On 7-8 October, GLOBINTERSECT, funded by the EUI Widening Europe Programme, hosted a workshop to discuss the research results on gender, race, ethnicity, class, religion, queerness, disability, and other markers of discrimination within transregional and transcontinental connections and disconnections since the 19th century.
GLOBINTERSECT brings to the fore an innovative approach to studying discrimination. “The main aim was to elaborate a conceptual framework to understand how globalisation and intersectionality may work together as concepts to understand past and present processes,” said Zsuzsanna Kiss, Professor at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary.
Yet, these two concepts have often remained separate in their application as analytical tools. “Whereas in intersectional research you hardly think about globalisation, in global history you do not think very often about intersectionality,” commented Benno Gammerl, Professor of History of Gender and Sexuality at the EUI Department of History. “Let's put the two together and see what happens with intersectionality in dynamics that range across local and global levels,” he added.
GLOBINTERSECT’s added value also stems from its research focus on Central Eastern Europe as the analytical field of its case studies. “It is important to consider how these theories of global history and intersectionality - that are very popular in academia - work specifically in this region with our case studies,” mentioned Marta Chmielewska, researcher at the EUI Department of History.
Moreover, the project serves as a space that brings together academics from a diverse range of backgrounds. Apart from enriching thought-provoking conversations, the diversity of profiles “helps at the theoretical or conceptual level,” mentioned Kiss, “because we have different understandings of these concepts at different stages of our academic life,” she added. Indeed, Gergely Magos, Assistant Professor at Eötvös Loránd University, found “fruitful how Eastern and Western European experiences meet here because we always have something to learn from each other.”
Despite the historical nature of GLOBINTERSECT, academics agree on the connection between their research and the current political momentum across Central Eastern Europe. “The backlash against gender studies or, in general, the rise of right-wing populism and discourse is something that we intervene in our project,” stated Chmielewska.
“What we witness in several societies is a global phenomenon, the rise of the new right or right extreme movements that are always refracted in specific local contexts,” emphasised Gammerl, pointing out the pertinence of studying the intertwined implications of globalisation and intersectionality in concrete scenarios.
Through this novel conceptual framework, case studies have gone beyond previous research that focused on single markers of discrimination, reaching broader explanatory results. In Chmielewska’s research on bra production in Poland in the 1980s and 1990s, “intersectionality is one of the approaches that allows to grasp the diversity of identity factors that build local structures and experiences of workers, while globalisation gives meaning to the chains that bring together the global productions in the garment industry.”
Kiss’ study is centred on the notion of singlehood, taking into consideration how age “has not been in previous talks about intersectionality as a dimension or as a hierarchy that may bring discrimination with itself.” Her work departs from a diary written by a 30-year-old Hungarian single woman from the upper middle class in the late 1930s. For Kiss, the conceptual framework “helps to better understand how singleness is happening and how it is translated to her very special position, from a global concept of singlehood - which actually has no proper meaning if we just use it generally - to a very special context.”
In Magos’ research, the subjects studied are not the marginalised groups but the privileged ones in approaching sexuality. “I focus on educated urban men to understand how they maintain their power while also revealing how their body and sexuality were strictly disciplined in the late 19th century,” Magos said. Power dynamics are essential in his work to better understand the conflict between both parties. “We study how some decide to maintain their power, what their discourse practices are, and how others try to demolish it and demand or claim more power in the name of social justice,” he added.
Building on their work, and in light of the context of the rise of the far-right in Europe and violence against minorities, GLOBINTERSECT’s research will contribute to today’s discussions on migration and discrimination. “Thinking of current debates about migration, it is important to remember that everybody involved in these debates has agencies and the power is unequally distributed,” said Gammerl.
“We are learning very much about the narratives that are present and who is blaming who,” added Chmielewska, who finds it puzzling that “the tensions in these narratives are showing how the logic of the discrimination works.”
Looking ahead to what is next for GLOBINTERSECT, Kiss shared the upcoming activities and initiatives planned to promote the work, including an online roundtable and a podcast. “We would like to invite renowned scholars to revisit our paper, to comment and criticise it, and to give us new insights,” shared Kiss.
The GLOBINTERSECT project is funded by the EUI Widening Europe Programme. With contributions from the European Union and EUI Contracting States, the programme is designed to strengthen internationalisation, competitiveness, and quality in research in targeted Widening countries, and thus foster more cohesive European Higher Education and Research Areas.