INTERMAPS · Mapping intersectionality: a conceptual and methodological model for the study of inequalities and discriminations

Intersectionality is a concept that has gone viral in the past decade, becoming the most prominent analytical framework for analysing inequality. Its main premises are that people differently positioned in relation to their gender, ethnicity, age, social class, sexual orientation, etc., experience inequality in different ways, showing that the interconnection of specific social positions produces concrete forms of inequality and discrimination that are differently configured in different spaces. Despite the expansion of this concept, there is a lack of theoretical or methodological proposals that characterize how this variability is configured, leading to a prevailing use of intersectionality as a vague concept.INTERMAPS aims to make a significant paradigm shift in intersectionality studies by proposing a new theoretical and methodological model that, while maintaining the original purposes and motivations of the concept, develops a specific framework that can establish a systematization and characterization of intersectional dynamics. It includes a new theoretical model for conceptualizing intersectional inequalities from a spatial and emotional perspective, the development of new specific methods that combine and integrate qualitative, quantitative, digital and spatial (GIS) approaches and an empirical application that will follow an intercategorical approach. This will allow an analysis of intersectional dynamics in themselves, the creation of new indicators of intersectional inequality and discrimination and the establishment of a characterization and mapping of intersectionality. INTERMAPS will enable a better understanding of how structural inequalities are (re)produced and how they differently affect people’s everyday lives, building bridges between feminist and postcolonial theories, critical geographies and social psychology, and overcoming the divide between quantitative and qualitative approaches in the social sciences.