Intersectionality in Transnational Education Policy Research

This review assesses intersectionality as a theoretical and methodological approach to transnational education policy research. In particular, we are concerned with how the concept is translated and interpreted to interrogate globally circulating education policies and how that transformation might inform the concept within Western and Northern contexts. We acknowledge intersectionality’s origins in U.S. Black feminist scholarship, but anticipate transformations as it travels to “Other” contexts and is translated to theorize systemic inequality in particular albeit interconnected spaces. Examining Eastern and Southern Hemisphere English-language, Chinese-language, and Spanish-language peer-reviewed publications, we ask how intersectionality translates to languages other than English and to Eastern and Southern contexts, and what analytic insights are gained from intersectionality’s travel and translation that may contribute to its reconceptualization in Northern and Western contexts. Intersectionality coupled with transnationalism provides theoretical and methodological might toward understanding complex systems of inequality through/in which education policy travels, critiquing how inequality continues to flourish within nation-states and global-level hierarchies and privileging non-Western/Southern struggles for equity.