Critical Intersectionality in Adult Education: Experiences in Dialogue

Abstract

This article analyzes critical intersectionality as an approach to understand the multiple oppressions affecting racialized women, migrants, and workers in Latin America. Based on a participatory research methodology, the study recovers experiences in adult education in literacy contexts with migrants, in adult secondary education—including in recovered factories—and in incarceration contexts. Structural inequalities that permeate the lives of these women are evidenced, manifested in educational exclusion, labor precariousness, and gender violence. The findings highlight that access to education is conditioned by patriarchal and racist power structures, reproducing marginalization. The discussion emphasizes the need for critical intersectionality that incorporates feminist community and territorial perspectives from Abya Yala, in contrast to its appropriation through descriptive uses by institutions with interests contrary to the struggles and demands that this category has encompassed and continues to encompass. The article advocates for situated approaches and the collective production of knowledge as strategies for resistance and social transformation.