Intersectionality and social movements: a comparison of environmentalist and disability rights movements

Abstract

Demands for intersectional organising have long been a priority for Black feminists, and in recent years it has also been taken up by a wide variety of social movement actors operating across different contexts. Analysing and actualising intersectionality as a strategic and generative tool presents a series of theoretical and empirical challenges and opportunities. In this article, we think through and about intersectionality in relation to two different social movements in the UK: the environmentalist movement and the disability rights movement. Discourse analysis undertaken of a range of groups’ websites indicate that intersectional frameworks undergird some aspects of the ways that these two movements organise. We reflect on the ways that intersectional discourse is taken up by some groups within both movements to situate their politics. We also examine how intersectional frameworks shape some groups’ framing of the issues under their ownership, and who the labour of intersectional organising falls to: (more often than not) women of colour.

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