Conceptualizing the Multiple Levels of Identity and Intersectionality

With disciplinary roots in legal studies and Black feminist scholarship in the United States, intersectionality takes a birds-eye view of structural inequality and oppression. Yet, as the construct of intersectionality has moved across disciplines, alternate perspectives have come into view and new questions have been asked. Psychological perspectives on intersectionality have centered on questions (and tensions) about how to apply intersectionality in the study of identity—that is, whether intersectionality informs how individuals come to understand themselves and others, and how this may occur. Identity is an obvious link to intersectionality because the categories of difference/inequality that comprise intersectionality are also the identity groups that we study (e.g., racial identity, gender identity). At the same time, identity is (mostly conceived to be) a personal-level construct, which seems to stand in opposition to the structural lens that defines intersectionality. In this chapter, we use empirical data to consider what the study of identity reveals to us about intersectionality as a psychological process. We first define intersectionality and our developmental approach to identity drawing on Erikson’s (1968) psychosocial identity theory. Next, we discuss core challenges that identity researchers in psychology often face when integrating intersectionality; the disciplinary emphasis on individual-level processes, discrete variables, and linear associations. We then present an analytical framework, drawn from our analysis of Black and White adolescents’ race x gender identities, to conceptualize identity and intersectionality as phenomena that can be measured at multiple levels—personal, relational, and structural. We conclude that a multi-level perspective allows psychologists to see intersectionality in identity development.