0:01

BBC Sounds. Music, radio,

0:03

podcasts. This is a

0:06

Thinking Allowed podcast from the BBC

0:08

and for more details and much, much

0:10

more about Thinking Allowed go to our website

0:13

at bbc.co.uk.

0:16

Hello. In advance of this programme

0:18

I conducted a small unstructured

0:20

survey among friends and relatives. I asked

0:23

this, well, largely middle class group

0:25

if they employed any migrant domestic workers,

0:28

perhaps a regular cleaner or a nanny

0:31

or an occasional cook and if so did

0:33

they know the specific nationality

0:36

of their employee? Did they know anything

0:38

at all about their domestic lives, their homes,

0:40

their familial circumstances, their

0:42

state of health? Did they know the minimum

0:45

wage for such workers and were they paying

0:47

more or less than that? Well

0:49

I received a mixed bag of replies.

0:52

Most respondents admitted a help of one

0:55

sort or another but

0:56

if that domestic help was from overseas

0:58

they often had only a very limited

1:00

knowledge about their employees' personal

1:02

circumstances. But on the positive

1:04

side there was an assurance that in all cases

1:07

the helpers were being paid more than the £10.42 an

1:10

hour minimum wage. Now

1:14

what prompted my little survey was

1:16

a new study of female migrant domestic

1:18

workers, one which boasts an

1:21

intersectional approach. Yes

1:23

that word intersectional did rather jump

1:25

out at me but it's something of a buzzword among contemporary

1:28

sociologists. What exactly

1:30

does it mean? Well I'm very

1:32

pleased to say that I'm now joined by Patricia Hill-Collins,

1:35

Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University

1:38

of Maryland, who's written extensively

1:41

about this form of analysis.

1:43

So Patricia we're going to be talking about your

1:45

book a little later in the program but firstly

1:47

at this point I did want to ask you, I

1:49

mean briefly, just explain

1:52

that term intersectionality for me. I

1:54

doubt it's going to be familiar to most of our listeners.

1:57

Intersectionality is a recently

1:59

new term. that emerged in the 1990s

2:02

for a set of practices that we were all

2:04

engaged in, but we had no language

2:06

to describe. Many of us were involved

2:08

in work against racism or work

2:11

against sexual discrimination or

2:13

against gender discrimination, and we were

2:15

all working in separate places, whether

2:17

it was intellectual or whether they were

2:20

political spaces. And what we found

2:22

was that our work was converging in

2:25

one location or a crossroads. So

2:27

the idea of intersectionality speaks to

2:29

a crossroads, an overlapping

2:32

set of concerns that are shared by people

2:35

who are working in very different locations and

2:37

may not be aware of one another, and

2:39

they share common concerns specifically

2:41

around issues of social equality, social

2:44

justice, and making this a better world.

2:46

So it's a way of not looking at the separate

2:49

boxes that we're in, but in developing

2:51

the connections among the boxes

2:54

that we're in to build something new.

2:56

That's hugely helpful. I look

2:58

forward to talking to you later about

3:00

your own work in this area. Let

3:02

me now introduce my first guest. She

3:05

is Dr. Joyce Xiang, Senior

3:07

Lecturer in Human Resource Management at the

3:09

University of York, an author of

3:11

the study Understanding Abuses

3:14

Against Female Migrant Domestic

3:16

Workers, an Intersectional

3:18

Approach. It's a chapter in a new book,

3:20

a new book entitled Gender-Based Violence, a

3:23

Comprehensive Approach. Well, she's now with

3:25

me in the studio. Joyce, your chapter

3:28

on female domestic migrant workers in the UK

3:30

does adopt this intersectional

3:33

approach which you've just been hearing about. Why

3:36

did you take that approach?

3:37

If we look at the nature of the workforce

3:40

in the domestic work sector, they

3:42

are predominantly women. Approximately 80%

3:45

of global workforce in the domestic work sector

3:47

are women, so it is a women issue. The

3:50

nature of their work is highly individualized,

3:52

private, emotional and intimate, but they

3:55

are workers. Care work has been

3:57

increasingly fulfilled by migrant women

3:59

from the UK. developing countries, so they are migrants.

4:02

And also there's a historical pattern effect

4:05

of the ethnic minorities as well. So

4:07

it's very difficult to find the scenarios

4:09

of domestic workers in a labour market or

4:11

wider society based on one single

4:14

social category, including class agenda.

4:16

We have to look at multiple social

4:18

structures. We can't really talk about

4:20

the migrant domestic worker without invoking

4:23

the wider concept of the global

4:26

care chain. Tell me about the global

4:28

care chain. What is it?

4:29

The global care chain describes a phenomenon

4:32

that particularly in middle income

4:34

or high income countries, domestic

4:36

worker work is increasingly being

4:38

fulfilled by migrant women from developing

4:41

countries. This has become

4:43

a proximate issue in the context of

4:45

the lack of state support for care and aging

4:47

societies in many advanced economies.

4:50

So yeah, this potentially creates

4:52

a division between two different groups of women, professional

4:55

elite women who spent more time in labour

4:57

market by the care deficit is being

4:59

addressed by women from developing countries.

5:02

I mean, the figures are staggering up

5:04

there. I mean, according to recent ILIS estimates,

5:06

there are 75.6 million

5:09

domestic workers in the world. Most of these

5:12

are women. And in the UK, 31.2%

5:14

of domestic workers are migrants

5:16

from a range of countries, including

5:18

the Philippines, India, Pakistan, Indonesia,

5:21

Sri Lanka, Morocco, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda,

5:24

another Asian and African countries. I

5:26

mean, tell me a little bit about how they get

5:28

into the UK.

5:29

Many of them enter the UK with overseas

5:32

domestic work visa. This visa

5:34

is six months long. They have to work for a particular

5:36

employee abroad and that employee decides to move

5:38

to the UK and bring them to the

5:41

UK as well. And these women mostly

5:43

are Asian and African women. In

5:45

the UK, they will be working in private households.

5:48

Many of them are living domestic workers. They stay

5:50

in employed houses, summer workouts.

5:52

And some workers in the care economy are

5:55

holding the health and care work visa. And

5:57

this visa can be renewed and last year.

6:00

year the British government has added care

6:02

worker to the shortage occupation list

6:04

so many people have entered

6:06

the UK with this visa category as

6:08

well. You talk about the

6:11

various vulnerabilities of these

6:13

female migrant domestic workers. Tell

6:15

me about some of these.

6:16

The most common theme we found across

6:18

different research projects is the labour exploitation.

6:21

So the non-compliance of national wage, extremely

6:24

long working hours

6:24

is common among domestic

6:27

workers in private households but also for those

6:29

working in institutional settings such as care

6:31

homes and hospitals. So I've

6:33

got some extreme cases for

6:35

people working in private households. They haven't received

6:38

pay at all or extreme low

6:40

pay such as £100 a month before tax. That's

6:44

a more than slavery case. And

6:46

on top of that many of them face racial

6:49

discrimination or even gender based violences.

6:52

Some cases include some women being

6:54

raped by male employers in

6:56

private households.

6:57

You've drawn on two research

7:00

projects on migrant domestic workers

7:02

in the UK. The first one is an ethnographic study

7:04

of migrant domestic workers conducted between

7:06

2009 and 2013. The

7:09

second one is a participatory video project

7:11

conducted with 12 migrant domestic

7:14

workers between 2018 and 2019. And

7:16

the women you spoke to describe

7:19

being exploited at work in various

7:21

ways. I mean you've hinted at these already but give

7:23

me a few more examples of this sort of exploitation.

7:26

Yeah, we often assume

7:27

that living domestic workers

7:30

will have an individual bedroom in employed

7:32

houses but this is certainly not the case.

7:34

We've conducted a survey with more than 500 migrant

7:37

domestic workers in the UK and

7:39

almost 70% reported they

7:42

do not have an individual bedroom which means

7:44

they sleep on the floor, on the sofa,

7:46

in a corridor. And we've got some extreme

7:48

cases that have been locked in by their

7:51

employees without enough food. Our

7:53

survey reviews that, averagely, they have

7:55

worked for more than 90 hours per

7:57

week. Some of them have been ready to do that.

7:59

to provide service to employees 24 hours

8:02

a day. Isolation,

8:04

these workers often feel very much alone.

8:06

Yeah,

8:06

because you're working prior to household, it's

8:09

a severe sense of isolation and it's

8:11

very commonly will be reported

8:13

by these workers, they're not allowed to go outside

8:16

without supervision from employers. So

8:19

they're isolated, go stuck in houses

8:21

without access to outside support.

8:23

I've got a clip here, this

8:25

is taken from a 2016 BBC Radio File

8:28

on Fall report which investigated the

8:30

situation of migrant domestic workers. A

8:32

reporter is talking to Emma,

8:35

a Filipino maid who has been helped to escape

8:37

an employer who'd taken her passport.

8:40

We estimate Emma was getting paid roughly £1

8:42

an hour,

8:45

far less than she expected when she was

8:47

taken on. Her pay is

8:49

just one indication that she was the victim

8:52

of exploitation. And here's

8:54

another. I stole my passport. You

8:57

had to steal your passport?

8:58

Yeah, they put it in the suitcase, the

9:00

padlock. Why did they

9:02

lock your passport away? They're always

9:05

hiding my passport.

9:06

I'm thinking they're already in their mind

9:08

that I will run. Is it pretty easy

9:11

for migrant domestic workers to leave their

9:13

employers or is this passport business really

9:15

an impediment? It is very common for employers

9:18

to detain their passport. So if they

9:20

leave their abusive

9:21

employees, they will be living in immigration limbo.

9:24

They don't have any documents to prove that they're in

9:26

the immigration status. They have to embark on a very

9:28

lengthy and expensive process

9:30

of obtaining new documents from the home

9:32

office and the embassy.

9:34

Tell me about the violence that

9:36

you encountered in relation to these

9:38

workers.

9:39

We have come across a wide range

9:41

of physical, verbal and psychological violence.

9:44

It is commonly reported some

9:46

employees were shot at them because

9:48

of their skin colour. I've got a quotation

9:50

here. My employment and daughter

9:53

is spitting on my face, knocking my

9:55

head, calling me donkey and monkey, never

9:57

calling my name. This is a quotation of Filipino

9:59

domestic.

9:59

In some countries,

10:02

domestic workers aren't allowed to join trade

10:04

unions. I think that's true for Malaysia, Thailand

10:07

and the States. That's not true

10:09

in the UK. So do women here seek

10:12

assistance from trade unions?

10:13

They are allowed to join trade unions. Actually, there have

10:15

been a few unions such as United Unison, which

10:18

has been actively enriching and organising

10:20

this group of workers. But they are challengers because

10:22

they're living a highly fragmented workforce.

10:25

The issue is how to reach them. The union has to

10:27

work with community groups and also

10:29

some of them are not commented. So we have to be

10:31

more sensitive to the issue. But interesting

10:33

phenomenon at global level, domestic

10:35

workers often set up their own independent

10:38

and autonomous, like organising groups.

10:40

I suppose some

10:42

people listening to this might say, well, look, these

10:44

women may be having a hard life in many ways

10:46

that you've described. They didn't have to take

10:49

this overseas domestic work. I

10:51

mean, you want to argue it's hardly a free

10:54

choice for many of them.

10:55

If we look at the reason why these women

10:57

decide to work abroad, the reasons we come across

10:59

include they cannot afford medical

11:01

bills for family members. They cannot even buy

11:04

ice cream for their kids. They're in

11:06

debt. They're relating poverty or facing destitution

11:09

in home societies. I'll give you one example.

11:11

I've got one Filipino domestic work initially

11:14

moved to the Middle East and got abused,

11:16

returned home with support from the embassy.

11:18

But later on, she decided to migrate

11:21

again. Here's a quotation from this Filipino

11:23

domestic worker. Am I sure of what

11:26

could happen to me in a new place I'll be working

11:28

at fear itself is triggering my

11:30

sadness because I don't even know

11:32

what I can return home alive. So

11:34

this is a heartbreaking

11:35

decision for these women. And then

11:37

we'll have to stop. Joyce Yang, thank you so

11:39

much for talking about your research. I'm pleased to say

11:41

I can now further broaden the

11:44

concept of intersectionality with the author

11:46

of a new book, which casts more light

11:48

upon the manner in which race, gender

11:51

and violence are related. You already have

11:53

heard from her. She is Patricia Hill Collins,

11:55

distinguished professor of sociology at the University

11:58

of Maryland and author of the intersections

12:01

race gender and violence.

12:03

Patricia in your introduction you note

12:06

that we can't change the facts

12:08

of violence to suit us but

12:10

we can change the stories we

12:13

offer to explain the facts

12:15

of violence. Tell me about how

12:17

your latest book is seeking to change

12:19

the usual stories we tell about violence.

12:22

The usual stories often identify

12:24

the causes of violence as being

12:27

biological or human

12:29

nature. They describe violence in such

12:31

a way that is just part of human life and

12:34

I argue that violence the kind of

12:36

violence I'm looking at and particularly the kind of

12:38

violence that we've heard from prior guests

12:41

are socially constructed.

12:43

They are political processes and

12:45

they emerge from racism,

12:47

sexism, class exploitation,

12:50

nationalism and a variety of

12:52

systems of power that require

12:54

violence in order to stay

12:56

stable. So violence is really

12:58

an instead of institutional practices

13:01

that are designed to empower some

13:03

groups and disempower others and

13:05

it works in particular ways either individually

13:08

or in a converging space

13:10

of intersectional ways. Intersectional

13:12

violence is the term that I use. You

13:15

talk about lethal intersection so

13:17

what God constitutes a lethal intersection?

13:19

Lethal

13:19

intersection would be people who are vulnerable

13:22

because we are all differentially vulnerable

13:25

in these systems. We both benefit from some

13:27

systems and we are penalized by some systems.

13:30

If you are a woman you might

13:32

be penalized because you are a woman.

13:34

Certain types of violence can occur to you

13:36

if you're a man you may benefit from

13:38

being a man in certain societies but when

13:40

you think about the lethal intersection

13:43

itself any individual

13:45

has a variety of identities,

13:48

statuses, is located in

13:50

a intersection of some sort. Now the

13:52

intersection becomes lethal where your

13:54

location in that space leads

13:56

to either death or

13:59

the threat of death.

14:00

and where violence itself

14:02

and the threat of death is designed

14:04

to keep you in your place. So

14:06

the lethal aspect would be something

14:09

like a premature death of a baby

14:11

or a human being who died before his or her time,

14:14

or excess deaths, something like

14:16

COVID. We've just come through a major pandemic

14:19

where the patterns of who died were

14:21

quite varied in terms of premature

14:24

and excess deaths. And tracing backwards

14:26

from that and seeing how

14:28

inequalities shaped those

14:30

outcomes. So lethal intersection

14:32

is a tool that allows us to

14:35

enter into social problem solving

14:38

around the question of violence itself.

14:40

What constitutes violence?

14:42

What is said to be violence?

14:44

It depends on who has the power to define

14:47

violence. It's the stories

14:49

that we tell. And those stories

14:51

are not benign. They are very much implicated

14:54

in systems of power. So if I tell

14:56

you a story that little black girls

14:58

are stupid and they're only designed to do domestic

15:01

work or certain kinds of work and you

15:03

believe that, that contributes

15:05

to placing that little black girl

15:08

or that category in that particular

15:10

potentially lethal intersection of violence.

15:13

So to

15:14

broaden the lens and ask what counts

15:16

as violence, is it more than just individual

15:19

acts? Well, it is. It's certainly

15:21

individual acts. You can see violence

15:23

when someone hits you or makes you or that kind

15:25

of thing. But violence is also disciplinary

15:28

violence. It occurs in how we

15:31

implement the rules and regulations

15:33

of society. Some people are more

15:35

harshly disciplined for one set

15:37

of behaviors than others. The

15:39

structures that we live in in terms of institutional

15:42

structures that protect people like

15:44

employers who do exploit their workers

15:47

and who enable workers to be

15:49

exploited. And the stories

15:52

that we tell come straight

15:53

from our cultural myths. They

15:55

come from our philosophies. They come from religion.

15:58

They come from historical narratives.

15:59

So we have inherited a whole

16:02

system of ideas from Western

16:05

culture and before that uphold

16:08

and justify the use of violence

16:11

against some people and do

16:13

not punish those

16:14

often who engage in such practices.

16:17

You look at a variety of case studies

16:19

from different countries of intersectional violence

16:21

as a way of understanding how power operates.

16:25

I mean, why did you select these particular stories?

16:28

And tell me about some of the sources you relied

16:30

on. They're pretty wide, pretty diverse.

16:32

They're very wide. If I look only to the academic

16:34

literature for the very

16:36

good work that's being done on violence, I

16:39

am going to miss the texture of how

16:41

people experience and respond

16:43

to intersectional violence. I start

16:45

with journalistic accounts, with

16:47

film, with fiction, with media.

16:50

I had to go into the realm of the humanities,

16:52

which was not necessarily my strong suit.

16:55

But there I found lots

16:57

of stories and examples of violence. I

17:00

kept a notebook. You're not just looking for

17:02

individual experiences, but you're looking

17:04

at structural practices. You're looking

17:05

at how laws are implemented. You're

17:07

looking at

17:08

police practices. So I had

17:09

no problem finding examples of

17:11

violence. The issue was, how

17:14

was I going to sift through that? What

17:16

I looked for was not how violence

17:18

and power are organized. We know a lot

17:20

about that. I was interested in how

17:23

people resist within those particular

17:25

settings. When they are the victim

17:27

of violence, when they witness violence, when

17:30

they see it happening in their communities,

17:32

what do

17:33

people do?

17:34

So that became a deciding

17:37

frame for how I selected the cases.

17:39

There were cases, many of them, that

17:42

we would not know about had people not in some way

17:44

responded to them, because the violence

17:46

was often invisible.

17:47

So it's turned to those case studies,

17:49

because you juxtapose a story of

17:51

Ms. Dew, an Aboriginal

17:53

woman who died in police custody in Australia,

17:55

with a case of Philando Castile, an African-American

17:58

man who was shot and killed. during

18:00

a routine traffic stop.

18:02

Ms. Dew's story, Ms. Dew was a 22-year-old woman who

18:05

the neighbors in her neighborhood called to

18:08

come to her domicile because there was

18:10

a domestic incident. Ms. Dew

18:12

was being abused by her partner, who was substantially

18:15

older than her, and in fact had injured

18:17

her in one of these events. But when the police arrived,

18:20

they didn't know who to believe. So

18:22

basically, Ms. Dew had an

18:24

outstanding warrant of some kind. This is

18:27

why, an unpaid fine it

18:29

was called. She was in debt, she was poor.

18:32

So rather than protecting her

18:34

from her partner, they arrested both of

18:36

them. Ms. Dew spent three days in the police

18:38

station asking for help, dying

18:41

alone in her cell. Now,

18:43

we know about this case because her

18:45

family and

18:46

friends organized afterwards

18:49

so her memory would be retained. Philando

18:51

Castile, very similar situation,

18:54

a world away. Australia and Minneapolis

18:56

are not the same. I've been to both places. They

18:58

are very different places. So here

19:00

we have Philando Castile, a

19:03

worker in a school coming home

19:05

with his girlfriend and her daughter in the backseat

19:08

who has stopped for a police stop. She

19:11

gets shot sitting in the seat of his car. But what

19:13

was different about this one, Ms. Dew

19:15

died in secret in Finland. The

19:17

state organized after her death. There

19:20

was a court case, innocent. In

19:22

Cutstills case,

19:23

his girlfriend got out of her car and started

19:25

filming with her cell phone. So we

19:27

now have a situation that's very different

19:30

around these types of incidents where

19:32

many people are now citizen journalists

19:34

is the term that's applied to the use of the phone.

19:37

And she live streamed it. Now, she

19:39

was clearly distraught while this was going

19:42

on. But the practices that led

19:44

to Castile's being

19:46

treated the way he was treated were very similar

19:49

than the ones that affected Ms. Dew's case. And

19:52

in these two cases, I wanted to highlight

19:54

the commonalities of reactions

19:57

to violence across

19:59

very. different national contexts

20:02

and among very different people. She was a woman,

20:05

he was a man, she was aboriginal,

20:06

he's black. I want to stay with case

20:09

studies as well. They are so interesting. Thank

20:11

you. In the chapter about violence and the power

20:13

of ideas you discussed Marielle Franco,

20:16

a black lesbian feminist and human rights

20:18

activist in Brazil who took a strong

20:21

stance against all forms of

20:23

violence. Tell me how she fits

20:25

into your analysis into your story. She

20:27

fits into this analysis because very

20:30

often people do not live to see the benefits

20:32

of their resistance. Right? So the thinking

20:34

often goes kill the messenger, kill the idea.

20:37

So we have a whole history of assassinations

20:39

of people who have really tried to make the world

20:42

better. In Brazil, tactics of

20:44

police are particularly egregious. But

20:46

does it work? That's what I wanted to

20:48

know. If you kill the messenger, does it kill the

20:51

idea? Well, quite frankly, if I might get biblical,

20:54

the ideas of Jesus are still

20:55

with us, for those of people who are Christian.

20:57

So what are the ideas now

20:59

when people are raising their voices about violence,

21:02

they're raising their voices about intersectional

21:04

violence that they see

21:05

as being connected with racism

21:07

and sexism and homophobia and

21:09

class exploitation and disenfranchisement.

21:12

When we take those people out now, what

21:15

happens? Well, here's Marielle Franco,

21:17

a very unlikely heroine.

21:19

She grew up in a favela. She went to college.

21:22

She was able to have an opportunity. She did not

21:24

say, ah, finally I have escaped. She

21:27

refused to do that. She said, I am

21:29

bringing people with me. I'm

21:31

gonna bring my knowledge about violence

21:34

in the favela with me. And she was assassinated

21:37

for those beliefs. But I went

21:39

to Brazil. Shortly after she was assassinated,

21:42

I had no idea who she was. And

21:44

I was talking with people who were able to keep her memory

21:47

alive and vowed to keep it alive. So

21:49

her death, in a way, is a statement

21:52

of what we should not

21:53

forget. What a composure to home

21:55

now, because I've got a clip here relating to a

21:57

scandal in the Republic of Ireland when

21:59

the was a discovery of the bones of babies buried

22:02

in a mass grave in Toowoome County Galway.

22:05

Now these were babies who died at a Catholic

22:07

run home for unmarried mothers and babies

22:09

which had run from, I think it was open

22:11

from 1925 to 1961. And this is Annette Mackay telling a 2017

22:17

edition of the Today programme about

22:20

her mother's experience in that

22:23

Toowoome home.

22:24

My mother was the victim of an assault

22:26

when she was 17 and she

22:28

was sentenced to the Toowoome mother

22:30

and baby home. The baby was born

22:33

in the home and died six

22:35

months later in June of 1942.

22:38

My mother was separated from the baby

22:40

we found out later. So when the baby

22:42

died of whooping cough, my mother wasn't

22:44

with the baby. It was absolutely

22:47

traumatic. My mother was told

22:49

the day the baby died that

22:51

the child of your sin is dead and

22:54

was thrown out on the road the same

22:56

day. And when did she tell you about all

22:58

of this? On the birth of her first

23:01

great grandson and she was

23:03

desperately desperately upset and sobbing

23:06

and we couldn't understand why it was such a

23:08

happy occasion. But she described

23:11

what happened to her with her baby,

23:13

her first baby, and she'd kept

23:15

that secret for 70 years. 70 years. You described

23:19

this Toowoome case as an example

23:22

of a lethal intersection that became visible

23:24

through citizen activism. Tell

23:26

me a little bit more about the case and what it

23:28

illustrates.

23:29

First of all, it's really upsetting for me to

23:31

hear that particular cut because

23:34

when you're doing this kind of work you realise

23:36

that many people keep secrets for many,

23:38

many years but secrets are unlikely

23:40

to remain buried. And

23:42

it's good if they come out. Boys

23:45

who were playing discovered the bones

23:47

of these babies. And in tracing

23:50

the breadcrumbs as I describe

23:52

it of this particular case, I

23:54

came to see how this case was really profoundly

23:57

a lethal intersection. These were babies

24:00

who through no fault of their own were born into the

24:02

world to mothers who were stigmatized

24:05

for the sexual situation that they were in. They were

24:07

very poor. And many people benefited

24:10

from the situation in the Catholic

24:12

homes because mothers were also

24:15

working in laundries, the exploitation

24:17

of labor and care work. So when

24:19

I think about this particular case, what it really

24:21

means to me is that you think you

24:23

may cover up past crimes, but past

24:25

crimes do live on in

24:28

memory. They certainly lived on in the memory

24:30

of this woman who lost her baby

24:32

under these conditions. If this were

24:34

discovered 50 years from now, the bones would

24:37

still be the same bones, but we would be discovering

24:39

what happened in that situation. And

24:42

we would be discovering the resistance

24:44

to it. This came to our attention

24:47

because one woman who went to school with

24:49

children who were growing up in the home thought

24:51

of them. She remembered them from her childhood

24:53

in this village as being not cared

24:56

for and being cast aside

24:58

and decided to investigate. A local

25:01

historian by herself started

25:04

this case. We've been talking about a number of cases

25:06

that you selected. None of them

25:09

really seem to go together

25:11

initially, but when you took a step back, you

25:13

began to see how they were all

25:15

connected. Working

25:16

with intersectionality as a framework,

25:19

you don't start off on the front end assuming

25:21

that you have a theory that you then apply

25:23

to the world around you. You're kind

25:25

of finding things out and putting

25:27

together a jigsaw puzzle. I love to do

25:29

jigsaw puzzles. And what you're doing is

25:32

arranging these pieces to see how they fit

25:34

together. And eventually you begin to see

25:36

the overlaps. For example,

25:39

the disposition of children who disappear

25:42

is a big issue globally. And

25:44

it'd be very nice for many governments, particularly

25:47

indigenous children who have disappeared

25:48

and been taken into native boarding

25:50

schools. It'd be very nice if we could just

25:52

forget the past and say, why can't

25:54

we just hit a reset button and start again?

25:57

That's what people want to do. But these

25:59

cases are...

25:59

speaking to us. This is a particular case.

26:02

The Twam case is historical. I

26:04

have contemporary cases. They all

26:06

speak together across space and time

26:09

because they are all cases of social

26:11

injustice, but they are all cases that

26:14

we know about because someone cared enough

26:16

to tell us. Violence operates

26:19

by convincing us it's going to win

26:21

all

26:21

the time. So if I can

26:22

convince you there's no point in resisting,

26:24

there's no point in fighting, there's no point in organizing

26:27

if I am a care worker who has

26:29

no passport, I mean if there's no point in talking

26:32

with other people like that, or there's no point

26:34

in writing your own memories up

26:36

if you have lived in

26:38

a death camp under the Nazis,

26:40

there's no point in telling us about that. There's no hope.

26:43

Then why would we get up in the morning? Particularly

26:46

those of us who are not benefiting from these particular

26:48

systems. My own work began with

26:50

working on black women who society

26:53

said are on the bottom. But recognizing

26:55

there was a very rich tradition of

26:58

ideas and activism and

27:00

intellectual activism on the part of black

27:02

women, a lot of intersectionality actually comes

27:05

from this particular tradition, or at least my

27:07

understanding of it. The violence

27:09

we're experiencing today is a

27:12

reflection of the resistance

27:14

of the past that is giving us a

27:16

chance to

27:17

keep going with making things

27:19

better. Patricia, I think congratulations

27:21

in order because I hear you've just been awarded

27:23

the Berg-Gruin Prize for Philosophy

27:26

and Culture, an award given to an individual,

27:28

I quote, whose ideas have profoundly shaped

27:31

human understanding and advancement in

27:33

a rapidly changing world. Well done indeed.

27:35

Congratulations. I'm

27:36

well done by all of the people who work

27:38

in this area, including my colleagues

27:40

here today. This is a collective effort.

27:43

I'm the one receiving the prize,

27:45

and I work for it. But I also

27:48

recognize

27:48

this is not the work of the

27:50

individual genius.

27:52

This is the face and the voice

27:54

of something that's much bigger.

27:56

Thank you, Patricia, your colleagues. We

27:58

must stop there. Now, I'm sorry to say,

27:59

that this is the last in the present

28:02

series of Thinking Allowed. We'll

28:04

be back early in the New Year. However,

28:07

if you're feeling well intellectually

28:09

starved, cognitively bereft or conceptually

28:12

deprived, then you'll find a veritable

28:14

treasure trove of past programmes on

28:17

BBC Sounds. That was

28:19

a Thinking Allowed podcast from BBC

28:22

Radio 4. You'll find a treasure trove

28:24

of other Thinking Allowed programmes on BBC

28:26

Sounds. Hi, I'm Kristy

28:28

Young and this is Young Again, my

28:31

podcast for BBC Radio 4,

28:33

where I get the chance to meet some of the world's

28:36

most noteworthy and intriguing

28:38

people and ask them the question,

28:41

if you knew then what you know now,

28:43

what would you tell yourself? I

28:45

don't regret anything in my life. You don't?

28:48

No me. Oh, if we could only turn back.

28:50

For me, well, I'd probably tell my younger

28:53

self to slow down, not

28:55

to be so judgmental, but

28:57

all that worrying was wasted energy

28:59

and that a perm is always

29:01

a bad idea. This might be the best therapy

29:04

I've had all year, by the way. Okay. You never know.

29:06

Join me for some frank and I hope fascinating

29:09

exchanges. Subscribe to

29:11

Young Again on BBC Sounds.