Call for Papers. Intersectional Perspectives on the Socio-Economic Participation of Minorities

Effective participation in social and economic life for all is a sine-qua-non condition for social cohesion, and particularly so in multiethnic societies. While the right to socio-economic participation is enshrined in a range of European legal instruments, some even specifically referring to national minorities, in practice the extent and modalities available to national minorities to access various socio-economic goods vary, depending on the policy area, minority group, and country they reside in.

Where available, existing research tends to focus on the inequalities and barriers facing minority groups in accessing specific policy areas (e.g., employment, healthcare, housing). Very often, this type of research focuses on ethnicity as a single dimension of inequality and pays limited attention to other dimensions salient for the experiences of racially and ethnically minoritized people (i.e., age, social class, gender, sexual orientation, ability status) or to how multiple vulnerable identities may combine to shape access to socio-economic goods.

Intersectional research recognizes the multiple interlocking identities that are defined in terms of relative sociocultural power and privilege and that shape people’s individual and collective identities and experiences (Shields 2008). Introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989), the concept of intersectionality initially addressed the distinctive form of discrimination faced by black women; over the years, intersectional approaches have become employed in researching the mutually constitutive relations among multiple social identities (Hancock 2019). Intersectionality provides a framework with which to study the ways in which identities, social statuses, contexts, and conditions intersect to create specific outcomes and to identify the underlying mechanisms that explain them (Tobin et al. 2023). This approach is therefore particularly well-suited for exploring how ethnicity intersects with gender, sexual orientation, social class, age, or ability status in shaping access to socio-economic goods.

Our workshop calls for scholarship examining the socio-economic participation of national minorities through an intersectional lens. We welcome contributions using intersectional approaches to explore the inequalities and discrimination experienced by members of national minorities in accessing socio-economic goods (e.g., healthcare services, housing, employment, education, digital services, protection from environmental harm, etc.), as well as strategies to overcome them.

 

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References:

Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum 1, 139–167.

Hancock, AM. (2019). Empirical Intersectionality: A Tale of Two Approaches. In: Hankivsky, O., Jordan-Zachery, J.S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Intersectionality in Public Policy. The Politics of Intersectionality. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Thomas Tobin, C. S., Gutiérrez, Á., Farmer, H. R., Erving, C. L., Hargrove, T. W. (2023). Intersectional approaches to minority aging research. Current Epidemiology Reports, 10(1), 33-43.

Shields, S.A. (2008). Gender: An Intersectionality Perspective. Sex Roles 59, 301–311.

Topics, themes, and issues of interest include but are not limited to:

• Theoretical contributions exploring concepts and methodologies used in intersectional research on socio-economic inequalities concerning national minorities
• Legal tools for addressing ethnicity-based socio-economic discrimination from an intersectional perspective
• Empirical case studies and comparative research on the following (non-exhaustive) subjects:
  • The impact of multiple identities on health outcomes, including barriers to healthcare access and treatment.
  • The experiences and barriers faced by people with disabilities in relation to their ethnic identities, as well as the strategies to overcome them.
  • The challenges facing minority women and minority youth in navigating the housing market.
  • The economic inequalities and opportunities facing young people from minority backgrounds.
  • The intersection of ethnicity, social class, or gender in exposure to environmental harm.
  • The barriers to accessing digital services as shaped by ethnicity, age, and social class.

Depending on the interest of the authors and the quality of submissions, we aim to publish the papers presented during the workshop as a special issue in a relevant academic journal.

Abstracts (500 words max.) should be sent by 14 April 2025 to Dr Andreea Cârstocea, at carstocea@ecmi.de.

Selected participants will be invited for a presentation at the event hosted by the European Centre for Minority Issues in Flensburg (Germany) during a workshop on 6 June 2025.

We have limited travel stipends for scholars who do not have institutional funding to be able to attend the workshop.