-cultural life styles and practices.
This suggests a move away from static and rigid forms of ethnicity and potentially may
herald some breaking with ethnocentrism and racism. It may be the case that there is an
intermingling of cultural styles and values, producing new and innovative forms, but this
need not necessarily lead, however, to changing ethnic solidarities or the diminution of
ethnocentrism and racism. For example young white adolescents have been seen as
synthesising the culture of their white English backgrounds with the new cultures of
minorities. New cultural forms are forged in music and inter-racial friendship networks
and movements (Hewitt 1986, Back 1996). The pick and mix of cultural elements,
denoted by the term hybridity, does not necessarily signify, however, a shift in identity
or indeed the demise of identity politics of the racist or anti-racist kind. Moreover, the
mixed cultural patterns of second and third generations underplays the ways in which
gender and religion, serve different ends in different contexts. One example is found in
the uses and meanings of the hijab for the young women who wear it with pride but also
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as a form of agency both vis a vis their parents and inferiorisation/racism (see for
example Afshar 1994). In other words the bringing together of different cultural
elements syncretically may transform their meaning. However,this need not always
mean the breakdown of the central or core cultural values espoused.
Therefore the term hybridity has not only tended to be over-celebratory but it has not
paid adequate attention to crosscutting differences and locations in terms of gender and
class (relying on so-called ethnic/cultural practices and their intermingling). The use of
the term hybridity has not always paid enough attention to context, meaning and
temporal dimensions and how cultural practices may be ‘resources’ to be used
strategically and whose meaning is therefore never given.
Diaspora
The popularity of notions of diaspora (Hall 1990, Gilroy 1993, Cohen 1997, Clifford
1994, Brah 1996) can be related to the attempt to overcome some of the criticisms made
of the 'race and ethnic relations' tradition (Miles 1993, Anthias and Yuval Davis 1992,
Hall 1990, Gilroy 1993, Brah 1996) as well as recognising certain empirical features
relating to population movements and settlements. However, I have argued before that
such depictions rely on a national imaginary of social location (Anthias 1998b).
When people construct themselves as a diaspora this involves a particular form of
mobilisation around national and ethnic symbols which are used as resources. Despite
this, it is difficult to overcome the tendency in most of the literature to locate diaspora
as a grouping in terms of national boundaries, i.e. from whence the people came and
to where they have settled. Although the term is often limited to population categories
which have experienced 'forceful or violent expulsion' processes (classically used about
the Jews), it may also denote a social condition entailing a particular form of
'consciousness' which is particularly compatible with globalisation (see Anthias 1998b).
However, one danger of using the concept too uncritically is that this may
overemphasise transnational as opposed to trans-ethnic processes (i.e. not focus enough
on common experiences amongst different ethnic groups).
It is equally important to attend to differentiations within ‘diasporic’ groups, such as
those of gender and class, as well as differences between different ‘diasporas’, thereby
treating them situationally and contextually. Whilst diasporic groups have been
thought of as particularly adaptable to a globalised economic system (Cohen 1997) it
is important not to think that they are essentially constituted in this way. It is also
important to continue examining the more violent, dislocating and ‘othering’ practices
that they are subjected to. The existence of group boundaries and the ways we think
about our belonging are crucial elements in these practices but the forms they take are
products of positionalities and contexts that do not themselves originate from these
identity formations. We must be careful that the focus on belongings in terms of
diasporic attachments does not foreclose a concern with differences of gender, class
and generation within diasporic groups in all their complex interlockings.
Globalisation involves a growth in the amount of movement, which both intensifies
strangeness and normalises it. The condition of 'overall strangeness' becomes the
condition par excellence of global society. The importance of 'asymmetry', together
with hegemonic cultural discourses in this process, needs to be considered by the new
approaches to interculturality found in the idea of cultural hybridities and diasporic
imaginations. We must be careful, therefore, not to treat hybridity and diasporic
formations outside the parameters of unequal power relations that exist between and
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within cultures. I would propose, therefore, that it is difficult to encapsulate the
processes relating to translocation, which involves processes of crisscrossing borders and
boundaries of different types (not only those related to ethnic or national borders),
through the terms of diaspora and hybridity.
Cosmopolitanism
Like diaspora the term ‘cosmopolitan’ sees people as belonging to a range of social
relations and political and cultural communities across nation states. There are a range
of approaches to cosmopolitanism, however, from the idea that it is the consciousness
of frequent travellers (Calhoun 2003) to the idea that it is the refusal to be rooted
within an ethnic or nationalist space (e.g. Nussbaum 1998). The role of local
attachments extending beyond the local is found in the work of Held (2000). For Beck
“The central defining characteristic of a cosmopolitan perspective is the ‘dialogic
imagination’. By this I mean the clash of cultures and rationalities within one’s own
life, the ‘internalized other” (2002: 18).
Cosmopolitanism is antithetical to local cultures and traditions and particularly to
forms of ethnoculturalism. Cultural cosmopolitanism is associated with the middle
class urban intellectual/ business elite familiar with a range of cultures, who travel
frequently and who feel ‘at home’ everywhere. Normative cosmopolitanism
additionally questions the value and meaning of national identity and belonging and
longs for a wider social space to imagine belonging to. The citizenship or
transnational citizenship strand of this is concerned with the formation of new forms
of governance and political arrangements that diminish the importance of national
borders and is dedicated to a world political system. As Held says with regard to the
notion of cosmopolitan citizenship, “people would come, thus, to enjoy multiple
citizenships-political membership in the diverse political communities which
significantly affected them” (1995: 233).
Kofman (2005) rightly notes that the positive conception of the moving subject who is
at home everywhere and belongs to nowhere becomes negative for particular
categories of persons, depending on their ethnic origin. One could argue that it is not
just a question of ethnic origin but that whether it is imbued with positive or negative
value depends on social location within the world. Western individuals are regarded
positively (on the whole, although it is also a question of social class) and yet
migrants who travel and are involved in multiple sites of destination over time are
regarded as problematic, even though they may have acquired some of the cultural
baggage of the cosmopolitan ideal: many languages, extensive travel, familiarity with
a range of cultural norms and values and being able to negotiate these. Eurocentric
views of cosmopolitanism, therefore, exclude the transnationalism of migrants,
particularly economic and poor migrants. For example, there is the issue of the class
nature of the concept as the term cosmopolitan is often not seen as appropriate for
describing the global pathways of working class migrants (Werbner 1999).
Cosmopolitanism (like transnationalism, diaspora or hybridity) does not attend to
asymmetry or inequality. However, the idea of a ‘free floating’ cosmopolitan without
a social base is problematic. Even free floating intellectuals (to coin Mannheim’s term
(1929/36)) have a social base. Similarly there are no classless cosmopolitans.
Cosmopolitanism could involve the formation of new forms of citizenship, away from
national democracy. However, there is an assumption that globalised or cosmopolitan
citizenship is consensual when in fact there is no singular cosmopolitan politics or
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social and cultural system of values. Indeed cosmopolitanism is merely itself: an
empty glass waiting to be filled. It could potentially involve a fascist system as much
as participatory democracy. Laying claims to a cosmopolitan politics doesn’t give us
the detail of social arrangements necessary. It is better at being set as an opposition to
forms of ethnic or national boundaries at a number of different levels, depending on
its object of reference, rather than as a specific political alternative.
The debates around different forms of transnational identity (for example, hybridity,
diaspora and cosmopolitanism) all point to the difficulties of thinking about the
contemporary world as bounded by national boundaries alone. However, none of
these positions focus on social locations in their broader sense and this constitutes a
significant shortcoming. Both local and less local forms of belonging and position
cannot be disassociated from a range of bounded social relations through the other
categorical formations of gender and class (for example), their processes and their
effects. This brings me to the debate on intersectionality which I will address briefly as a
preliminary to focussing on ‘translocational positionality’.
Intersectionality
Intersectionality argues that it is important to look at the way in which different social
divisions inter-relate in terms of the production of social relations and in terms of
peoples lives. In the earlier debates, particularly in the Marxist feminist concern with
gender, one way in which different social divisions were connected was to argue that one
of them was most determining (for a review see Anthias and Yuval Davis 1992). This
found its currency in debates on 'race' and class, and gender and class, where the
tendency was to use a reductionist model, whereby gender and 'race' were determined by
class. A further (and opposite) formulation was in terms of ideas about a triple burden
faced by ethnic minority women. Here class, gender and 'race' inequalities were treated
as separate but as being experienced simultaneously. This position can be criticised as
being too mechanistic and entailing an additive model of the oppression of gender, race
and class. Intersectional approaches have tried to move away from this additive model
by treating each division as constituted via an intersection with the others (Collins 1993,
1998, Anthias and Yuval Davis 1992, Crenshaw 1994, McCall 2001, Anthias 2002a,
2005 to name a few). In this way classes are always gendered and racialised and gender
is always classed and racialised and so on.
There are clearly rather different foci within the ‘intersectionality’ framework but
there is not enough space to consider these in all their complexity here (for one
discussion of this complexity see McCall 2001). However a brief note of some
tendencies may be useful to note. Gender, race and class may be treated as different
ideological (see for example Collins 1993) or discursive practices that emerge in the
process of power production and enablement (as would be suggested in the work of
Foucault 1972). On the other hand, gender, race and class can be regarded as
distinctive systems of subordination (Weber 2001) with their own range of specific
social relations and intersectionality refers to how these systems interact. A position
developed by Anthias and Yuval Davis is that social divisions refer to social ontologies
around different material processes in social life, all linked to sociality and to the social
organisation of sexuality, production and collective bonds; features which arguably all
societies entail (Anthias and Yuval Davis 1992, Anthias 1998a, 2005).
The political and policy dimensions raised by intersectionality are important also. A
particularly influential account of intersectionality in the United States (for example
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around human rights) is that categories of discrimination overlap and individuals
suffer exclusions on the basis of race and gender, or any other combination (Crenshaw
1994). Clearly important is that this approach leads to an interest in the production of
data or policy research and practice that recognise specific problems of social
categories like racialised women and which cross reference the divisions within
formulated groups.
Arguably, one danger with the notion of intersections is found in constructing people as
belonging to fixed and permanent groups (e.g. ethnic, gender and class groups) which
then all enter, in a pluralist fashion, into their determination. This undermines the focus
on social processes, practices and outcomes as they impact on social categories, social
structures and individuals. This is further complicated by the fact that, despite the danger
of seeing people as belonging to fixed groups, groups exist at the imaginary or ideational
level as well as at the juridical and legal level. Therefore, the membership of people in
groups is important in two ways. One is in terms of attributions of membership and the
consequences that flow from these attributions. For example, being labelled as a member
of a national or racialised group may affect how one sees oneself and ideas of belonging
and otherness. Secondly, this may have an important role in determining forms of social
engagement and participation, such as those found in identity politics.
One could argue that the intersectionality focus doesn’t go far enough in its
deconstructionist project. Looking at the concrete experiences and positions of subjects
in terms of a multiplicity of identities (for example, of black working class women or
white middle class men) is important. However, this cannot pay attention to the range of
social processes; i.e. the multiple situational elements that produce social outcomes.
These cannot be encapsulated by sex/gender, race/ethnicity and class and their
intersections and raises broader issues of social organisation and representation.
It could also be argued that it can go too far, thereby leading to the failure to identify
systematic forms of oppression. In the attempt to say that each individual has a unique
position in terms of the triad of gender, race and class (Collins 1993: 28) and that each
person is simultaneously oppressor and oppressed (ibid) the danger is the steady
disappearance of systematic forms of subordination and oppression in terms of
people who suffer them.
Despite the difficulty of the notion of intersections, partly linked to the variety of
meanings it has taken on, there is a core which I believe is central to theorising
identities. Ethnicity/nation, gender and class involve processes relating to a range of
economic, political and social interests and projects and to distinctive (and variable)
forms of social allegiance and identifications which are played out in a nuanced and
highly context related fashion. These may construct multiple, uneven and
contradictory social patterns of identity and belonging (as well as domination and
subordination). This is because in terms of social hierarchy, a person may be placed in
a different position depending on the saliency of a particular category or hybrid
category (for example, as black working class woman) in terms of context, meaning
and time and in relation to different regulatory practices of the state, as well as in
terms of the individuals own understanding of their social location. The political
questions opened up here have direct relevance in terms of how inequalities, identities
and political strategies are conceptualised and assessed. Such implications undermine
identity politics on the one hand since the intersectionality framework refuses the
notion of given political positions tied to singular forms of identity (for example,
gender OR ethnicity Or class) and instead recognises a multiplicity of potential
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subcategories and crosscutting forms. Indeed one problem is the potential of an
endless array of synthetic identity constructions (such as black unemployed middle
class men). Nonetheless, this approach both problematises identity politics and raises
the political potential of organising on the basis of specific issues rather than
identities. At a different level, it raises more general questions about wider
frameworks for integrating approaches to inequality. I have introduced the terms
‘translocation’ and ‘translocational positionality’ to aid in addressing some of these
issues within intersectionality frameworks.
Translocations and translocational Positionality
In this section I want to note some of the potential uses of the notion of
‘translocational’ as an heuristic device and not just as a neologism.
Firstly the term signals a refusal to think of issues of population movement and
settlement in terms of dislocation as this assumes a fixed and given location from
which we become dislodged. Although this may appear in our imaginations to be the
case, our locations are multiple and span a number of terrains such as those of gender
and class as well as ethnicity and nation, political and value systems. To be dislocated
at the level of nation is not necessarily a dislocation in other terms, if we find we still
exist within the boundaries of our social class and our gender. However, although we
may move across national borders and remain middle class or women (for example)
the movement will transform our social place and the way we experience this at all
social levels and in different ways. Hence the interconnections and intersections
involved here are important. From this point of view, to think of translocations opens
up not only thinking of relocations but also of the multiplicity of locations involved in
time and space, and in terms of connections between the past, the present and the
future.
Secondly, the term helps us to think of lives as located across multiple but also
fractured and inter-related social spaces. Narratives and strategies of identity and
belonging are constructs which are produced relationally (in terms of both
commitment and struggle - i.e. agonistically). They are also situational, temporal and
subject to different meanings and inflections. ‘Translocations’ also reference the
intersections of gender, ethnicity and class and other important social boundaries and
hierarchies. They can be thought of as social spaces defined by boundaries on the one
hand and hierarchies on the other hand. The concern with boundaries AND
hierarchies lies at the heart of the concept. It moves away particularly from the idea of
cross cutting groups which characterises much of the discussion of intersectionality.
A translocational positionality is one structured by the interplay of different
locations relating to gender, ethnicity, race and class (amongst others), and their at
times contradictory effects. Positionality combines a reference to social position (as a
set of effectivities: as outcome) and social positioning (as a set of practices, actions
and meanings: as process). That is, positionality is the space at the intersection of
structure (social position/social effects) and agency (social positioning/meaning and
practice). The notion of ‘location’ recognises the importance of context, the situated
nature of claims and attributions and their production in complex and shifting locales.
It also recognises variability with some processes leading to more complex,
contradictory and at times dialogical positionalities than others. The term
‘translocational’ references the complex nature of positionality faced by those who
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are at the interplay of a range of locations and dislocations in relation to gender,
ethnicity, national belonging, class and racialisation. Positionality takes place in the
context of the lived practices in which identification is practised/performed as well as
the intersubjective, organisational and representational conditions for their existence
(Anthias 2002a).
Using this conceptual framework may aid in moving the discussion of identity and
belonging forward in a number of ways in order to resolve some of the impasses
associated with the idea of ‘multiple identities’ on the one hand and intersections of
identities on the other. It may be able to do this in three interrelated ways. First,
difference and identity are conceptualised as a set of processes, and not possessive
characteristics of individuals, and as both material and cultural. Moreover, people
produce identity in interplay with regulatory regimes, via hegemonic and agonistic
narratives and practices and as resources for social action of different types, either
exclusionary or usurpationary. This also enables looking outside the sphere of human
experience and interrogating discourses, practices, and structures at the more ‘macro’
level of analysis. In other words it shifts away from the idea of crosscutting social
groups or categories and enables a focus on wider social processes in a space and time
framework. Moreover, it flags much more some of the potentially contradictory social
locations that are brought to play than either hybridity or intersectional frameworks
have done so far. There may be amplifications of disadvantage via the interplay
between the different discourses, practices and regulatory regimes relating to the
categories of gender and ethnicity (for example). On the other hand these may
produce highly contradictory and uneven processes of advantage and disadvantage, or
exclusion and inclusion (found for many women for example). This may help in the
understanding of how the intersections of social relations can be both mutually
reinforcing (as is the case for those subject to a range of class, gender and racialisation
subordinations such as some migrant working class women) and contradictory (for
example, racialised men may be in a position of dominance within some of their own
forms of ethnic organisation particularly in relation to women or the young). In the
first case, social divisions articulate to produce an amplification in practices of
subordination, while in the second, social divisions lead to highly contradictory
processes. Both, however, have implications for the production of forms of
positionality and identity (Anthias 1998a). An important research agenda is to chart
how systematic amplifications of disadvantage, on the one hand, and more uneven
and contradictory ones affect people’s positionality and social engagement.
Concluding remarks
I have attempted to show the problems with the identity framework and explored various
types of transnational belonging which act as challenges to the paradigm of ‘the
national’ and ‘national belonging’ in our increasingly global yet divided world. I then
briefly reviewed the intersectionality framework and argued that it is vital to consider the
links amongst social relations and particularly those that produce structures of
differentiation and identification and structures of exclusion and inclusion.
I have also argued that the challenges coming from transnational forms of solidarity
that link ‘home and away’ (diaspora), mixed cultural forms (hybridity), and
cosmopolitanism are themselves problematised by persisting ethnocentric and ethnic
based power structures. There has been a failure to fully consider the role of
asymmetries of power and differentiations in terms of the experience of these
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transnational processes by actors in different social locations. A promising
perspective, found in intersectionality approaches, requires even further the
development of more integrated social theorisations of unequal power relations within
our globalising world.
I have presented the concept of ‘translocational positionality’ both as an adjunct to
intersectionality and as an alternative means for thinking through some of the issues
raised by the concepts of identity and belonging that are tied too much to a centred
notion of individuals and suffer from what Brubaker has termed ‘groupism’ (Brubaker
2004). The notion of translocational positionality not only focuses on the crisscrossing
of different social locations, but also relates to the shifting locales of peoples lives in
terms of movements and flows. It relates to the importance of context, meaning and
time in the construction of positionalities. Positionalities themselves are socially
produced through the interplay of processes and outcomes of social relations. This
turns our attention to experiential, representational and organisational features of
social life (Anthias 1998a) as opposed to groupings of people around gender, ethnicity
and class (which is one of the limitations noted earlier of some intersectional
frameworks).
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