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Belongings in a Globalising and

Unequal World: rethinking
translocations

Article · January 2006

DOI: 10.4135/9781446213490.n2

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Floya Anthias
University of East London
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1
Belongings in a Globalising and
Unequal World: rethinking
translocations
By Floya Anthias

Introduction

Displacement has become the most powerful imagery for the modern world.
Displacement already presupposes its opposite, which can be thought of as being
‘in place’. Stuart Hall (2000) has argued (in his interview with Nira Yuval-Davis
quoted in the introduction of this volume) that the multicultural question is the
most important question facing the world today. This is defined as the problem of
how people with very different cultural traditions, ways of life and understand-
ings can live together. I believe that this is, of course, important. But we could
usefully turn this question on its head and ask instead: under what conditions do
people with different languages, cultures and ways of life fail to live in harmony?
And I think turning the question on its head brings more clearly into focus the
structural and political conditions involved and acts to contextualise the new
‘multicultural question’ historically and structurally (although such an analysis
will take us in a different direction and this chapter is concerned with another set
of issues).
Current debates around borders, security and social cohesion have reinforced
the importance of engaging critically with the notion of belonging and its
centrality to people’s lives as well as political practice (Yuval-Davis et al., 2005).
They have also reinforced, however, the need to move beyond the politics of
belonging and relate to the continuing importance of unequal social resources
(which are increasingly, and I believe problematically, being discussed using the
notion of social capital) and to think in what have been termed ‘intersectional
ways’. I want to contribute to this debate by trying to avoid the problems of a thor-
oughgoing deconstruction, where the only thing we are left with is the idea of a
multiplicity of identities when discussing issues of belonging.
In this chapter, I will signpost a number of related issues – a kind of state of
play – drawing out their implications in terms of finding a way forward. I will
move towards developing an intersectionality approach that is tied to the idea of
translocational positionality (see Anthias 2001; 2005).
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18 Floya Anthias

Global Power: Refusing to Focus on ‘Groups’

First, I would like to propose that the realities of global power requires rethinking
processes of exclusion away from the focus on ‘groups’. In the context of global-
isation and the consolidation of hierarchical relations worldwide, new forms of
migration, exclusion and racialisation, and new forms of violence and boundary
making, it is no longer possible to clearly differentiate between ethnic and racist
phenomena as phenomena relating to groups which are to be regarded as ‘ethnic’
or ‘racial’. I believe that, alternatively, there is a need to highlight different forms
of exclusion and violence. These are not so much enacted or experienced with ref-
erence to population categories with particular characteristics. Rather, we should
look at the range of attributions that are constructed in the wake of different polit-
ical strategies such as the war against terror, economic interest, fear for European
or Western interests, values and culture and so on. In this sense we need to focus
on processes and strategies involved in the political and economic projects of
powerful social actors as well as the strategies and processes involved in dealing
with these by people those on the receiving end. Such social actors may be either
non-person actors such as financial or government institutions or person actors.
Person actors cannot be conceptualised purely in terms of their affiliation to a
specific group as such, given that group membership is always multiple and
indeed cross-cutting.
We are confronted today with many different forms of ethnic and racist
violence. Widespread ethnic conflict has been one of the most significant devel-
opments since the end of the 1980s, and it has had an impact both on ideas and
practices of racism and on the flows of people fleeing violence and persecution in
many parts of the world; in the process, the asylum seeker victimisation syndrome
has re-emerged. This involves characterising asylum seekers only and persistently
in terms of the act of flight from a ‘home’, and in terms of their orientation to
‘return’ even when they have settled in a new place and have made it a new ‘home’.
We have also seen the growth of riots and racist groupings in many large
European cities, the growth of anti-Muslim racism and racial attacks and the
racialisation of refugees and asylum seekers. These phenomena have helped to
correct the tendency in the past to differentiate between ethnic and race cate-
gories, showing that forms of violence based on different constructions of group
boundaries (via culture, religion, ethnic heritage, supposed racial lineage etc.)
share many characteristics. The enemy within, hatred towards particular cate-
gories of the population, and practices of dehumanisation and violence cannot be
easily pigeonholed into issues of race on the one hand, stemming from race
differentiations and ‘otherness’, and issues of ethnicity on the other (Anthias and
Yuval-Davis 1992; 2002). The recent racialisation of ‘Muslim’ is a good example
of the shifting nature of the boundaries used as props for pursuing particular
political agendas.
Although ethnic and racist violence manifests itself at local levels and in specific
sites, we cannot ignore the transnational and global dimensions involved in terms
of policies, practices and identities. Transnationalism itself, by definition,
involves the crossing and challenging of borders. However, it is often accompanied
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Belongings in a Globalising and Unequal World 19

by increased expressions of inequality, uncertainty, ethnic conflict and hostility

(Bulmer and Solomos 1998). It is not, therefore, the case that the dismantling of
national or ethnic borders of particular types leads to the dismantling of all
borders. A good example is that of Europe and Islam. New borders achieve
prominence in particular constellations of political and economic practice. New
enemies emerge or may be resurrected in new ways. The ways the violence or
hatred is expressed may also be reconfigured.
These processes of globalisation involve the growing imperialism of Western
cultural forms that have become consumables on an ever-growing market avid for
their commodities of plenty, often in nations where poverty and exploitation by
the major Western countries continue to grow. In what the British and US gov-
ernments refer to as the post 9/11 world, we live in a time when the war against
terror is used as way ideologically to pursue often racist and exclusionary policies
and practices.
Globalised networks now characterise modern societies at all social levels, includ-
ing the cultural and the economic. Although this does not minimise the importance
of ethnic and cultural ties, it does mean that these ties operate increasingly at a
transnational rather than merely national level. Groups involved are also at the
leading edge of the emergence of hybrid cultural forms, on the one hand, and
communication flows around racist hatred and insularity, on the other.
One of the difficulties of thinking only about groups can be illustrated by
pointing to the many ways in which concepts like ‘global’ or, as in the example
below, ‘transnational’ function. Whilst transnationalism refers to processes that
transcend or cross nation-state borders, it is possible to differentiate a number of
objects of reference that it can be attached to:
● an ethnic group (e.g. diasporic groups);
● a category (e.g. sex workers);
● a person (e.g. a person who commutes across borders, or a person with homes
in more than one country);
● an orientation (although not necessarily ‘cosmopolitan’);
● processes (e.g. trading rules, or juridical human rights).
Transethnic connections, on the other hand, can exist both within national
borders and also transnationally. It could be argued that the two concepts militate
against each other in the sense that transethnic bonds involve connections
between people from different ethnic categories whereas many transnational con-
nections are also essentially co-ethnic, certainly in terms of solidary formations
or social networks.

Identity and Belonging in Relation to Exclusion and Inclusion

Belonging and identity are words overused and under-theorised in the context of
population movements and translocation. A sense of collective identity and a feel-
ing of belonging to the country you reside in are neither necessarily coterminous
nor mutually exclusive. You may identify but not feel that you ‘belong’ in the
sense of being accepted or being a full member. Alternatively, you may feel that
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20 Floya Anthias

you are accepted and ‘belong’ but may not fully identify, or your allegiances may
be split. Here it is useful to bring up the issue of multiple identities (in a later sec-
tion I will refer to the idea of hybrid identities). Multiple identities may exist in a
number of ways, such as in the sense of co-existence of different identities within
one person (e.g. being both British and Asian, or a member of an ethnic group and
a member of a particular social class or gender). In addition, the notion of a mul-
tiplicity of identities can refer to the situationally salient nature of identity (say, I
am British in the classroom but Cypriot at home). However, identities cannot be
thought of as cloaks to put on at will or to discard when they not longer fit or
please. This is because they are more than agency-driven labels or subjectively
constituted. They are empowered by their very relationality within intersubjective
contexts (you need to be acknowledged (or otherwise) as having a particular
identity). Moreover, the idea of multiple or multilayered identities, or their recog-
nition, does not resolve the problem of the notion of identity. This is because
the notion of identity, in its most conventionally accepted sense, has assumed that
it is a stable marker of sameness or difference: with multiple identities, therefore,
the question is where is the ‘identity’ to be located within the idea of multi-
plicity (see Brubaker and Cooper 2000, Anthias 2002b for different critiques of
the concept of identity). A concern with multiple and fragmented identities still
suggests that identity might be a possessive property of individuals rather than a
process.
To problematise the epistemological and ontological status of the concept of
identity, and critique the forms of politics based upon this, does not mean that
identity cannot be treated as a socially meaningful concept. Such a position
enables attention to be paid to spatial and contextual dimensions, treating the
issues involved in terms of processes rather than possessive properties of individ-
uals (as in ‘who are you’ being replaced by ‘what and how have you’). Displacing
the concern with identity, by focusing on location and positionality, enables a com-
plete abandonment of the residual elements of essentialisation retained even
within the idea of fragmented and multiple identities so favoured by critics of uni-
tary notions of identity (e.g. Hall 1996).
It is increasingly important to think of a sense of belonging in terms of
preconditions for quality of life, and not purely in terms of cultural initiation or
cultural identity. This includes a focus on the range of experiences of enablement
in society, as well as experiences of hurdles. In other words, there has been a
tendency to focus too much on the cultural predispositions of newcomers or
‘others’, and this has turned attention away from societal mechanisms involved in
the production of socially salient narratives and practices of ‘identity’ and belonging
(Anthias 2002b).
The emphasis on integration and social cohesion in current debates can be seen
as a new form of assimilationism (Rattansi 2004). However, unlike assimilation-
ism, the edict for social cohesion involves a respect for group boundaries and the
acknowledgement of ‘difference’. This is accompanied by additional require-
ments from ‘others’ about learning and conforming to the central cultural and
value systems of mainstream hegemonic Englishness (Yuval-Davis et al., 2005).
This includes currently, in the UK, learning the language and pledging allegiance
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Belongings in a Globalising and Unequal World 21

to the throne and state as a precondition of citizenship. However, the differences

of economy and power are not attended to and managed equally, and hence the
ideal of integration is in danger of being undeliverable.
From discussions of identity politics to discussions of the modern self, the
issue of identity sticks out as one of the most important in modern-day life. And
it is precisely when we feel destabilised, when we seek for answers to the quan-
daries of uncertainty, disconnection, alienation and invisibility that we become
more obsessed with finding, even fixing, a social place that we feel at home in,
or at least more at home with; where we seek for our imagined roots, for the
secure haven of our group, our family, our nation writ large.
Asking ‘where do I belong?’ may be prompted by a feeling that there are a
range of spaces, places, locales and identities that we feel we do not, and cannot,
belong to. Belonging, therefore, involves an important affective dimension relat-
ing to social bonds and ties. However, the collective places constructed by imag-
inings of belonging gloss over the fissures, the losses, the absences and the
borders within them. The notion of ‘imagining’ also refers to the ways in which
constructions of belonging serve to naturalise socially produced, situational and
contextual relations, converting them to taken-for-granted, absolute and fixed
structures of social and personal life. Such constructions produce a ‘natural’ com-
munity of people and function as exclusionary borders of otherness.
Belonging has a number of dimensions. There is the dimension of how we feel
about our location in the social world. This is generated partly through experi-
ences of exclusion rather than being about inclusion per se; a sense of, or concern
with, belonging becomes activated most strongly when there is a sense of exclu-
sion. The relational nature of belonging is important here. Belonging in this sense
is about both formal and informal experiences of belonging. Belonging is not
only about membership, rights and duties (as in the case of citizenship), or merely
just about forms of identification with groups, or with other people. It is also
about the social places constructed by such identifications and memberships, and
the ways in which social place has resonances with stability of the self, on with
feelings of being part of a larger whole and with the emotional and social bonds
that are related to such places.
Belonging and social inclusion (rather than cohesion), are closely connected,
although this does not mean that belonging itself brings about social inclusion (or
cohesion). It is, however, through practices and experiences of social inclusion
that a sense of a stake and acceptance in a society is created and maintained.
Belonging is in this sense centrally related to experiences of inclusion and exclu-
sion and must be differentiated needs differentiating from the notion of ‘identity’.
Here, to belong is to be accepted as part of a community, to feel safe within it and
to have a stake in the future of such a community of membership. To belong is to
share values, networks and practices and it is not just a question of identification.
Belonging is about experiences of being part of the social fabric and should not
be thought of in exclusively ethnic terms. You cannot belong to any collectivity if
you do not conform to the gender norms of this collectivity. It is important to
relate the notion of belonging, therefore, to the different locations and contexts
from which belongings are imagined and narrated, in terms of a range of social
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22 Floya Anthias

positions and social divisions/identities such as gender, class, stage in the life
cycle and so on.
Belonging is also about rights and obligations related to citizenship, although
being more than this (as suggested earlier). However, such rights and obligations
are about meeting the criteria of inclusion and there is differential inclusion and
exclusion of so-called citizens along the lines of gender, ethnicity, class, age and
so on. Belonging is about boundaries but it is also about hierarchies which exist
both within and but across boundaries (Anthias 1998a; 2001).
Moreover, there is much evidence that belonging is a gendered process and that
gender itself is central to the boundary formation which characterises ethnic,
national and state formation and transformation. As early as 1989, Nira Yuval-
Davis and I presented a developed argument (Anthias and Yuval-Davis 1989)
about women and gender processes in nation making. In this we argued that
women carried the burden of the reproduction of national discourse, imagery and
practice in particular ways, with men taking a different role. Women were impor-
tant in the reproduction of the ideology and culture of the nation, and in produc-
ing nationalised subjects through the transmission of national ideologies and
practices (as well as ethnic ones); they were symbolic of the nation (which was
often represented as a woman, particularly when appealing for reinstatement of
rights) and played specific roles in institutional and other arrangements of the
nation-state such as labour markets and the military.
Boundaries of identity and exclusion are of many kinds and the difficulty is
trying to think through the complex interweaving and contradictions involved. As
we know, this poses challenges for feminists and antiracists, whose political
projects often channel them into prioritising the boundaries and identities which
are the focus of gendered, and feminist and anti-racist struggles.
Boundaries are shifting and changing; some are more a product of external
constraints, such as political, legal and national rules relating to membership.
Others are inscribed in the body through the stigmata of absence, and notions of
incapacity/deformity via gender or disability. They may also be inscribed through
body style (such as in class relations) or through colour physiognomy and the
bodily and personal style/gait associated with ethnic difference (Anthias 2002a:
277). But boundaries are never fixed and they are forms of political practice.
Constructions of boundaries of difference homogenise those within and pay no
attention to differences, for example, of class, gender, age, political persuasion
and religion. Such identities always cross-cut each other, and people simultane-
ously hold different ones and belong therefore to different categorisations
depending on context, situation and meaning. Such a recognition problematises
the very notion of identity.

Celebrating Cultural Diversity

Claiming difference and celebrating it has been one way of fighting racism,
particularly in various forms of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism is currently
under attack from both the left and the right. It is now being pitched as the opposite
of social cohesion, as that which has prevented it, within the new integrationist
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Belongings in a Globalising and Unequal World 23

politics. The problem still remains, however, of a balance between valorising

difference and the cherished traditions of people from different backgrounds or
different values, and finding a common space of civic participation and agree-
ment on core social aims. This is far from easy, particularly where there are divi-
sions in terms of economic and other material resources and a different
commitment to dominant structures.
There is also the debate on the twin aspects of the representational needs of
people defining themselves in terms of different group boundaries (religious, ethnic
or territorial, amongst others) and the pursuit of a politics of redistribution of
resources. In this connection, these become pitched against each other only on the
assumption that they are indeed alternatives and therefore not inextricably linked.
The pursuit of representation can, however, also be seen as the pursuit of a form
of social capital in its broadest sense and therefore may also enter into the pursuit
of redistribution of a range of cultural, symbolic and material resources (Fraser
2000, Anthias 2002a). When debates on resources are given prominence, it
becomes clear that forms of representation, as indeed ethnicity is in its mobilised
form, are a resource (e.g. see Barth 1969).
However, resource distribution and social capital could usefully be distin-
guished. One can possess resources that cannot be mobilised or do not translate
easily into valuable social capital. Examples include resources such as minority
languages that are not widely used or ethnic resources that are negatively
perceived. Other examples include social networks that are attributed negative
valuation, as is the case for the social networks of stigmatised or excluded group-
ings. Similarly, resources such as money which cannot be accessed or taken out
of a bank or used to create more value may be thought of as lying outside the
definition of capital, let alone social capital. From this point of view, non material
forms of capital entail those resources – cultural, social, symbolic, representa-
tional or political – which can be mobilised or are being mobilised (cf. Bourdieu
1986, Portes 1998).
On the other hand, Bourdieu emphasises the importance of the translatability
of non-economic forms of capital into economic resources. This is overly reliant
on the retention of the idea of materiality in terms of the traditional Marxist
conception of the economic as a feature of social life, and as superordinate in
defining place and position in the social hierarchy.
Whilst culture is a social resource and may be mobilisable as a form of social
capital, the validation of the cultural difference of migrant populations and their
descendants, which has been pursued for many years by multiculturalist policies,
has had the effect of producing modes of struggle that focus on culture and
identity, repeating for themselves the static and ahistorical nature of racialised
definitions. Recent critiques of multiculturalism (e.g. Trevor Phillips 2004) and
those embodied perfectly in David Edgar’s play at the National Theatre, Playing
with Fire, have pinpointed the unintended consequences of segregating commu-
nities on the basis of cultural needs and cultural commonalities. This strategy of
paying attention to cultural needs is not only about unambiguously respecting the
wishes of communities, for it has resonances with segregationist politics, where
it has led to separation of culturally or ethnically defined groups.
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24 Floya Anthias

Multiculturalist policies have also tended to fail to acknowledge the gender-

specific, and indeed at times sexist, elements of ethnic culture or the ways in
which both ethnic and race boundaries are exclusionary. Critiques of identity
politics, too, are very powerful in this regard (e.g. MacLaren and Torres 1999).
The project of maintaining culture potentially creates a notion of a static and
totalising culture. Whilst public validation of different ways of life is important,
who are to be the voices for defining this? There is much evidence that it is often
the traditional male voices that are given the role of acting to represent the cultural
needs of groups. Moreover, uncovering the hidden ethnicity of the dominant
groups is as important as validating the ethnicity of minority groups and welcome
attention is now being paid given to this (e.g. in Gabriel 1998).
A liberal multiculturalist framework means that the dominant group within the
state is able to set the terms of the agenda for participation by minority ethnic
groups and involves a bounded dialogue where the premises themselves may not
be open to negotiation. This is one reason there has been increasing debate around
critical multiculturalism (Parekh 2000b). Multiculturality or critical/reflexive
multiculturalism, unlike liberal multiculturalism, is concerned with the removal
of barriers to the legitimacy of different ways of being and is compatible with
transnational and transethnic identities as well as those that have been discussed
using the notion of hybridity. As such, the identification of the fault lines of mul-
ticulturalist policies should mean a reframing of the agenda and not ditching it in
the name of a spurious notion of social cohesion (see Yuval-Davis et al., 2005).
A starting point in debates on critical multiculturalism must be a move away
from the idea of one dominant culture that sets lays out the frame of reference, and
which sees the issue as a question of tolerance towards other cultures. In other
words, tolerance must go hand in hand with dialogue and effective voice to differ-
ent social groups. A view of citizenship must be maintained where the boundaries
of citizenship are not coterminous with belonging to a community in the singular.
The idea of a ‘community of communities’ is offered by the Parekh report on
Multi-Ethnic Britain, published by the Runnymeade Trust (2000a). Whilst this
may be a recognition of what exists in the aftermath of multiculturalism and
racism, it cannot be a way forward. Such communities themselves are not
homogeneous in any case, nor do they have members who agree on the forms of
participation best for them in society.

Diasporic Connections and Imaginations

The concepts used to understand population movements and identity formations

such as diaspora, hybridity, transculturalism and cosmopolitanism provide different
ways by which culture and ethnic identity are seen to be affected by translocation
processes or population movements. Such concepts are not attentive on the whole
to the intersectionalities of social position and positioning.
I would propose that it is difficult to encapsulate the processes relating to
translocation through the terms available today (for a critique of diaspora see
Anthias 1998b). Migrants and their descendants have complex relationships to
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Belongings in a Globalising and Unequal World 25

different locales. These include social networks involving social, symbolic and
material ties between homelands and destinations and relations between destina-
tions. Many nation-states wish to retain the ethnic identity of their diaspora
populations and encourage their reproduction as well as their return to the home-
land (unrecognisable for those who were born outside it; a home no longer ‘a
home’ or a place where they may feel ‘at home’). All these present us with a
multiplex reality and a shifting landscape of belonging and identity.
Critiques of notions of ethnicity and identity that are fixed, stable, monolithic
and exclusionary have led scholars and activists to embrace new ideas of hybridity
and diaspora. Hybridity and diaspora (Anthias 1998b) are used to counter the
essentialism found in many traditional approaches to ethnicity and racism
(Bhabha 1994). To what extent do they potentially create a space to challenge the
fixity of boundaries that characterise racist practice, culture and identities?
Hybridity and diaspora postulate shifting and potentially transnational and
transethnic cultural formations and identities. These new identities are seen to be
tied to a globalised and transnational social fabric rather than one bounded by
the nation-state form. If one of the most virulent forms of racism is to be found
in the very nature of modern exclusivist ethnicity with its culture of fixed bound-
aries, then we might envisage that progress can be made with forms of cultural
identity that are more fluid and synthetic, such as those that have been charac-
terised as hybrid and diasporic. One issue, however, is the need to be cautious in
espousing concepts such as hybridity and diaspora as unproblematic.
Today, globalisation involves a growth in the amount of movement, which both
intensifies strangeness and normalises it. The condition of ‘overall strangeness’
becomes the condition par excellence of global society. The importance of
‘asymmetry’, together with and hegemonic cultural discourses in this process,
needs to be considered by the new approaches to interculturality found in the idea
of cultural hybridities and diasporic imaginations.
Why is the problem of the concepts of diaspora and hybridity important and
what are the limitations and usefulness of these concepts? Partly this relates to the
importance such depictions give to our desire for a fixed place of origin where we
are treated as social actors (when we are described as belonging to a particular
diaspora by name, for example, Cypriot, Turkish, Asian, African, Eritrean) in
terms of this origin. To think of diasporas in this way is to fail to problematise the
processes at work and to create little boxes into which we fit.
Many writers emphasise the importance of transnational bonds between
communities of origin and see these as positive and useful in undermining ethnic
and national divisions. However, such bonds may weaken transethnic bonds with
other groups which share a more local or national context of contestation and
struggle. Trans-ethnic, as opposed to transnational, commonalities and processes
are pushed to the background.
We must be careful not to treat hybridity outside the parameters of unequal
power relations that exist between and within cultures. Diasporic groups have
been thought of as particularly adaptable to a globalised economic system (Cohen
1997). It is important to consider such groupings neither as essentially constituted
in this way nor as undifferentiated. It is also important to continue examining the
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26 Floya Anthias

more violent, dislocating and ‘othering’ practices that they are subjected to.
The existence of group boundaries and the ways we think about our belonging are
crucial elements in these practices but the forms they take are products of
positionalities and contexts that do not themselves originate from these identity
formations. We must be careful that the focus on belongings in terms of diasporic
attachments does not foreclose a concern with differences of gender, class and
generation within diasporic groups.

Intersectionality and the Concept of Translocational

Positionality

This discussion leads me to a reflection on intersectionality prompted by the

recognition that we all occupy positions in a range of categories of difference and
location such as ethnicity, racialisation and social class. Here I would like to
discuss some of the problems and some of the potential to be found in bringing
together the analysis of the different forms of oppression on the basis of gender,
race, ethnicity and class.
The metaphors of intersectionality, crossroads and intermeshing have been
used to denote the complex relationships of social identities and divisions (Hill-
Collins 1993, Crenshaw 1994). However, it is important not to focus on the inter-
sections in terms of constructing people as belonging to fixed and permanent
groups which then all enter, in a pluralist fashion, into determining their lives.
One view of intersectionality (e.g. around human rights; for a discussion see
Anthias 2005, Yuval-Davis 2003, and forthcoming) is that categories of discrim-
ination overlap and individuals suffer exclusions on the basis of race and gender
or some other combination. One can see the usefulness of this approach, even
though it merely scrapes the surface in terms of the issue of belonging we are con-
cerned with here (for a discussion see Anthias 2005). The sexual trafficking of
young Albanian women in Greece, for example, cannot be seen merely as either
a gender problem or a race problem (e.g. concerning the position of Albanians in
Greek society).
One aspect of this is the production of data which cross-reference the divisions
within formulated groups. However, the very act of already presupposing the
groups per se as useful classificatory instruments as opposed to groups who are
positioned in a particular relation to the state (e.g. focusing on Albanians rather
than working class or poor migrants who are located in Greek society in a partic-
ular way) risks placing too much emphasis on the origin of the migrant and not
enough on a shared terrain of disadvantage across country-of-origin-based lines
(or those of religion and so on).
If belonging is constructed in an intersectional way in relation to a range of
boundaries such as those of class, gender and so on, the contradictory processes
are as important as the symmetries experienced. Since we all belong to different
constructions of boundaries and hierarchies involved in the different categories of
difference and identity, it is important that belonging in relation to a person’s posi-
tion and positioning is seen as multiply experienced (bearing in mind the critique
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Belongings in a Globalising and Unequal World 27

made earlier about the idea of ‘multiple identities’). This means that it is difficult
to construct persons in a uniform or unitary way in relation to different dimen-
sions of social inclusion and belonging. We need to move away from the concept
of intersectionality as an interplay in terms of peole’s group identities in terms of
class, gender, ethnicity, racialisation and so on, and towards seeing intersection-
ality as a process. Intersectionality is a social process related to practices and
arrangements, giving rise to particular forms of positionality for social actors.
I have introduced the term ‘translocation’ to capture a number of aspects of our
modern world, partly as a contrast to the idea of diasporic identity as hybridity
which has so dominated the field and partly as an accompaniment to the notion
of intersectionality. Social locations can be thought of as social spaces defined by
boundaries on the one hand and hierarchies on the other hand. Therefore, when
we think of our social locations we are forced to think of them in relation to each
other, and also in terms of some of the contradictions we live in through our
differential location within the boundaries in terms of hierarchies. The notion of
‘location’ recognises the importance of context, the situated nature of claims and
attributions and their production in complex and shifting locales.
Positionality combines a reference to social position (as a set of effectivities, or
as outcome) and social positioning (as a set of practices, actions and meanings:
as process) (Anthias 2001: 634). That is, positionality is the space at the inter-
section of structure (social position/social effects) and agency (social positioning/
meaning and practice) (Anthias 2001: 635). It also recognises variability, with
some processes leading to more complex, contradictory and at times dialogical
positionalities than others; this is what is meant by the term ‘translocational’. The
latter refers to the ‘complex nature of positionality faced by those who are at the
interplay of a range of locations and dislocations in relation to gender, ethnicity,
national belonging, class and racialisation’ (Anthias 2001: 634).
Positionality is about more than identification; it is also about the lived
practices in which identification is practised/performed as well as the intersub-
jective, organisational and representational conditions for their existence (Anthias
2001: 635). The major advantage of this conceptual framework is that it takes us
beyond the theoretical and political impasse of post-structuralist and cultural
feminist theorising, and beyond the fragmentation of identity politics. It does so
in a number of ways:
First, difference and inequality are conceptualised as a set of processes, and not
possessive characteristics of individuals. The concept of translocational position-
ality, and all the processes that are involved, allow us to develop radical concep-
tualisations of difference and inequality which are non-essentialist and therefore
dynamic and changeable.
Second, the term signals a refusal to think of issues of population movement
and settlement in terms of culture and identity; instead, they are thought of in
terms of social inequality and transformation and in relation to the cross-cutting
social divisions of gender, ethnicity and class difference and stratification.
Third, it signals a refusal to think of diaspora as merely a process of dislocation
and relocation. For dislocation assumes a fixed and given location from which we
become dislodged. Although this may appear in our imaginations to be the case, our
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28 Floya Anthias

locations are multiple and span a number of terrains, such as those of gender and
class as well as ethnicity and nation, political and value systems. To be dislocated
at the level of nation is not necessarily a dislocation in other terms if we find we still
exist within the boundaries of our social class and our gender. Nevertheless, it will
transform our social place and the way we experience this. Hence the inter-
connections and intersections involved here are important. From this point of view,
to think of translocations opens up thinking not only of relocations but also of the
connections between the past, the present and the future.
Fourth, the term helps us to think of lives as located and therefore of our
identities as always relational to our location both situationally and in terms of the
intersections of gender, ethnicity and class and other important social boundaries
and hierarchies. For example, we might be white working-class men or women or
black middle-class men or women. We might occupy a disadvantaged or subordinate
position within one boundary: for example, as a woman I occupy a generally sub-
ordinate role vis-a-vis men. I occupy a more advantaged position in class terms.
Moreover, it helps explain why the intersections of social relations can be both
mutually reinforcing (e.g. minority working class women live in the worst social
space, in many different political, economic and cultural contexts) and contradic-
tory (e.g. a working class poor man is in a relation of subordination at work, but
in a relation of domination in his relations with women). In the first case, social
divisions articulate to produce a coherent set of practices of subordination, while
in the second, social divisions lead to highly contradictory processes in terms of
positionality and identity.
This opens up the possibility of more reflexive forms of political struggle and
avenues to greater dialogue and collaboration between groups organising around
particular kinds of struggles rather than particular kinds of identities.

Concluding Remarks

A society dedicated to social inclusion and cohesion (despite the problems

involved in these conceptions politically), in the sense of acknowledging diversities
and fostering multiculturality whilst pursuing a more just and equal society with
enhanced quality of life, must involve a concerted attack against those construc-
tions of difference and identity that exclude and devalourise. It also requires a
concerted effort against all those social practices that construct identities and dif-
ferences in naturalised, collectivised and binary ways and in terms of hierarchical
otherness, unequal resource allocation and modes of inferiorisation (see Anthias
1998a). I believe that these strategies must be tied to a new imaginary of social
transformation at the economic, political and cultural level and involve working
on a number of fronts, but particularly in the redistributive sphere.
Our theoretical and political work must attempt in every possible way to
denaturalise difference and identity by showing the ways they are located
historically and as social constructs. Concretely, this means acting at all levels, for
example, being aware and problematising our own positionality as well as refus-
ing the idea that our positionality is determined by any singular social location
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Belongings in a Globalising and Unequal World 29

(e.g. as women, or as members of an ethnic group), for this fails to acknowledge

our tranlocational positionalities (i.e. that positionalities are complexly tied to
situation, meaning and the interplay of our social locations). At the intersubjec-
tive level in our roles as friends, political activists, citizens and workers, we can
challenge each other to construct narratives of belonging that break with
processes of differentiation and stratification. We need to question the underlying
assumptions and mechanisms of accountability of legal and political systems, the
unequal resource distribution (of various institutions) across various social cate-
gories and the violence inherent in our social system. I believe we also need to
once again attend to a more radical conception of our social arrangements, of the
ways we work and produce, of the ways we live in families, of our primary social
bonds and of the ways we care for ourselves and others. This is not to provide a
blueprint but to pursue more rigorously a dialogue about the kinds of societies
and lives we want to have.
This involves thinking about ways which validate and respect differences of
location and positionality (as well as the validity of the collective imaginings
that inform people’s valued and cherished beliefs, cultural practices and self-
identities) without neglecting the important issue of equality for individuals and
groups.
Attempts to bridge universes of meaning and develop alternative ways of think-
ing cannot be successful without the fight for equality. We need to attack the
enabling conditions which allow all types of subordinating and oppressing
social/cultural practices. His involves attacking not just those very practices but
the structural and contextual relations which support and reproduce them. The
role of agency and organisation on the basis of struggles rather than identities is
crucial here. Identities exist only inasmuch as individuals are placed in different
constructed identities in context, and in relation to particular facets of social
participation (e.g. as women, as members of ethnic groups, as classes and so on).
I have referred to this elsewhere in terms of the grid of social divisions as bound-
aries and hierarchies (Anthias 1998a). If this is the case, organisation on the basis
of identities appears problematic, whilst organisation on the basis of struggles and
solidarity formation appears more useful.
This includes engagement at a political level around the following:

Naturalisation: a denaturalisation of difference and identity by showing the ways

in which they are located historically and as social constructs. This involves not only
culture contact but a concern with addressing all those institutional ways in which
such naturalisation is constructed, from the assumptions made in the legal and
political systems to unequal resource distribution across various social categories.

Collective attributions: a recognition of differences within individuals in terms

of the interaction between ways in which they are constructed and in which they
construct themselves situationally and contextually; therefore an emphasis also
on gender, class and other forms of categorisations. This is a refusal to construct
people or selves in terms of singular identities. Whilst identity is the narrative
where one is constructed as a person with agency, this needs to be mitigated by
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30 Floya Anthias

a recognition of the importance of location and positionality in terms of opportu-

nities and constraints for the effective articulation (even at the necessary fictive
level) of its performance or accomplishment.

Hierarchical cultures: the development of legal and other state mechanisms

which embody the principle of multiculturality where it does not conflict with the
fundamental basic ethical principle of personal autonomy as a basic human right,
and where the collective claims of groups allow individuals to choose the legal
and cultural framework within which they are embedded (e.g. education or legal
pluralism) as long as this does not violate rules of human rights of individuals.

Racial and ethnic categories: to be disassociated from the space of political

voice at the overall societal level but not in terms of the construction of internal
communities with their own rights to culture and ways of life as long as they do
not conflict with principles of human rights.

Rights and responsibilities: human rights also to be ways in which ethical princi-
ples are pursued whereby we acknowledge the other and our responsibilities for
the other’s human rights.

Mechanisms of accountability within institutional frameworks: scrutiny of

procedures in terms of outcomes as well as intentions and rules, so that racialised
sexist and class-unequal outcomes are made prominent even where no intention-
alities are found, and are redressed through corrective and sustainable procedures
such as positive action frameworks.

If we turn Stuart Hall’s question on its head, we will find that it is precisely in
societies where the enabling conditions for xenophobia, racism, unequal valorisation
and distributive inequality are rampant that we find the most difficult question
of our time: how can we change a world where the bloody stains of cultural
difference are emblazoned as indelible markers on our lives?

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