Why Categories Matter: Which Ones We Need for a More Just World
Essay · Magdalena Nowicka on Why We Need Neither More Categories Nor No Categories — but Different Ones That Make State-Produced Inequality Visible
What Kind of Categories Do We Need to Address Social Inequality?
Sociologist Magdalena Nowicka (DeZIM Institute, Humboldt University of Berlin) cuts through a familiar debate. Calls to multiply categories so they better reflect individual heterogeneity, and counter-calls to abandon categories altogether because they cannot capture intersectional experience, both miss the point. The decisive question, she argues, is which categories we use — and whether they reveal or obscure the role of the state in producing inequality. Her answer points away from identity proliferation and toward categories that foreground legal status, transnational ties, and the institutional rules that distribute rights.
Essential points in this essay:
Categorisation is at once necessary, natural, imperfect, and problematic — it organises social life and power simultaneously, because deciding who belongs to which category often decides how they are treated
The nation-state is a uniquely powerful category-maker: through law, policy, and statistics it ties rights to classifications like citizen/denizen, while frequently obscuring legal status in public data so that state-produced inequality appears as a problem of people rather than of rules
Instead of ever more identity categories, we need categories that capture legal status, intersections with identity, and transnational biographies — so that policy can address causes, not symptoms
About the author: Magdalena Nowicka is a sociologist, Head of the Department of Integration at the DeZIM Institute, and Honorary Professor at Humboldt University of Berlin. Her research focuses on migration, racism, conviviality, and social class, with a strong emphasis on intersectionality.
In the context of what Steven Vertovec has called the “diversification of difference” and what Andreas Reckwitz describes as societies of singularities, calls for more refined categories that reflect individual heterogeneity have become common. Others argue that categories fail to capture intersectional experiences and therefore should be abandoned altogether. To address social inequalities, however, I argue that we need neither more categories nor no categories, but different ones: categories that foreground the role of the state in producing social inequalities and thereby enable more effective political responses.
Categorisation, Power, and Social Life
Being in the world is a complex experience. Recognising patterns, detecting similarities, and categorising are cognitive strategies that make thinking faster and social life possible. Yet human beings are complex, and any individual could belong to countless categories depending on which characteristics are emphasised or ignored. For this reason, categorising human difference is at once necessary, natural, imperfect, and problematic.
In social life, categorisation is not merely a way of naming or ordering differences; it is also a way of organising power. Deciding who belongs to which category often entails deciding how members of different categories should be treated. While not all categories are equally consequential, essential rights, obligations, and access to resources are frequently distributed along categorical lines.
This produces a fundamental dilemma. On the one hand, belonging to a category can be empowering: shared classification can foster solidarity and make collective claims to rights possible. On the other hand, individuals may not identify with the categories assigned to them, especially when these are based on similarities they do not experience as meaningful. As a result, tensions arise between institutional classifications and lived experiences, as well as between identity and access to rights.
Categories as Political Tools
Categorisation is a common strategy for reducing social complexity, but some categories become institutionalised and therefore durable and difficult to challenge. Moreover, not all actors have equal power to define categories. The state is a particularly powerful actor in this respect. Through law, policy, and statistics, it fixes categories and ties them to differential treatment. The distinction between citizens and denizens is the most obvious example.
Because categories shape access to rights, groups have often engaged in what is known as strategic essentialism: the deliberate construction of similarity and commonality to achieve political goals. In many countries, the assumption that “other minorities were like Blacks” helped drive civil rights expansion. More recently, references to anti-Slavic racism in Germany have been used to point to the disadvantaged position of Eastern European immigrants and the need for better legal protection.
“Categories are not merely descriptive but can function as political instruments. They may enable protection while simultaneously limiting recognition by fixing identities.”
These examples illustrate that categories are not merely descriptive but can function as political instruments. At the same time, they show that categories may enable protection while simultaneously limiting recognition by fixing identities. When the state assigns rights, it often has an interest in defining the relevant categories as restrictively as possible.
I suggest that this strategic potential contributes to the current proliferation of categories. Many people seek classifications that better reflect their specific experiences, often shaped by intersecting forms of disadvantage. Some communities define themselves more narrowly than in the past, while others redraw boundaries altogether. Not all of these developments are politically strategic; in a society increasingly oriented toward individual uniqueness, there is also a growing desire for recognition of singular experiences. While this is not problematic in itself, it poses challenges for institutional policies.
Migration, Nation-States, and Structural Inequality
These dynamics intersect with migration in particularly complex ways. States play a central role in producing social distinctions through categories related to origin and legal status. Following what Liisa H. Malkki has described as the “sedentary rule,” they grant rights to those recognised as citizens while withholding them from those who seek entry or have arrived recently. This logic may coincide with other forms of belonging, but it can also conflict with them. As a result, individuals who share the same ethnic or religious identity may be treated very differently by state institutions depending on their legal status. Communities that appear unified from the outside are thus internally stratified by state-conferred rights, contributing to what Vertovec describes as societal superdiversity.
Yet the central role of the nation-state in producing inequality is often obscured by the state itself. Unlike categories of origin, legal status is frequently absent from public statistics and administrative data, rendering these inequalities less visible. At the same time, an emphasis on identity and cultural difference linked to origin and migration can shift attention away from institutions and toward individuals, fostering an understanding of inequality as a problem of people rather than of rules.
Toward Categories That Reveal Structural Inequality
To address structural inequalities more effectively, we need a reorientation toward categories that foreground legal status and its intersections with identity rather than obscuring them. Such categories would make visible how nation-states actively produce inequality and would enable demands for institutional change. Statistics and administrative data are crucial to this shift. Without transforming how we classify and measure social reality, policies will continue to address symptoms rather than causes.
Another way to highlight the role of nation-states in producing inequality is to adopt a transnational perspective. Many people have education, professional experience, family obligations, property, and rights in countries other than those in which they currently reside. Such transnational biographies are rarely captured by nationally organised administrative data. By obscuring transnational lives through national statistics, states produce partial and often misleading pictures of contemporary inequalities. Research shows that legal status and transnational obligations can intersect to exacerbate economic disadvantage, for example among transnational caregivers.
“Rather than introducing ever more identity categories, what is needed is a shift of attention — and a systematic inclusion of indicators that capture legal status and transnational ties.”
Rather than introducing ever more identity categories, what is needed is a shift of attention and a systematic inclusion of indicators that capture legal status and transnational ties. This would allow us to better identify structural disadvantage and to demonstrate which state policies must be changed to make a meaningful difference.
Magdalena Nowicka is a sociologist, Head of the Department of Integration at the DeZIM Institute, and Honorary Professor at Humboldt University of Berlin. Her research focuses on migration, racism, conviviality, and social class, with a strong emphasis on intersectionality. She is the co-author of Revisualising Intersectionality (Palgrave Macmillan 2023) and has published widely on transnationalism and everyday social relations in diverse societies.
Futures of Difference is produced by Steven Vertovec at the Max Planck Institute for Political and Social Science (formerly the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity).