Strategic Intersectionality: Narratives of Minority Members of Parliament’ as Substantive Acts

Ethnic and racial minorities are numerically underrepresented in most advanced democracies and their parliaments. The consequential inequality is a key question in debates about the functioning of representative democracies. To study why and how the political presence of historically disadvantaged groups matters, a wealth of scholarship has studied the relation between so-called descriptive and substantive representation, focusing on both the numerical presence as well as the activity of representatives. Inspired by US Black feminist scholars increasingly take an intersectional to demonstrate how the relation between a politicians’ descriptive characteristics and the extent to which they promote group specific interests is influenced by more than one category. We follow this trail but take a step back. We study how ethnic/racial minority Members of Parliament themselves represent their multiple identities and how this relates to what they say they stand for. We focus on the moment when they address the public and their colleagues for the first time in their new role as MPs: the maiden speech. We develop a typology of intersectional strategies to explain these patterns of if and if so, how, MPs represent their identity. Strategies depend on party ideology, the actual political climate regarding ethnic and racial diversity and identity politics and years that have passed since the first minority MPs entered parliament.