Abstract
Intersectional analyses represent an enormously important advance in understanding how people identify whether as individuals, families or other social groups. However, the overwhelming majority of research taking an intersectional approach to date is hampered by limiting its analysis to the confines of any given country. Such “domestic intersectionality” does not reflect the growing transnationalization of people’s lives and family matters given that over 200 million people now live outside the nation where they were born. A key objective of this article is to make a case explicitly for broadening intersectional analyses to the transnational scale. Moreover, the article argues that feminist analysis of families is greatly enhanced when their standpoints are examined simultaneously at multiple social scales including the intimate, local, national and transnational scales. Intersections of gender, class, ethnicity, race, nation, etc. can and typically do shift as we move across scales of analysis. Thus, a family who enjoys a privileged standpoint in their homeland community can, and often does, occupy a marginalized standpoint abroad, albeit marginalization vis-à-vis the society in the country of relocation and enhanced privilege concurrently in the home community. Within the same transnational family—indeed within any family—there will be variability in individuals’ standpoints as well. This article provides a blueprint for how such multi-scalar intersectional analyses can be accomplished and then executes it for one set of transnational families—Hindu Bengalis who conduct their family life between India and South Florida.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aboud, F. E. (1988). Children and prejudice. New York: Blackwell.
Abraham, M. (2000). Speaking the unspeakable: Marital violence among South Asian immigrants in the United States. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Alexander, M. J., & Mohanty, C. T. (Eds.). (1997). Feminist genealogies, colonial legacies, democratic futures. New York: Routledge.
Allen, K. R., Lloyd, S. A., & Few, A. L. (2009). Reclaiming feminist theory, methods, and practice for family studies. In S. A. Lloyd, A. L. Few, & K. R. Allen (Eds.), Handbook of feminist family studies (pp. 3–17). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Aranda, E. M., Hughes, S., & Sabogal, E. (2014). Making a life in multiethnic Miami: Immigration and the rise of a global city. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.
Baldassar, L., & Merla, L. (Eds.). (2013). Transnational families, migration and the circulation of care: Understanding mobility and absence in family life. New York: Routledge.
Barrett, M. D., & Buchanan-Barrow, E. (Eds.). (2005). Children’s understanding of society. New York: Psychology Press.
Bhattacharya, T. (2005). The sentinels of culture: Class, education, and the colonial intellectual in Bengal (1848–85). Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Boehm, D. A. (2012). Intimate migrations: Gender, family, and illegality among transnational Mexicans. New York: New York University Press.
Brah, A., & Phoenix, A. (2004). Ain’t I a woman? Revisiting intersectionality. Journal of International Women’s Studies, 5(3), 75–86. Retrieved from http://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol5/iss3/8.
Bryceson, D. F., & Vuorela, U. (Eds.). (2002). The transnational family: New European frontiers and global networks. Oxford: Berg.
Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. New York: Routledge.
Charsley, K. (2005). Vulnerable brides and transnational Ghar Damads: Gender, risk and ‘adjustment’ among Pakistani marriage migrants to Britain. Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 12, 381–406. doi:10.1177/097152150501200210.
Charsley, K., & Shaw, A. (2006). South Asian transnational marriages in comparative perspective. Global Networks, 6, 331–344. doi:10.1111/j.1471-0374.2006.00147.x.
Chatterjee, P. (1993). The nation and its fragments: Colonial and postcolonial histories. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Chaudhuri, M. (2014). Gender in motion: Negotiating Bengali social statuses across time and territories (Doctoral Dissertation). Florida International University Electronic Thesis and Dissertation, Paper 1251. Retrieved from http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1251.
Chaudhuri, M., Thimm, V., & Mahler, S. J. (2014). Gendered geographies of power: Their value for analyzing gender across transnational spaces. In J. Gruhlich & B. Riegraf (Eds.), Geschlecht und transnationale räume. Feministische perspektiven auf neue ein- und ausschlüsse (pp. 192–207). Münster: Westfälisches Dampfboot.
Choo, H. Y. (2006). Gendered modernity and ethnicized citizenship: North Korean settlers in contemporary South Korea. Gender & Society, 20, 576–604. doi:10.1177/0891243206291412.
Collins, P. H. (2000a). Black women and motherhood. In P. H. Collins (Ed.), Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment (2nd ed., pp. 173–200). New York: Routledge.
Collins, P. H. (2000b). It’s all in the family: Intersections of gender, race, and nation. In U. Narayan & S. Harding (Eds.), Decentering the center: Philosophy for a multicultural, postcolonial, and feminist world (pp. 156–176). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Coltrane, S. (1989). Household labor and the routine production of gender. Social Problems, 36, 473–490. doi:10.2307/3096813.
Connell, R. W. (1987). Gender and power. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Constable, N. (Ed.). (2011). Cross-border marriages: Gender and mobility in transnational Asia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43, 1241–1299. doi:10.2307/1229039.
Dasgupta, S. (1986). Caste, kinship and community. India: Universities Press Limited.
Dasgupta, S. D. (1998). Gender roles and cultural continuity in the Asian Indian immigrant community in the U.S. Sex Roles, 38, 953–974. doi:10.1023/A:1018822525427.
Davis, K. (2008). Intersectionality as buzzword: A sociology of science perspective on what makes a feminist theory successful. Feminist Theory, 9, 67–85. doi:10.1177/1464700108086364.
Dill, B. T. (1988). Our mother’s grief: Racial ethnic women and the maintenance of families. Journal of Family History, 13, 415–431. doi:10.1177/036319908801300404.
Drever, A. I., & Hoffmeister, O. (2008). Immigrants and social networks in a job‐scarce environment: The case of Germany. International Migration Review, 42, 425–448. doi:10.1111/j.1747-7379.2008.00130.x.
Fanon, F. (1967). Black skin, white masks (trans: Markmann, C.L.). New York: Grove Press.
Ferdinand, D. L. (1996). Marginalisation and gay families in Latin America and the Caribbean. Gender and Development, 4, 47–51. doi:10.1080/741922013.
Ferree, M. M. (1990). Beyond separate spheres: Feminism and family research. Journal of Marriage and Family, 52, 866–884. doi:10.2307/353307.
Ferree, M. M. (2010). Filling the glass: Gender perspectives on families. Journal of Marriage and Family, 72, 420–439. doi:10.1111/j.1741-3737.2010.00711.x.
Few-Demo, A. L. (2014). Intersectionality as the “new” critical approach in feminist family studies: Evolving racial/ethnic feminisms and critical race theories. Journal of Family Theory & Review, 6, 169–183. doi:10.1111/jftr.12039.
Freeman, C. (2011). Making and faking kinship: Marriage and labor migration between China and South Korea. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Gardner, K. (2002). Age, narrative and migration: The life course and life histories of Bengali elders in London. London: Berg Publishers.
Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. NY: Basic books.
Ginsburg, R. (2008). The view from the back step: White children learn about race in Johannesburg’s suburban homes. In M. Gutman & N. D. Coninck-Smith (Eds.), Designing modern childhoods: History, space, and the material culture of children (pp. 193–212). New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
Glick Schiller, N., & Fouron, G. E. (2001). Georges woke up laughing: Long-distance nationalism and the search for home. Durham: Duke University Press.
Goldring, L. (2001). The gender and geography of citizenship in Mexico-U.S. transnational spaces. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 7, 501–537. doi:10.1080/1070289X.2001.9962677.
Goulbourne, H., Reynolds, T., Solomos, J., & Zontini, E. (2010). Transnational families: Ethnicities, identities and social capital. Oxon: Routledge.
Grewal, I., & Kaplan, C. (Eds.). (1994). Scattered hegemonies: Postmodernity and transnational feminist practices. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Grewal, I., & Kaplan, C. (2001). Global identities: Theorizing transnational studies of sexuality. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 7, 663–679. doi:10.1215/10642684-7-4-663.
Gupta, M. D. (1997). “What is Indian about you?” A gendered, transnational approach to ethnicity. Gender & Society, 11, 572–596. doi:10.1177/089124397011005004.
Haraway, D. (1988). Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies, 14, 575–599. doi:10.2307/3178066.
Harding, S. G. (1987). Introduction: Is there a feminist method? In S. G. Harding (Ed.), Feminism and methodology (pp. 1–14). Bloomington: University of Indiana Press.
Harding, S. (Ed.). (2004). Feminist standpoint theory reader: Intellectual and political controversies. New York: Routledge.
Hartsock, N. C. (1983). The feminist standpoint: Developing the ground for a specifically feminist historical materialism. In S. Harding & M. Hintikka (Eds.), Discovering reality: Feminist perspectives on epistemology, metaphysics, methodology, and philosophy of science (pp. 283–310). Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company.
Hesse-Biber, S. N., & Yaiser, M. L. (2004). Difference matters: Studying across race, class, gender, and sexuality. In S. N. Hesse-Biber & M. L. Yaiser (Eds.), Feminist perspectives on social research (pp. 101–120). New York: Oxford University Press.
Hirsch, J. S. (2003). A courtship after marriage: Sexuality and love in Mexican transnational families. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hochschild, A. R. (1989). The second shift. New York: Viking.
hooks, B. (1981). Ain’t I a woman? Black women and feminism. Boston: South End Press.
hooks, B. (2000). Feminist theory: From margin to center. London: Pluto Press.
Jarrett, R. L., & Burton, L. M. (1999). Dynamic dimensions of family structure in low-income African American families: Emergent themes in qualitative research. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 30, 177–187. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41603624.
Kalpagam, U. (2005). ‘America Varan’ marriages among Tamil Brahmans: Preferences, strategies and outcomes. Indian Journal of Gender Studies, 12, 189–215. doi:10.1177/097152150501200203.
Kaplan, C., & Grewal, I. (1999). Transnational feminist cultural studies: Beyond the marxism/poststructuralism/feminism divides. In C. Kaplan, N. Alarcón, & M. Moallem (Eds.), Between woman and nation: Nationalisms, transnational feminisms, and the state (pp. 349–363). Durham: Duke University Press.
Kibria, N. (2005). South Asian Americans. In P. Min (Ed.), Asian Americans (pp. 206–227). Newbury Park: Pine Forge Press.
Kimmel, M. S. (2004). The gendered society. New York: Oxford University Press.
Knapp, G. A. (2005). Race, class, gender: Reclaiming baggage in fast travelling theories. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 12, 249–365. doi:10.1177/1350506805054267.
Kurien, P. A. (2005). Being young, brown, and Hindu: The identity struggles of second-generation Indian Americans. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 34, 434–469. doi:10.1177/0891241605275575.
Kyle, D. (2000). Transnational peasants: Migrations, networks, and ethnicity in Andean Ecuador. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Leeder, E. (2004). The family in global perspective. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Lloyd, S. A., Few, A. L., & Allen, K. R. (2009). Handbook of feminist family studies. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Lorber, J. (1994). Paradoxes of gender. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Lowe, L. (1996). Immigrant acts: On Asian American cultural politics. Durham: Duke University Press.
Mahalingam, R., Balan, S., & Molina, K. M. (2009). Transnational intersectionality: A critical framework for theorizing motherhood. In S. A. Lloyd, A. L. Few, & K. R. Allen (Eds.), Handbook of feminist family studies (pp. 69–80). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Mahler, S. J. (1999). Engendering transnational migration A case study of Salvadorans. American Behavioral Scientist, 42, 690–719. doi:10.1177/00027649921954426.
Mahler, S. J. (2000). Constructing international relations: The role of transnational migrants and other non‐state actors. Identities Global Studies in Culture and Power, 7, 197–232. doi:10.1080/1070289X.2000.9962665.
Mahler, S. J. (2013). Culture as comfort. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education.
Mahler, S. J., & Chaudhuri, M. (2014). Gender and the undocumented: Avanzando or abject? In L. Lorentzen (Ed.), Hidden lives and human rights in America: Understanding the controversies and tragedies of undocumented immigration (Vol. 2, pp. 117–143). Santa Barbara: ABC CLIO.
Mahler, S. J., & Cogua-López, J. (2014, July). No one wants to be at the bottom: Documenting social hierarchies among Latinos in South Florida. Paper presented at the Latino Studies Conference, Chicago, IL.
Mahler, S. J., & Pessar, P. R. (2001). Gendered geographies of power: Analyzing gender across transnational spaces. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 7, 441–459. doi:10.1080/1070289X.2001.9962675.
Mahler, S. J., & Pessar, P. R. (2006). Gender matters: Ethnographers bring gender from the periphery toward the core of migration studies. International Migration Review, 40, 27–63. doi:10.1111/j.1747-7379.2006.00002.x.
Maira, S. (2002). Desis in the house. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Majumdar, R. (2009). Marriage and modernity: Family values in colonial Bengal. Durham: Duke University Press.
Mani, L. (1998). Contentious traditions: The debate on Sati in colonial India. Berkeley: University of California Press.
McCall, L. (2005). The complexity of intersectionality. Signs, 30, 1771–1800. doi:10.1086/426800.
Minh-Ha, T. T. (1989). Woman, native, other: Writing postcoloniality and feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Mohanty, C. T. (2003). Cartographies of struggle: Third world women and the politics of feminism. In C. T. Mohanty (Ed.), Feminism without borders: Decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity (pp. 43–84). Durham: Duke University Press.
Moore, M. R. (2001). Invisible families: Gay identities, relationships and motherhood among Black women. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Moraga, C., & Anzaldúa, G. (Eds.). (1983). This bridge called my back: Writing by radical women of color. New York: Kitchen Table Press.
Mullings, L., & Schulz, A. J. (2006). Intersectionality and health. In A. J. Schulz (Ed.), Gender, race, class, and health: Intersectional approaches (pp. 3–17). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Ogbu, J. U. (1993). Differences in cultural frame of reference. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 16, 483–506. doi:10.1177/016502549301600307.
Ong, A. (1999). Flexible citizenship: The cultural logics of transnationality. Durham: Duke University Press.
Ortner, S. B. (1996). Making gender: The politics and erotics of culture. Boston: Beacon.
Parreñas, R. S. (2005). Children of global migration: Transnational families and gendered woes. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Patil, V. (2013). From patriarchy to intersectionality: A transnational feminist assessment of how far we’ve really come. Signs, 38, 847–867. doi:10.1086/669560.
Piore, M. J. (1979). Birds of passage: Migrant labor in industrial societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Platt, K. (1988). Cognitive development and sex roles on the Kerkennah islands of Tunisia. In G. Jahoda & I. M. Lewis (Eds.), Acquiring culture: Cross cultural studies in child development (pp. 271–287). London: Routledge.
Pribilsky, J. (2004). ‘Aprendemos a convivir’: Conjugal relations, co‐parenting, and family life among Ecuadorian transnational migrants in New York and the Ecuadorian Andes. Global Networks, 4, 313–334. doi:10.1111/j.1471-0374.2004.00096.x.
Pribilsky, J. (2007). La chulla vida. New York: Syracuse University Press.
Purewal, N. K. (2010). Son preference: Sex selection, gender and culture in South Asia. Oxford: Berg.
Purkayastha, B. (2010). Interrogating intersectionality: Contemporary globalisation and racialised gendering in the lives of highly educated South Asian Americans and their children. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 31, 29–47. doi:10.1080/07256860903477696.
Raju, S., & Lahiri-Dutt, K. (2011). Doing gender, doing geography: Emerging research in India. London: Routledge.
Ramirez, H. (2010). Masculinity in the workplace: The case of Mexican immigrant gardeners. Men and Masculinities, 14, 97–116. doi:10.1177/1097184X10363993.
Risman, B. J. (2004). Gender as a social structure: Theory wrestling with activism. Gender and Society, 18, 429–450. doi:10.1177/0891243204265349.
Robinson, K. M. (2009). Gender, Islam and democracy in Indonesia. London: Routledge.
Rouse, R. (1991). Mexican migration and the social space of postmodernism. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies, 1, 8–23. doi:10.1353/dsp.1991.0011.
Sanders, T. (1999). “Doing gender” in Africa: Embodying categories and the categorically disembodied. In H. Moore, T. Sanders, & B. Kaare (Eds.), Those who play with fire: Gender, fertility and transformation in East and Southern Africa (pp. 41–82). London: Athlone Press.
Shields, S. A. (2008). Gender: An intersectionality perspective. Sex Roles, 59, 301–311. doi:10.1007/s11199-008-9501-8.
Sinha, M. (1995). Colonial masculinity: The ‘manly Englishman’ and the ‘effeminate Bengali’ in the late nineteenth century. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Smith, R. C. (2006). Mexican New York: Transnational lives of new immigrants. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Stack, C. B. (1974). All our kin: Strategies for survival in a Black community. New York: Harper & Row.
Toren, C. (1988). Children’s perceptions of gender and hierarchy in Fiji. In G. Jahoda & I. M. Lewis (Eds.), Acquiring culture: Cross cultural studies in child development (pp. 225–270). London: Routledge.
Uberoi, P. (Ed.). (1994). Family, kinship and marriage in India. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
United Nations. (2013). International migration and development. Report of the Secretary-General. Sixty-eighth session. Retrieved from http://www.un.org/esa/population/migration/SG_Report_A_68_190.pdf.
West, C., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1987). Doing gender. Gender and Society, 1, 125–151. doi:10.1177/0891243287001002002.
Weston, K. (2007). Families we choose: Lesbians, gays, kinship. New York: Columbia University Press.
Wimmer, A., & Glick Schiller, N. (2002). Methodological nationalism and beyond: Nation–state building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks, 2, 301–334. doi:10.1111/1471-0374.00043.
Won, S. Y. (2014). Rhetoric or reality? Peripheral status of the Women’s Bureaux in the Korean gender regime. In S. Sung & G. Pascall (Eds.), Gender and welfare states in East Asia: Confucianism or gender equality? (pp. 49–65). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Yuval-Davis, N. (2006). Intersectionality and feminist politics. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 13, 193–210. doi:10.1177/1350506806065752.
Zinn, M. B. (1990). Family, feminism, and race in America. Gender and Society, 4, 68–82. doi:10.1177/089124390004001006.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to the journal’s chief editor, Dr. Irene H. Frieze, to its managing editor, Susan Dittrich, and to the guest editors Dr. Katherine R. Allen and Dr. Ana Jaramillo Sierra for their detailed feedback that aided us to improve and enrich the manuscript. We are also grateful to the anonymous reviewer for excellent comments and helpful recommendations, particularly with regard to the ethnographic case featured. We also apologize to the many scholars whose work we did not cite given space restrictions. We wish we had space to include all your valuable contributions.
Compliance with Ethical Standards
All data used in this paper are part of an original doctoral research involving human subjects. The research is FIU IRB approved (Original FIU IRB approval obtained on May 4, 2011; CITI Refresher Course/2 completed on October 14, 2014; reference ID: 5973457). Data for the original project were collected over a span of 12 months, from June 2011 until June 2012.
Conflict of Interest
There are no conflicts of interest associated with this project.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mahler, S.J., Chaudhuri, M. & Patil, V. Scaling Intersectionality: Advancing Feminist Analysis of Transnational Families. Sex Roles 73, 100–112 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-015-0506-9
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-015-0506-9