Late adolescents' accounts of marginalization in India: Towards a ground-up intersectional framework

Within the broader context of limited published literature on identity-based marginalization in Majority World communities, research on adolescent experiences of marginalization in a diverse country like India is particularly scarce. The purpose of this study was to explore college-going adolescents' perceptions of commonly marginalized/stigmatized identities, the nature of marginalization, and the contexts within which it occurs using qualitative content analysis. Recruited from across India, participants were ethnolinguistically and religiously diverse late adolescents (across two samples, N = 877, M_age = 20.35, 70.1% cisgender women) situated within an urban, educated, middle-class context. Participants responded to open-ended questions through an online survey, and their responses were thematically analyzed. Over a third of our sample reported experiencing marginalization based on one or more identities. Marginalization pertaining to gender identity and expression was the most commonly reported, comprising nearly half of the responses, followed by religious affiliation, caste, and ethnolinguistic identity. Everyday undermining was the most common type of marginalization experienced, followed by negative expectations and assumptions, as well as explicit verbal comments. Grounded in these findings, we propose a conceptual intersectional framework to understand identity-based marginalization among adolescents in India to stimulate future research investigating the impact of these experiences on various domains of development. This work can promote a comprehensive understanding of identity-based marginalization among adolescents in Majority World contexts, with implications for developing programs to enable systemic community change.