Overlapping Inequalities in the Welfare State: Strengths and Challenges of Intersectionality Framework

The volume stresses the relevance of the intersectionality framework in welfare state analysis by examining overlapping inequalities within the shifting institutional boundaries and organisational processes across diverse welfare settings. The volume explores the strengths and challenges of theoretical and methodological approaches to intersectionality, addressing its spatial, temporal and comparative dimensions. It, therefore, adopts a critical and process-focused approach while recognising the agency of individuals as subjects of state policies. The contributions critically build the link between intersectionality and other theoretical frameworks and research paradigms, including Marxist social reproduction theory, critical race studies, Bourdieuan analysis of class, critical geography, childhood, queer, migration, and disability studies. The contributions provide insights into the institutional realms of health, education, social services, and care work and examine state practices of racial profiling and policing in distinct welfare states. Overall, the contributions illustrate the strengths of the intersectionality framework in empirical inquiries while providing critical reflections on its limitations. Readers across a diverse array of social science disciplines will find this book valuable.

Başak Akkan, PhD, is a faculty member at Istanbul Bilgi University Department of International Relations. Her research focuses on theories of justice and inequality with a particular emphasis on intersectionality, feminist analysis of care regimes, and child well-being. She is a research partner of CUWB, an international research network devoted to studying child well-being. She serves as an associate editor for the International Journal of Care and Caring. Her scholarly work has been published in various scientific journals, including Child Indicators Research, Children and Youth Services, Feminist Theory, Historical Social Research, Journal of Gender Studies, Social Inclusion, and Social Politics.  

Julia Hahmann, PhD, is a trained sociologist and works as a Professor for Social Exclusion and Participation at the RheinMain University of Applied Sciences in Wiesbaden, Germany, Faculty of Applied Social Sciences. Her research focuseson single parenthood, alternative family concepts, friendship, caring practices, material and materialist gerontology, feminist and gender theories as well as qualitative methods. She is board member of the German Sociological Association and board member of the working group “Material Gerontology”. Her latest English publication is Friendship Repertoires and Care Arrangement. A Praxeological Approach. International Journal of Aging and Human Development and Material communities: Critical materialisms for the Aging Studies in the Journal of Aging Studies.

Christine Hunner-Kreisel, PhD, was Professor for Transculturality and Gender at the University of Vechta (Germany), Social Work, Faculty I of Education and Society Science. Her area of expertise was Childhood and Youth, Child Well-Being, Education, Intersectionality and the analysis of Social Inequalities as well as qualitative methodology. She had expertise in qualitative research in transnational settings as well as with ethnographic research. Christine Hunner-Kreisel was Editor-in-Chief of Child Indicators Research and executive board member of the International Society for Child Indicators.

Melanie Kuhn, PhD. is Professor for Educational Science with a main emphasis on education and inequality at the University of Education Heidelberg, Germany. Her main research areas are differences, inequalities and professionalization in the educational system, childhood and migration studies with a specific interest in antigypsyism.  She has an expertise in qualitative and especially ethnographic methodologies.