This document discusses intersectionality and deaf studies, specifically how intersectionality provides insights into international deaf mobilities. It defines key concepts like intersectionality, translanguaging, and deaf sameness/difference. Intersectionality examines how multiple aspects of identity like gender, race, class, etc. interact and overlap in shaping complex social inequalities. The document uses examples like a Mongolian deaf woman in the UK to illustrate how intersectional frameworks are needed to understand how differing aspects of identity and power dynamics impact deaf experiences of mobility and access to language and community.

1. Annelies Kusters, Erin Moriarty & Sanchayeeta Iyer
Intersectionality and Deaf Studies:
Insights from the Study of International Deaf Mobilities

2. Key concepts:
Intersectionality
Translanguaging

3. Deaf sameness and difference
Differences
•Background: Nationality, education, literacy,
language, values, epistemologies, and so on
Deaf
universalism/
similitude
(“deaf-same”):
Shared experience of being deaf (sensorial, social, history,
communication, education, politics)
Often believed to transcend geography, culture, religion, and
so on

4. Intersectionality
Early Deaf studies: “what comes first?” (eg. deaf first or
black first)
Problematic question!
Complex realities: intersectionality

5. Kimberlé Crenshaw

6. • Multiple
inequalities
experienced by
working-class
black women
• Being doubly/triply
oppressed because
of patriarchy,
racism, classism
Crenshaw (1989)

7. Addition of
other
dimensions in
intersectionality
theory

8. Intersectionality: visualisations

9. Intersectionality =
multiple identities?
Intersectionality =
one identity BIGGER?

10. Power
It’s about power in ‘structures’ and ’processes’:
Structures = economic and
institutional frameworks
Processes = social relations
Intersectionality = not just about multiple identities

11. Mongolian deaf woman in Hampshire, UK
• Lived in the UK for the past 3 years
• Uses ASL signs in interview
– learnt ASL from her husband, who learnt it during his stay in USA
• Attends British Sign Language (BSL), basic English and Maths
courses in sign language
• But: limited opportunities to interact with deaf community in her
area
– carer for her parent-in-law
– works in a (hearing) restaurant
– restricted access to BSL language in her area (predominantly white)

12. Erin example
Make the point that whiteness is intersectional subject
position too?

13. Intersectionality: differences in power and
resources lead to
inequality and oppression: audism, racism, sexism, classism,
ageism, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitism, …
mobility and immobility: who can travel?
differential access to languages: eg. access to education:
women, global South, migrants
opportunity and empowerment: eg. allies, and deaf
intersectional organisations: DPOC, LGBTQ, …

14. Intersectionality and mobility
intersectionality
is about power
and power is
always changing