ABSTRACT
Although intersectionality sheds light on the processes and power dynamics behind the construction of collective identities in transnational advocacy networks (Laperrière and Lépinard 2016), and is critical to exploring issues of privilege and inclusion, social movements literature rarely adopts theoretical frameworks or methodological tools that foster an intersectional perspective. Using the case study of the transnational advocacy campaign Nothing Without the Women in the Democratic Republic of Congo, this chapter seeks to challenge the conceptual delinking of intersectionality and feminism in transnational women’s networks by unpacking the centrality of strategic essentialising around sisterhood (Spivak 1996). It proposes a conceptual grid around borders, boundaries and brokers as co-constitutive pillars that define the construction of a social movement, showing how strategic essentialising works to produce and reproduce privilege inside transnational advocacy networks and their everyday practices.
