The intersectional right to the city: non-binary and trans people navigating gender, race, and class in Barcelona

Abstract

The concept of the right to the city has been central in urban studies and social justice movements, yet it frequently neglects the intersectional inequalities experienced by marginalized groups. This article examines the right to the city through the lens of intersectionality, focusing on how overlapping oppressions related to gender, race, class, and migration status shape urban experiences. Using a qualitative methodology of in-depth interviews and Relief Maps with 30 non-cisgender individuals living in Barcelona, we explore how multiple social positions intersect to produce specific forms of exclusion and negotiation within urban space, considering both public and private spaces as interconnected sites where these exclusions and negotiations unfold, challenging spatial hierarchies in urban studies. By foregrounding how these categories intersect, our research moves beyond essentialist understandings of marginalization and challenges rigid binaries of inclusion and exclusion. Instead, it highlights the complex, shifting, and sometimes contradictory ways individuals navigate urban life. In doing so, we position the right to the city within broader debates in urban theory, particularly the tensions between more economic perspectives and those rooted in feminist, postcolonial, and queer critiques. This perspective is particularly relevant in Southern Europe, where colonial histories, migration, and racialization follow different logics than those dominant in Anglo-American urban theory. We argue for a reimagined right to the city that dismantles exclusionary hierarchies by embracing the relational nature of urban experiences, recognizing that belonging and access to the city are shaped by a complex interplay of social categories.