# Incorporating disability within intersectional analysis: general challenges and French specificities

Célia Bouchet

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Célia Bouchet. Incorporating disability within intersectional analysis: general challenges and French specificities. French Politics, 2024, 10.1057/s41253-024-00270-3. hal-04830051

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Incorporating Disability within Intersectional Analysis: General
Challenges and French Specificities

Célia Bouchet, Sciences Po (Liepp) and CNAM (Lise and CEET)

Pre-print version

**Abstract:** While intersectional theory has gained significant attention, disability remains rarely addressed, particularly in France. This article first underscores two primary challenges in intersecting disability with social class, gender, or race: resolving definitional obstacles to designate “disability” as a hierarchical system, and evaluating the theoretical significance of treating this system alongside those traditionally studied. The prevalent focus on class-like mechanisms in French research hampers the acknowledgment of disability alongside other analytical categories. I then categorize the existing literature into four significant areas of research, inspired by McCall (2005): inequalities concerning impairments and functional limitations (pre-categorical approach); social influences on diagnoses and disability recognition (anti-categorical approach); targeted situations of disabled groups (intra-categorical approach); and processes generating inequalities across multiple hierarchical systems (inter-categorical approach). Finally, I outline five avenues for future research.

**Keywords:** disability, categories, intersectionality, inequality, stratification, France

**Word counts:** 8998
“I didn't feel like a woman for a long time. I didn't feel equal to others. [...] And I heard a woman on the radio, her name is Rokhaya Diallo, who talked about... intersectionality. She is an intersectional feminist. I said to myself, ‘What is that?’ And in fact... it felt good. Because I didn't recognize myself in the feminist discourse. And they never talked about me either.

And she said, ‘Well, you see, a Black woman is not going to experience the same discrimination as a Black man. A disabled woman will not experience the same discrimination as a non-disabled woman.’ And there, I recognized myself, you know. I said to myself: she's awesome, this girl.”

*(Émeline Lemaire, stay-at-home mother with a visual impairment; quoted in Bouchet 2022, 120–121)*

Since the 2000s, extensive media coverage and controversies surrounding the term intersectionality, particularly in France (Lépinard and Mazouz 2021), have sparked a transformation in identity and political perspectives among disabled individuals, understood here as people with various impairments exposed to social disadvantage – definitional disputes will be discussed later on. The integration of feminist and disability rights movements has catalyzed the formation of associations such as Femmes pour le Dire, Femmes pour Agir (literally “Women to Speak, Women to Act) in 2003, and activist groups like Les Dévalideuses (“The Disvalidatress”) in 2019¹. The conceptual framework of intersectionality has resonated even with ordinary disabled individuals who may have had minimal or no political involvement, as evidenced by the woman with visual impairment referred to under the pseudonym Emeline Lemaire in the excerpt above.

From an academic perspective, accounting for the relationships between disability and systems such as class, gender, and race within the structures of inequality, in alignment with a broad definition of intersectionality, is of substantive importance. Disability, like other hierarchical systems and in interaction with them, shapes lifelong opportunities and social
positions (e.g., Barnartt and Altman 2016; Bouchet 2022; Revillard 2019). Yet, in the absence
of explicit consideration of disability, research on intersectionality risks implicitly focusing on
able-bodied people, much like how feminist studies have been known to suffer from a white,
middle-class bias (West and Fenstermaker 1995). As a result, a significant portion of the
population is overlooked, along with important mechanisms of categorization and division in
the social world. Nevertheless, in academia and the social sciences, ongoing contention over
the term “intersectionality,” especially pronounced in France (Clair 2022), has triggered
disputes and fragmentation regarding the integration of disability – next to class, gender and
race – into intersectional theory. What challenges does disability pose to intersectional theory,
and how do existing works address them – whether they explicitly adopt an intersectional
approach or not?

In this review, I offer an analytical discussion of various research perspectives informing a
disability-sensitive approach to intersectionality. I illuminate the difficulties and contributions
involved when combining disability with traditionally used categories such as social class,
race, or gender. I also highlight French specificities in the framing of the subject, compared to
Anglo-American traditions.

The review proceeds as follows. The first section introduces the concept of disability,
highlighting the definitional and substantive issues that must be addressed before examining
the intersections of disability with social class, gender, and race. It becomes evident that the
predominant focus on class and class-like mechanisms in French research limits the
consideration of other analytical categories. The partial and incomplete construction of the
legitimacy of gender and race as analytical categories has been achieved by keeping disability
invisible, treating it primarily as an issue for social work and social policy. The second section
delineates a research agenda by pointing to four research perspectives on disability that are
compatible with an intersectional approach, loosely based on McCall's typology of categorical
complexity (2005) : (1) inequalities in impairments and functional limitations; (2) social influences in the diagnosis and administrative recognition of a disability; (3) focus on specific disabled groups; and (4) identification of processes driving inequality across disability, gender, class, and race.

**Does disability meet the prerequisites of intersectional theory?**

Treating disability as an analytical category alongside gender, social class, and race, and recognizing its interaction with them, is not straightforward. This involves overcoming terminological and definitional hurdles to designate the “disability” category as a hierarchical system, as well as assessing the theoretical relevance of treating this system equally with those more traditionally studied.

**Moving beyond missing or narrow concepts to expand analytical perspectives**

A pivotal development in international social sciences on disability has been the differentiation between the concepts of impairment and disability (Oliver 1990). Building on the assertions of the Disability Movement, Disability Studies have critiqued the prevailing conception that viewed disability solely as an individual bodily issue, labeling it as a “medical model” (Albrecht, Ravaud, and Stiker 2001). Instead, they have championed a social model, defining disability as the social disadvantages faced by individuals with bodily alterations—referred to as “impairments”.

This approach mirrors the efforts in gender studies to distinguish the labels of sexes from the system that articulates them, known as gender (Bereni et al. 2020), or in race studies that debunked the existence of biological races (plural) while highlighting race (singular) as the social hierarchy based on these alleged races (Mazouz 2020). The systemic nature of disability has been evidenced: various branches of Disability Studies have emphasized the mechanisms of material oppression (Abberley 1987; Finkelstein 1980) and cultural
subordination (Garland-Thomson 2005) related to disability, even drawing explicit parallels
with social divisions based on gender and race (Thomas 2012). However, unlike the term
“sexes” or “ethnoracial groups”, the label “impairment” doesn’t encompass the attribute of all
hierarchized groups but solely the disadvantaged group. This does not only underscore the
terminological shortcomings in a still-developing field of research but also reveals a lack of
integration with broader sociological literature on social stratification (Alexander 1976;
Jenkins 1991; Revillard 2019).

Internal definitional tensions may also challenge the characterization of disability as a
hierarchical system. Disability scholars have demonstrated the lack of alignment between
experiences of impairments or functional limitations, self-identification as a disabled person,
and administrative classifications (Ville, Ravaud, and Letourmy 2003; Midy 2009; Roy 2016).
This phenomenon is not exclusive to disability, as exemplified by Karl Marx classical
distinction between “class in itself”—grounded in material conditions of existence—and
“class for itself”—rooted in identity consciousness. The imperfect overlap of these two
criteria is widely acknowledged and primarily serves to refine the analysis of the same
hierarchical system, namely social class. For instance, accounting for both socioeconomic
attributes (e.g., educational attainment, occupation) and identity labels (e.g., self-identification
as “wealthy”) provides a more nuanced understanding of class-based electoral preferences in
Switzerland than relying on only one set of variables (Bornschier et al. 2021).

In contrast, not all authors agree that the material situations of people with impairments, the
disability identifications expressed by individuals, and the social identities established by
administrative entities constitute entries into the same latent reality, i.e., a system within the
overall structure of inequality. Alongside the material and cultural approaches to disability
within Disability Studies, a post-structuralist tradition influenced by French theorists
primarily examines the social construction of individuals as abnormal, deficient, or disabled
(Foucault 1972; 1999; Tremain 2005; Goodley 2014). In France, a particular attention has also been placed on disability as a policy category (Ebersold 1992; Castel 1995; Baudot 2016), in the realm of social work and social policies. Although the international circulation of Disability Studies has given rise to more materialist approaches (Stiker 2017; Revillard 2019; Baudot and Fillion 2021), the compatibility between their definitions and those focused on labeling processes remains disputed. Some authors refute that the people they study exist as a group apart from their social categorization as “disabled” (Bodin 2018; Lansade 2021). These tensions in arriving at definitions of disability that, while not necessarily convergent, are recognized as compatible and complementary, may cast doubts on whether disability constitutes a system at all, what this system encompasses, and whether it can be articulated with systems that have strong socioeconomic bases, such as gender, class, or race.

## How implicit criteria lead to overlook disability in France - and why this should change

Even when disability is defined in terms of hierarchization encompassing elements such as domination, exclusion, or discrimination, a question remains as to whether inequality research can and should consider it on an equal footing with gender, race, and – last but not least – social class.

This question is particularly acute in France. While English-language literature on intersectionality used to focus on the trio of class/gender/race, the current norm seems to recognize a broader range of systems, including sexual orientation, age, religion, and disability (Collins and Bilge 2020). The risk, however, is arriving at an “exclusion through nominal inclusion”: a discursive construction that lists disability among other systems without producing concrete analyses (Thomas 2006, 183). Nevertheless, there is no fundamental reluctance to consider disability alongside gender, class, race, and other factors. In a prominent English-language volume, Sharon Barnartt and Barbara Altman (2016) emphasize three key aspects that distinguish disability from race and gender: chronology (disability can
occur at any stage of life, while gender and racial statuses are typically assigned at birth), fluidity (the frequency and extent of changes in disability status during life are generally higher than for gender and race), and socialization (while individuals typically internalize gender and racial roles by modeling their parents, those with impairments are often educated by individuals unlike them in this important characteristic). However, three other criteria allow comparability between disability, gender, and race: their temporality (they are permanent roles, unlike, for example, professional or parental roles), their role as specifiers (each influences the perception of other social roles), and their influence on the allocation mechanisms of acquired social roles.

In France, the expansion of intersectional theory to encompass disability presents more challenges, especially in a context where the country exhibits reluctance to move away from an explanatory monopoly dominated by social class (Clair 2022). The French tradition of analyzing the interweaving of inequalities, even before the term “intersectionality” was imported, has favored an economic perspective derived from social class. This perspective takes precedence over identity dimensions, which are central in the case of gender and race (Dorlin 2009). In this context, despite recent efforts to broaden intersectional theory beyond the classic trio of class/gender/race (Jaunait 2020), disability largely remains marginalized.

This oversight is often implicit but occasionally explicit, revealing legitimacy criteria that favor social class, gender, and to a lesser extent race, over other systems. The French sociologist Danièle Kergoat<sup>ii</sup> argues, for instance, that fundamental systems of domination, referred to as “rapports sociaux” in French, involve groups linked by relationships of exploitation. These systems have historically been underscored from a social class perspective but have also been demonstrated to be relevant in gender studies through materialist feminism and in race studies within the American context (Kergoat 2021). Kergoat posits that disability fails to meet this economic condition, leading her to exclude it from scientific analyses of
entangled “rapports sociaux” to focus analytical efforts on the forms of inequality that are supposedly the most significant in a given society (ibid, p. 131). This assertion is debatable: the lack of legislation and social protection for workers in sheltered workshops could be viewed as a form of exploitation (Bates-Harris 2012). Moreover, even where individuals with disabilities are not directly denied material resources through expropriation or exploitation, work organizations designed around the “ideal” able-bodied worker indirectly foster systematic material inequalities (Foster and Wass 2012), similarly to established mechanisms that disadvantage women (Acker 2006).

Except for Kergoat’s work, the lack of consideration for disability in analyzing multiple inequalities remains often implicit. In France and beyond, feminist research and critical race theory have worked toward establishing themselves as legitimate fields without accounting for disability, leaving disability scholars to take the first step towards intersectional approaches (see below). This raises questions about symbolic hierarchies between research fields and how they may transpose or reproduce symbolic hierarchies between the claims of different social groups.

Despite these obstacles, several strands of research, though not always explicitly framed within intersectionality, provide valuable contributions to engaging in intersectional approaches to disability. The following section will elaborate on these contributions.

## Four intersectional approaches to disability

A canonical typology identifies three options in intersectionality research for modeling the complexity of categories (McCall 2005): anti-categorical complexity, achieved through the deconstruction of categories considered simplistic and driving inequality; intra-categorical, focusing on a specific group at a point of intersection; and inter-categorical, involving the provisional use of categories to document patterns of inequalities. This section relies on this
typology to present various types of research offering intersectional insights into disability. As the transformation of bodies over the life course is a source of considerable fluidity in disability status (Barnartt and Altman 2016), I introduce an additional type of complexity, termed “pre-categorical”, which reflects the influences of class, race, or gender inequality on the material onset of impairments and functional limitations.

**Pre-categorial: The unequal exposure to illnesses and accidents fueling disability**

Within Disability Studies, the imperative to clearly distinguish between health and disability has led proponents of the social model to shift their focus away from sick and/or impaired bodies, instead concentrating solely on social barriers (Wendell 2001; Thomas 2001).

However, understanding disability requires consideration of the social determinants underlying bodily conditions (Mitra and Shakespeare 2019). This becomes especially critical given the significant role of environmental factors in contributing to impairment, particularly evident in low-income countries (Mitra 2018). From an intersectional perspective, it is also important to highlight how socially disadvantaged groups may be disproportionately affected by impairments (e.g., blindness, spinal cord injury, cognitive impairment) and functional limitations (e.g., difficulties with bodily functions such as seeing, walking, raising arms, remembering). This endeavor calls for integrating insights from studies on social health inequalities with those on disability.

Firstly, exposure to illnesses and accidents leading to impairments varies significantly due to clearly established social factors. Socio-economic resources associated with social origin contribute to health inequalities from childhood, further exacerbated in the workplace, as low-skilled jobs such as laborers, farmers, or small independent workers carry significantly higher occupational risks compared to higher-grade professions (Aïach 2010; Fassin 2009).

Masculine socialization prompts men to engage in behaviors that increase the risk of severe chronic conditions (Courtenay 2000; Cousteaux and Pan Ké Shon 2008), while women are
exposed to under-recognized forms of risk and strain in both paid and unpaid work (Avril and Marichalar 2016). Moreover, racial inequalities in health coexist with the production of impaired bodies in the Global South due to colonization and wars, a phenomenon extensively documented in countries such as the United States or New Zealand (Meekosha 2011) but still largely neglected in France (with the notable exception of Brégain 2016; 2019).

Secondly, these disparities in facing impairments are compounded by inequalities in opportunities to compensate for them, resulting in differences in functional limitations despite similar levels of impairment (sometimes referred to as the “disabling effect”): for manual workers compared to executives (Mormiche and Boissonnat 2003), for women compared to men (Nusselder et al. 2019), for ethno-racial minorities compared to white individuals (Kail, Taylor, and Rogers 2020), or for low-income countries compared to higher-income ones (Mitra 2018).

Finally, recent literature reviews underscore the development of both qualitative (Bauer 2014) and quantitative (Harari and Lee 2021) research, demonstrating how various factors, including gender, race, socioeconomic status, and sometimes other dimensions like age or sexual orientation, intertwine to influence specific health conditions or limitations.

## Anticategorial: The social drivers of diagnosis and disability labeling

Diverse studies have undertaken a critical examination of categories such as diagnoses of various impairments or administrative statuses of disability, shedding light on the underlying social processes. Although these approaches typically do not explicitly claim intersectionality, it is nonetheless possible to interpret some of their contributions from this perspective.

Primarily, a vast body of literature has approached a range of conditions, most often cognitive or psychological, from a constructivist standpoint. In North America, where racial minority groups have historically been portrayed as physically and mentally deficient to deny them
access to citizenship (Baynton 2013; Boster 2013), contemporary research highlights the disproportionate assignment of the most stigmatizing diagnoses –such as intellectual disability (Blanchett 2010) or schizophrenia (Metzl 2010)– to ethno-racial minorities. In Europe, there is a predominant emphasis on social class. For instance, studies reveal a contrast between children from working-class backgrounds, who are disproportionately attributed diagnoses of intellectual disability (Mazereau 2001) or behavioral disorders (Dupont 2016), and children from middle or upper-class backgrounds, who may receive the more prestigious diagnosis of specific learning disorders (Garcia 2013; Morel 2014).

French research has also focused on the administrative statuses of disability, highlighting the framing effects influencing their acquisition. For instance, the overrepresentation of working-age men among those who hold such disability statuses, compared to the entire population declaring long-term functional limitations, can be interpreted as indicative of the importance for these men to obtain recognition that their lack of employment is legitimate - in contrast to women or older people, for whom unemployment is perceived as more commonplace (Ravaud and Ville 2003). Additionally, studies have shown that administrative statuses of disability are more readily claimed by middle-class individuals than by those from the upper class, who distance themselves more from the associated stigma, and those from the working class, who are less familiar with bureaucratic norms (Bertrand, Caradec, and Eidelman 2014).

These perspectives have seen a resurgence with concepts of ableism and disablism (Davis 1995; Campbell 2009; Goodley 2014) being introduced into the French language (Parent 2017). These works diverge from earlier research by asserting that disability-related labels are not only socially constructed but also that disability itself represents the social and institutional construction of normalcy and abnormality (Bodin 2018; Tabin et al. 2019). The intersectional potential of this research lies in demonstrating that this construction affects individuals differently based on their genders, social classes, or other factors.
Intracategorial: Rich insights on disabled women... and the need to study other groups

The concept of intersectionality originated from perspectives centered on Black women within the context of Black feminism, aiming to highlight that specific subgroups (e.g. Black women) have unique experiences that tend to be overlooked due to the focus on dominant fractions of disadvantaged groups (e.g., White women, Black men; Crenshaw 1989; 1991). Subsequent critiques have emphasized the importance of also examining how gender, race, and class co-construct inequalities from the perspective of individuals who are advantaged in one or more of these systems: men, White people, and/or those from upper classes (West and Fenstermaker 1995; Yuval-Davis 2015). Overall, the in-depth analysis of specific groups—often those politically underrepresented (Jaunait and Chauvin 2012)—remains central in research that adopts this theory.

In disability research adopting an intersectional perspective, this analytical stance has also been foundational, with a pioneering role of Feminist disability studies—a cluster of research originating from Disability studies, which highlights the oversight of feminist theories within the field (see Bê 2019; Masson 2022 for a presentation). Feminist disability studies emphasize that disabled women experience both specific cultural inferiorization (Garland-Thomson 2002) and socioeconomic marginalization linked to their “rolelessness” (Fine and Asch 1981), meaning restrictions both in paid and unpaid work. Furthermore, the stereotype depicting disabled individuals as mere recipients of care fails to acknowledge the caregiving role performed by disabled women (Morris 1993). Ultimately, disabled women find themselves excluded from feminist movements, whose organizational structures are often inaccessible (Wendell 2001). They are also inadequately represented in the disability movement and disability studies: the social model fails to account for lived experience, a central concept imported from feminist theory into Feminist disability studies (Thomas 2001). These ideas have circulated internationally, as demonstrated by the creation of the French-speaking
research network Réseau d'études handi-féministes ("Disability and feminist studies network") in 2020. These international studies have placed particular emphasis on certain themes, notably experiences of motherhood (see below) and the increased exposure to violence among disabled women (Aulombard-Arnaud 2019; Diederich 2006; Shah, Tsitsou, and Woodin 2016; Thiara, Hague, and Mullender 2011).

In contrast, studies focusing on other groups of disabled people have been significantly fewer and less institutionalized. The development of research on masculinities (Connell 2005) has inspired some studies on the specific challenges faced by disabled men who do not fit the virility standard of hegemonic masculinity (Dufour 2013; Shakespeare 1999; Shuttleworth, Wedgwood, and Wilson 2012). Through the lens of parenthood, several studies have centered on disabled mothers (Doé 2019; Frederick 2017; Grue and Lærum 2002; Malacrida 2019), while studies on disabled fathers have been much less common (Kilkey and Clarke 2010).

These studies illuminate the stereotypes faced by disabled parents, the material barriers encountered in fulfilling maternal and paternal roles, and the social control exerted when these roles are deviated from.

Another series of studies exploring the situations of disabled LGBT+ individuals have highlighted the shortcomings in sex education and structural support for these populations, as well as their exposure to stigma and marginalization (Martino 2017). These issues may be compounded by their social exclusion from both queer and disabled communities (Egner 2019). For instance, disability experienced by transgender individuals is often overlooked, despite iatrogenic causes and social violence disproportionately exposing them to health problems and limitations during gender transitions. Conversely, transitions of disabled individuals are often met with particular suspicion and paternalism, especially in cases of psychological, cognitive, or intellectual impairments (Baril 2018). Asserting asexuality also
appears highly challenging for disabled people, as the disability movement has fought against
the stereotype of desexualizing disabled individuals (Cuthbert 2017).

Finally, works targeting men and women from racial minorities reveal the intertwining of racist and sexist stereotypes fueling invisibility, exclusion, and heightened stigma, with material consequences such as denial of disability compensation to African-American veterans (Jefferson 2003), overexposure to mass incarceration for African-American and Latino disabled men (Erevelles 2014), or extreme socioeconomic disadvantage for Black disabled women (Miles 2019). Meanwhile, in France, as the concept of race is still met with strong defiance, rare studies have rather focused on disabled individuals with a migration background. These shed light on the role of migratory trajectories in the appropriation of disability policies (Wang 2013) and the complexity of identity construction processes – for example, how the cultural and linguistic specificities of the Deaf community may overshadow those of ethnic communities (Bedoin 2008; 2015).

**Intercategorial: From analogies to emerging dialogues between research fields**

Finally, within disability research, certain studies have endeavored to explore the mechanisms
contributing to disability-related inequalities by contextualizing them alongside other forms of
inequalities associated with categories such as gender, class, or race. This examination has
been conducted through two main approaches: (1) analogy, which seeks to elucidate
similarities or distinctions across results from Disability Studies and other research fields such
as Gender Studies and critical race theory, and (2) intersectionality, which integrates different
research fields to explore how inequalities are co-constructed based on multiple categories.

The first approach has led to insightful comparisons across social movements and research
fields. Documented instances of competition between groups include Black individuals and
women advocating for their right to vote in the United States by using rhetoric that
distinguished them from individuals with intellectual impairments (Baudot 2023). A tension
between imitation and lack of dialogue is also evident in research. Critical disability scholarship and critical race discourse have implicitly referenced each other without achieving convergence: disability scholars have drawn on the Civil Rights Movement model while focusing on white disabled individuals, while racial justice scholars have often used disability metaphors while focusing on non-disabled ethnic minorities (Frederick and Shifrer 2019; Collins and Bilge 2020). On another note, Disability Studies were shown to share two strategies with Gender Studies, another research field that has translated activist principles into academia (Revillard 2022): denaturalizing inequalities by critiquing biological explanations and creating concepts to distinguish encountered disadvantages (gender, disability) from socially framed individual bodily attributes (sex, impairment); and redefining concepts initially conceived from dominant groups, such as extending the notion of work beyond paid labor. Lastly, in disability scholarship, crip theory introduced an analogy between disability and marginalized gender or sexual identities, with queer theory serving as both an inspirational and contentious reference point (Kafer 2013; McRuer 2018; Puiseux 2018).

While queer theory offers insights into challenging societal norms, stigma, and asserting identity, crip theory aims to surpass its shortcomings, particularly its oversight of disabled experiences and its use of terminology laden with ableist connotations.

A second line of research has focused on exploring the connections between disability and other analytical categories, considering them as interlocked hierarchical systems. Expanding upon the foundational work of Feminist Disability Studies, the intersection of gender and disability has been a central theme in academic production. This is evidenced by a series of special issues in English-language gender journals dating back to the 1980s (Brooks and Deegan 1981; Kittay et al. 2001; 2002; Hall 2002; 2015; Naples, Mauldin, and Dillaway 2019). Recent French-language journals have mirrored this trend (Brasseur and Nayak 2018; Mosconi, Revillard, and Vouillot 2022), and the intersection of gender and disability is also
central in a special issue on “disability and intersectionalité” despite the coordinators initially
aiming for a broader scope (Arneton et al. 2021). The disability/age nexus has fueled another
systematic research program, through the lens of the life course approach (Priestley 2003;
Heller 2011; Dillaway, Shandra, and Bender 2023). This original perspective notably
highlights the specific configurations experienced by disabled individuals at each stage of the
life cycle, from the assessment of impairments based on neurodevelopmental norms during
childhood to the decreased prominence of disability in old age. It has received less attention in
France, with only a few papers addressing topics such as the ageing of life-long disabled
people (Azéma and Martinez 2005) or the differences in electoral practices between this
group and those who become disabled as they age (Baudot and Bouquet 2023).

Beyond these specific approaches, research that combines disability with other hierarchical
systems primarily occurs within thematic studies, often fragmented and lacking explicit
reference to intersectional theory. Their abundance and dispersion pose challenges for
systematic inventory, so only select examples are discussed here. In education, Anglo-
American literature extensively examines how ethnic or racial status affects placement into
special schools, ranging from critiques of racialization (Blanchett 2010; Moore and Slee 2012;
Harry and Klingner 2014) to socioeconomic status's role as a confounding factor (Shifrer,
Muller, and Callahan 2011; Morgan et al. 2015). Further analysis by country refines these
findings, revealing, for instance, the overrepresentation of children of Turkish immigrants in
Germany and children of immigrant families from the Middle East and Africa in Sweden
(Kozleski and Waitoller 2011). In France, the emphasis has unsurprisingly been on the role of
social class, not only in educational placements (e.g., Courtot 2023; Dupont 2016) but also in
mainstream education up to university pathways of disabled students (Milon 2021).

Conversely, pupils in special education settings appear to have relatively uniform - and low -
educational attainments across social origins (Bouchet 2022). In contrast, there is only limited
evidence available that gender socialization and racial ascription shape experiences of
disability during schooling, such as the restrictions experienced, how they are dealt with by
teachers, and the practices of disabled learners who face these obstacles (ibid). Studies on
work and employment also provide intersectional insights, revealing inequalities in job access
and career progression between disabled men and women (Engel and Munger 2003; Pont
2021; Boudinet and Revillard 2022), discrepancies in job retention and access to
accommodations following disability onset based on social class (Lejeune 2020; Roupnel-
Fuentes 2021), and professional disadvantages experienced by disabled racial minorities,
particularly women (Fuentes et al. 2024; Maroto, Pettinicchio, and Patterson 2019). Analyses
of couple formation (Banens et al. 2007; Bouchet 2021) and caregiving within families
(Banens and Marcellini 2015; Cheneau 2019; Shandra and Penner 2017) primarily focus on
intersections between gender and disability, with some studies acknowledging connections
with class and race (Kittay 1999). Lastly, studies on disabled individuals' healthcare access
highlight issues such as delayed care due to low socioeconomic resources (Pichetti et al.
2016) and/or lack of legal residence status (Peterson-Besse et al. 2014), as well as degraded
care experiences resulting from sexist and racist stereotypes (Pryma 2017) and neglect of
gender structures in care organization (Thorne, McCormick, and Carty 1997). These
phenomena can exacerbate the aforementioned social inequalities in health and functioning.
For instance, implicit social class and gender norms in care protocols for people with brain
injuries may result in fewer opportunities for neurological recovery for working-class
individuals and women (Darmon 2021).

Five avenues for further researchDespite the complexities in integrating disability into
intersectional theory due to terminology and theoretical challenges, existing research has
produced valuable insights. Drawing on various studies that may qualify as intersectional—
even if not explicitly identified as such by the authors—this review has highlighted how
including disability enriches the understanding of inequalities and their mechanisms across four approaches: “pre-categorical”, “anti-categorical”, “intra-categorical”, and “inter-categorical”. As this burgeoning literature is establishing itself as an important research agenda, future research will have to address five main challenges.

Firstly, studies on disability would benefit from developing a conceptual framework aligned with the literature on social stratification to support arguments regarding whether and how disability constitutes a hierarchical system. For example, while disability studies have extensively examined medical and administrative categories, no single term has emerged to encompass both dominant and dominated groups within the disability system—similar to “sex” for the gender system or “ethnoracial group” for the race system. The concepts and theories of inequality research suggest moving beyond focusing solely on disabled individuals. This shift could inspire studies that intentionally target the dominant group—able-bodied people—similar to studies on elites (targeting the upper classes), masculinities (targeting men), or whiteness (targeting white people). Following the same logic, these studies would highlight how social norms presented as universal actually privilege able-bodied people, while also accounting for the diversity of models of able-bodiedness.

Secondly, a significant effort towards dialogue is needed to address the imbalances and failures in dialogue between pre-, anti-, intra-, and inter-categorical perspectives. The literature on the social causes of health problems and accidents leading to impairments and functional limitations remains largely disconnected from disability research. Without compromising the essential focus of disability studies on the social causes of restrictions experienced by disabled people, recognizing the complementary insights of the "pre-categorical" perspectives for understanding intersectional phenomena is important.

Additionally, the development within anti-categorical perspectives of definitions that reduce disability to a social construction of anomaly poses increasing risks of rupture compared to
inter-categorical perspectives (Winance 2021). This could result in denying any possibility of inequality-driving mechanisms not passing through categorization as abnormal, or interpreting disability solely as a product of labeling processes related to other hierarchical systems such as social class, thus denying its autonomous existence as a hierarchical system.

Thirdly, while the lack of integration between disability studies and research on race (Bell 2011; Frederick and Shifrer 2019), migration (Burns 2017), and colonialism (Stienstra and Nyerere 2016) has been highlighted in the international literature, these blind spots appear even more critical in a French context reluctant to consider the analytical category of “race” (Clair 2022). This poses both scientific and political challenges: the use of intersectionality to discuss disability must not overlook the analytical categories of race, migration, and colonialism, lest it exacerbate a “whitening of intersectionality” (“blanchiment de l’intersectionnalité”; Bilge 2015).

Fourthly, although there is a solid knowledge basis on the intersections between disability and other analytical categories, as captured by scientific objectification, the subjective perceptions of these intersections by disabled people remain largely undocumented. A recent study indicates that disabled individuals belonging to multiple disadvantaged groups most often express unifactorial interpretations of inequalities, although secondary socializations may lead them to more complex frameworks (Bouchet and Boudinet 2023). In contrast, it appears that the intersectional perspective is gradually gaining ground within disability movements, at least in the British context (Evans 2022). These initial findings would need further exploration.

Fifthly and finally, a better consideration of the diversity of types and degrees of impairment would be desirable in each of the research perspectives capable of shedding light on intersectional theory through the lens of disability. While several international studies cited in this review identify this issue (e.g., Martino 2017; Shuttleworth, Wedgwood, and Wilson
2012), it remains much less prominent on the agenda in France. Yet, almost all anti-categorical approaches target cognitive or psychological conditions, whereas intra- or inter-categorical approaches predominantly concern mobility or visual conditions. Continuing this trend without reflection risks reproducing symbolic inequalities between disability groups (Deal 2003) while also creating harmful epistemological gaps for a comprehensive and integrated understanding of disability, as articulated with gender, race, class, and more.

## Acknowledgment

The author is affiliated with LIEPP, which is supported by the IdEx Université Paris Cité (ANR-18-IDEX-0001). Special thanks go to the participants of the young researchers' workshop organized by EHESS's GT Handicap(s) et sociétés, as well as to Pierre-Yves Baudot, for their insightful feedback on earlier versions of this work. This review also greatly benefits from Isabelle Guinaudeau's keen comments, which have significantly helped improve its form and content

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<footnote n="1">¹ Several of these collectives and individual activists share resources related to intersectionality, either in a general sense or focusing on specific intersections, on their personal websites. A few examples:

https://lesdevalideuses.org/ressources-2/ressources/

https://clhee.org/category/ressources/feminisme-intersectionnalite/</footnote>
https://cle-autistes.fr/category/anti-racisme/

https://www.harrietdegouge.fr/tagged/intersectionality

Kergoat favors the term “consubstantiality” over “intersectionality” to underscore the importance of a unified approach, rather than considering distinct systems that accumulate - a perspective she attributes to intersectionality.

As a White researcher, I acknowledge that my own research sometimes falls prey to this bias. Intersectionality scholars have highlighted how individuals tend to primarily consider the forms of subjugation they experience (West and Fenstermaker 1995), and I am not exempt. This emphasizes the importance of valuing racial minority or migrant researchers on this subject, and of White researchers being especially vigilant.