Contesting policy categories using intersectionality: reflections for studying migration governance

Abstract

This article presents a reflection on the analytical value of intersectionality for scholars who seek to critically interrogate migration governance in Europe–of which integration measures are an integral part. While there is a growing interest in using gender and feminist theory to investigate the policies and practices that sustain migration governance, there has been little dedicated reflection on the analytical significance of intersectionality for scholarly knowledge production. Building upon work conducted within the field of feminist policy studies, we argue that intersectionality crucially points to the broad systems of inequality and domination that are implicated in the governance of migration, which materialize in the ways in which the latter categorizes and constructs immigrant identities along intersecting axes of inequality. Analytically disentangling how such migration-related difference is created and upheld through such structures of domination and discrimination, deconstructs the apparent naturalness of the state and its hegemonic classification power.