Intersectional Coproduction and Infrastructural Violence: Experiences from Pakistan

The delivery of projects for the coproduction of services raises multiple questions about how different structural barriers prevent and hinder the participation of various sectors of the population. Intersectionality theory provides a critical lens to examine the delivery of such coproduction projects to refine any strategies to include vulnerable perspectives or perspectives that get silenced by existing hierarchies. This paper presents an intersectionality-led analysis of the delivery of a project to improve public safety in Pakistan. The project mapped existing concerns about urban violence of different groups of the population. The project used a multilayered approach to facilitate the engagement of excluded views, both in the constitution of the research team and in the involvement of communities. An intersectionality framework is applied to analyse the deployment of the project in terms of design, innovation, planning, and signification. The analysis shows that there are limitations to how far coproduction exercises can challenge existing social structural barriers.