Intersectionality and the Archive

The decision to record only income-earning males in nineteenth-century census and town-planning documents was not a neutral one but rather one motivated by ideological considerations. This reflects the broader issue of symbolic violence in data systems - when reproductive labour is excluded, women are effectively excluded from history. This exclusion is both material and symbolic. At Quarry Hill, this logic is reflected in the architectural blueprints that detail the layout of the factory but omit spaces for childcare from the design of the residence, thereby tacitly framing women's needs as a private matter (Criado Pérez, 2019).

As Crenshaw (1989) asserts in her foundational theory of intersectionality, systems of oppression do not act independently but intersect to produce unique forms of disadvantage. In Quarry Hill, migrant women faced structural marginalisation: absent from records due to class, unseen due to unpaid labour, and systemically unrepresented in archival logic. Their “invisible reproductive infrastructure” (Federici, 2004) exemplifies Crenshaw’s critique of how data systems privilege dominant categories while excluding those living at the margins.