How do minority positions shape women's routes out of crime? Intersectional perspectives on female desistance

Abstract

This article contributes to diversifying women's voices in desistance research by exploring how self-identified minority positions shape the experiences of female desisters. The study draws on 12 qualitative interviews with women in Sweden who identify as belonging to a minority group and are currently desisting from crime. Following a critical discussion of the term ‘minority’, the article presents three empirically derived findings: (a) Subjective experiences of minoritisation at the intersection of constructions of femininity: carrying an ‘ex'-identity, visible minority status and identity passing; (b) Minority positions as hindering desistance: loneliness, triple stigma and mistrust and (c) Minority positions supporting desistance: a ‘hook’ for change and a return to the authentic self. While emphasising that sex and gender remain vital categories for understanding women's lived experiences of desistance, the article stresses that desistance must be situated within interlocking structural conditions of power and oppression, that in turn are shaped by time and place. Finally, the article aligns with existing scholarship in calling for the development and use of equality data in Swedish criminal justice and social work to make intersecting inequalities visible within systems engaging with current and potential desisters.

Keywords

Women desistance ethnic minority visible minority feminist criminology Sweden intersectional perspectives

Introduction

Desistance is a complex and multidimensional process shaped by both individual and broader structural factors, including the social, economic and cultural contexts in which it occurs (Farrall, 2019; McNeill et al., 2012; Österman, 2018). In recent years, the desistance literature has undergone something of an ‘explosion’ (Bersani and Doherty, 2018), leading to a welcome diversification of voices and perspectives within the field. Part of this development has involved shedding light on women's particular experiences of ‘going straight’. A growing body of evidence now illustrates that, while many factors associated with desistance are often found to be shared across genders – such as poverty, substance addiction, low educational attainment and problematic family backgrounds (Giordano et al., 2002; Gomes and Rocker, 2024) – there are also gendered conditions and norms that shape the lived experience of desistance and (re)integration processes (Barr, 2019; Gålnander, 2019, 2020; Gomes and Rocker, 2024; Österman, 2018, 2022).

The increased attention given to women exiting crime and criminal justice has positively brought about new perspectives on the role of gender, however, how these experiences intersect with other conditions and identities have received negligible attention. For example, in a recent review of what is known about ethnicity in the desistance literature, Farrall et al. (2025) note that the field has very limited knowledge of how factors such as gender, age, ethnicity and conviction histories intersect and shape the processes of desistance. Moreover, the authors conclude that, to date, none of the studies that they have identified as dealing with ethnicity in relation to desistance and that also include women in their sample, have been conducted in the European setting. Power operates on multiple and interrelated levels and failing to acknowledge this risks overlooking important intersecting dimensions within the desistance process. As Davies and Wyatt (2021) observe, intersecting identities, such as for example being a Black, poor, Muslim woman – all shaped by economic, historical, political and social conditions – can amplify experiences of marginalisation and powerlessness, which in turn can impact on the lived experience of change processes.

This article is grounded in feminist desistance theory and seeks to offer new and exploratory insights into the under-researched area of intersectional perspectives on women's experiences of desistance. Recognising the complexities involved in defining minority positions, the article begins with a section that problematises and contextualises these definitions, applying a culturally informed viewpoint with a focus on the Swedish setting. It then briefly reviews existing knowledge on minority positions within the desistance literature, as well as outlines relevant theoretical concepts used in the analysis. Following a brief section detailing the methodological approaches, three empirically derived thematic findings are presented and discussed: (a) Subjective experiences of minoritisation at the intersection of constructions of femininity: carrying an ‘ex’-identity, visible minority status and identity passing; (b) Minority positions as hindering desistance: loneliness, triple stigma and mistrust and (c) Minority positions supporting desistance: a ‘hook’ for change and a return to the authentic self. The article concludes with a call for further research in this area and for continued efforts to add nuance to understandings of the lived experience of desistance through an intersectional lens. It also, in alignment with existing scholarship (Hübinette et al., 2023), argues for the introduction of equality data within Swedish criminal justice and social work systems in order to make intersecting inequalities visible in institutions engaging with current and potential desisters.

Minority perspectives in context: Definitional challenges

Defining what constitutes a minority group is not a straightforward endeavour. How terms are used also vary across languages and cultures. As noted by Aspinall (2007: 59), terms such as ethnic minority and race reflect geographical specificity, ‘with much of the discourse being deeply rooted, historically determined and specific, resulting in some of the terminology being infused with conflict and power conceptions of social reality’. In contrast to Anglophone practices, in Sweden it is not culturally normative to ask about race and ethnicity. Wikström and Hübinette (2021) note how, owing to a conception of Swedish colour-blind antiracialism, there is a lack of publicly acceptable language for talking about race in contemporary Sweden. Due to this, the word ‘ethnicity’ has systematically replaced the word race in official Swedish texts, and in everyday talk, ‘culture’ is commonly used. In Sweden, factors relating to diversity are typically recorded in terms of citizenship status, country of birth and mother tongue. In turn, this has implications for equality data gathering, an area that has recently become a highly controversial political issue in Sweden (Wikström and Hübinette, 2021). While a discussion of this rests outside the remit of this article, it is worthwhile to note that the lack of such data makes it challenging to measure inequality, as well as target social policies (Open Society Forum, 2014). The term ‘ethnicity’ is more commonly used, which refers to people of common origin who may share a culture linked to language, religion, nationality and tradition (Singh, 2014). That said, the ethnicity label has limitations. In particular, it does not capture appearances. This can be viewed as restrictive as people are judged, evaluated – and discriminated against – based on how they appear visually. Ignoring this may lead to a neglect of racialisation processes in our society (Hübinette et al., 2023). This is important, as we know that racial differences matter for experiences of criminal justice. For example, studies into criminal justice processes in England and Wales show evidence of direct as well as indirect discrimination due to both race and ethnicity (Phillips and Bowling, 2017).

An alternative term that emerged in Canada and the USA in the 1990s, and has since been increasingly recognised in research and practice that explore topics such as segregation and inequalities, is ‘visible minorities’. ‘Visible minorities’ is used to describe groups in a society whose appearance, behaviours, clothing, language traditions or religious practices are deemed to comprise a minority status in relation to the majority population of a country (Naidoo and Edwards, 1991). The term has been used by the National Board of Health and Welfare (‘Socialstyrelsen’) in Sweden since 2010 (Socialstyrelsen, 2010). Naidoo and Edwards (1991) note that the term is useful as it aids in the naming of groups that are often considered vulnerable minorities, which in turn links to the fact that included groups shoulder a heavy burden as the target for racism and discrimination. In view of these knowledges and critiques, as well as the study being located in Sweden and what is culturally normative to categorise people by, this study employed a combination of the term ethnic minority and ‘visible minority’.

Gender, minority positions and desistance

While there are a few published studies into female desistance in Sweden (Gålnander, 2020; Österman, 2018), none of these analytically explore minority perspectives. Studies into desistance by minority groups are primarily found in the Anglophone setting (Farrall et al., 2025). A recent key example is Low's (2024, 2025) study into women's desistance in Aotearoa New Zealand. Low found that aspects such as women's employment opportunities, housing access, as well as the significance of tertiary desistance, vary according to social locations, including class and ethnicity. In addition, these factors also intersect with forms of oppression in earlier parts of their lives, including histories of poverty and trauma which contributed to for example poor mental health and substance abuse (ibid). Though such disadvantages were identified across the sample in different ways, Low (2024, 2025) demonstrates that Māori women are particularly acutely affected by interlocking systems of inequality. This underscores the importance of an intersectional perspective for a fuller understanding of variation in desistance processes (Potter, 2015).

Introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw in the late 1980s, intersectionality emphasises that discrimination based on different identity markers cannot be fully understood in isolation, but must be considered jointly (Crenshaw, 1991). Since then, it has become a central concept within feminist theory (Tong and Botts, 2024). The concept of intersectionality highlights that different forms of oppression overlap and shape the lived experiences of marginalised individuals. It rejects universalising categories and instead foregrounds the complexity of social positioning. Despite its prominence in feminist scholarship, intersectionality has been relatively slow to take hold within criminology, where intersectional feminist analyses still remain limited (Barr and Hart, 2022; Fader and Traylor, 2015). While categories such as race, gender, sexuality, age, religion and socioeconomic class are intersecting identities that have been given attention in the broader criminological literature, Potter (2015) notes that any social position could be considered in an intersectional analysis relating to crime and punishment.

Minority groups’ experiences of desistance have been examined in a number of American desistance studies, though few have included women. One of the most notable is Giordano et al. (2002) that found that a so called ‘respectability package’, including both a job and marriage, could provide important building blocks to increase a desister's social capital, with positive desistance effects. The availability of this type of package varies, however, across different groups in society and intersects to produce different access to such a package. Specifically, Giordano et al. (2002) found that white men are the most likely and African-American women the least likely to achieve such a package. It is accordingly recognised that ‘actors make moves, but they do so within bounded territory, and a specific nexus of opportunities and constraints (as women, as highly disadvantaged, as minorities, as inhabitants of a late 20th-century environment, as all of these positions)’ (Giordano et al., 2002: 1004). This aligns with more recent desistance studies showing that women's experiences of exercising agency, as well as forming new relationships, are shaped by intersecting disadvantages linked to social, political and economic circumstances, which may in turn be further compounded by race, class, sexuality, ability and other markers of difference (Petrillo, 2023). As Sered (2021) argue, these intersections operate in complex and compounding ways. For example, experiences of poverty, homelessness and mental ill-health may increase the likelihood of arrest and incarceration, which in turn can produce criminal records that restrict access to employment, thereby pushing people into continued poverty (Sered, 2021).

There are studies into desistance that focus more exclusively on ethnicity, though most of them are based on an all-male sample. A noteworthy one is Calverley's study into cultures of desistance, where he explores how ethnicity impacts on the experience of desistance for a sample of desisting men in London. Calverley (2013) found for instance that the family context can play a diverse role across different ethnic group settings, so too can the aspect of shame and stigma. Additionally, a range of desistance-related factors, such as employment status, family structure and religious affiliation are known to be related to ethnic status, and thus, for a more holistic understanding of a person's desistance journey, Calverley (2013) argues that the structural location of the desisters’ minority status must be given attention. Moreover, a study by Glynn (2013) into black men and the impact of racialisation within their experiences of desistance, showed that awareness of racism in wider society, and how that reality can act to subordinate individuals, have a direct impact on black men's subjective views of their route out of crime. That is, racialised barriers and disempowering processes within the criminal justice system acted to erode the feeling of optimism around pursuing a new (non-offending) future (ibid.). For some men in Glynn's study (2013), a successful shift in identity was enabled by returning to their communities in a form of symbolic heroism of being a stronger, reformed man. This type of narrative is closely related to the ‘generative model’ of change in self-concept that Maruna puts forward in his work (2001), that is, that an individual finds a new social identity or position that allows the reconstruction of what may otherwise be viewed as a ‘wasted’ life. As noted by Fader and Traylor (2015), the accessibility of desistance narratives and the ability to conceive a law-abiding replacement self are, however, likely to be shaped by an interplay of factors, including criminal stigma and racism. Yet, given that desistance theory has predominantly focused on white men, the role of intersecting forms of oppression has often remained under-theorised. An intersectional lens is necessary to account for how multiple axes of inequality combine to shape desistance processes (Barr and Hart, 2022; Stone, 2016).

Furthermore, existing research demonstrates that women with offending histories experience heightened stigma (Estrada and Nilsson, 2012; Grace, 2022; Sharpe, 2023), which may make to tougher for them to have a desistance narrative recognised. The importance of such recognition and acceptance has in recent scholarship been conceptualised in terms of tertiary desistance (McNeill, 2015). From this perspective, desistance is not only an individual or narrative achievement, but a relational process that depends on whether others come to recognise the individual as having moved on from offending. This insight is particularly relevant for minority group women, whose access to recognition and legitimacy may be further constrained by intersecting layers of stigma.

Feminist critiques of tertiary desistance question the assumption that ‘conventional society’ is equally accessible or desirable for all desisters. From this perspective, the tertiary phase is not simply about achieving belonging, but about negotiating entry into social contexts structured by gendered and intersecting norms. Desistance is thus conditioned by ideals of heteronormative femininity, where notions of normalcy can be both narrow and exclusionary (Fredriksson and Gålnander, 2025). As Barr and Hart (2022) argue, processes of tertiary desistance must be situated within broader power structures, including patriarchal, neoliberal and neocolonial forces, which intersect to produce particularly exclusionary relations between ‘conventional society’ and criminalised women. Consequently, belonging in the context of desistance processes raises critical questions not only about inclusion, but also about resistance to heteronormativity and structural inequality (Fredriksson and Gålnander, 2025; Barr and Hart, 2022). For some women, continued engagement in criminalised economies may represent one such form of resistance, enabling the pursuit of recognition, status and empowerment outside normative, feminised pathways (Grundetjern and Miller, 2019).

In addition to desistance and feminist scholarship, to capture the lived, relational and intersecting dynamics of desistance, this article also draws on the concepts of minoritisation and identity passing. Minoritisation refers to the process through which individuals are treated as members of a group that is suppressed or disadvantaged relative to a dominant social group (Wingrove-Haugland, 2022). Importantly, this shifts attention away from minority status as a fixed attribute and towards minoritisation as something done to individuals (ibid.), a move that aligns well with intersectional perspectives by highlighting how multiple disadvantages intertwine and accumulate. It can also help make visible a minoritised group within a minoritised group. This is particularly relevant for women in desistance, where men are the norm. Moreover, it is especially helpful in this study, which applies a wide as well as self-defined definition of the minority construct, as it does not predefine the axis of power and equality that the person in question experiences minoritisation through. A second concept informing the analysis is identity passing, and in particular racial passing, understood as the practice whereby individuals present as members of a different racial group, most commonly as white, to navigate social hierarchies (Khanna and Johnson, 2010). Passing may involve strategies such as selective disclosure, concealment, or covering aspects of one's ancestry, and is shaped by the availability of social and material resources. In criminal justice contexts, passing may be particularly consequential, and may say something important about how individuals carrying different identity markers are met and treated by institutions.

The study: Minority women's experiences of desistance in Sweden

The data for this article derive from the study Minority Women's Experiences of Desistance in Sweden, an 18-month qualitative project funded by the Nordic Research Council of Criminology and conducted between 2022 and 2024. The study aimed to explore how female desisters in Sweden who self-identify as belonging to a minority group voice their story of desistance through intersecting identities and social positions. Twelve in-depth interviews with women were completed. Ethical approval was granted by the Swedish Ethical Review Board in early 2023.

As discussed above, defining minority identities presents challenges not only conceptually but also methodologically. Given the non-normativity of categorising individuals according to ethnic or visible minority status in Sweden, the ethical decision was taken not to pre-define minority categories, but instead to allow participants to self-identify. Accordingly, the study focuses on women's subjective experiences of carrying a minority status. In practice this meant that interviews began with the question: ‘Knowing that this is a study about minority women's experiences of desistance, how would you describe identifying as belonging to a minority group in Sweden?’.

Data were collected through semi-structured interviews lasting between 50 and 150 minutes. The women ranged in age from 25 to 65 and had desisted between 2 and 15 years. Interview locations were arranged at places convenient for the participants. Participants received a high-street voucher as a token of appreciation for their time. The women were recruited via a combination of statutory and peer-based gatekeepers, as well as through direct recruitment within third-sector organisations supporting exit processes. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using thematic coding, combining deductively derived codes aligned with the research questions with inductively generated in vivo codes. ATLAS.ti was used as a data management and coding support tool.

The coding process was iterative. In the first round of coding, the data were coded in larger segments in order to retain contextual richness and allow for ‘thick description’. Using ATLAS.ti to compile all data segments associated with each code, a second round of coding was conducted within these broader coded sections, enabling further categorisation and comparison across the dataset. Through this process, patterns and themes emerged. Particular analytical attention was given to the interconnections between desistance processes and experiences shaped by intersecting social positions. While the identified themes were overlapping and relational, they were, in line with participants’ own narratives, as well as for analytical and organisational purposes, grouped into those reflecting experiences that appeared to hinder and those that appeared to support desistance. This categorisation should not be interpreted as fixed or mutually exclusive, but rather as interconnected dimensions that may fluctuate across different stages of desistance.

Once core themes had been clustered, focal narratives were selected as illustrative cases, chosen because they provide particularly rich accounts of the theme in question. Given the qualitative nature of the study, these narratives were not selected based on frequency, but are instead considered analytically representative in that they capture key mechanisms and processes identified through the analysis. It should, however, be recognised that each woman's narrative is unique, and no single excerpt can capture the full complexity of a theme. To preserve contextual depth, excerpts are presented with as much narrative detail as the article format allows.

The analysis, and the project is in its entirety, is informed by a feminist perspective, with reflexive attention paid to the researcher's position of privilege. A stance of reciprocity was adopted as a core ethical principle, whereby the researcher, for example, also answered participants’ questions – both personal and professional – before, during and after the interview encounters.

Findings

Subjective experiences of minoritisation at the intersection of constructions of femininity: Carrying an ‘ex’-identity, visible minority status and identity passing

Reflecting the methodological emphasis on self-identification, it was far from straightforward how the women identified as belonging to a minority group. Their interpretations of minority status were not always linked to positions typically recognised as ‘official’ minority categories. Instead, a dominant theme concerned how minority status was construed in relation to gendered norms and an ‘ex’-identity as someone with experiences of offending and often also substance abuse. This is illustrated by Jill, responding to a question about how she would describe belonging to a minority group:

‘The first thing is because I am a woman, and I have been a criminal for most of my adult life. I’ve done a lot of violent crimes, the kind of things that women don’t usually do really. So I think yes that's probably it. And then I've been involved in gang crime a lot, and you know, there's really not a lot of girls in that. So that is how I see it’.

Applying the concept of minoritisation, Jill illustrates how her identity as a woman, in combination with someone who has ‘done a lot of violent crimes’ and been involved in ‘gang crime’, subjectively positions her as a minority. This clearly speaks to the idea of ‘double deviance’ (Heidensohn, 1996; Lloyd, 1995) that feminist scholars have described since the early onset of feminist criminology, whereby women are stigmatised not only for law-breaking but also for transgressing normative expectations of femininity. That this combination of identity and experiences is positioned as the primary aspects of minority status sends a powerful message about the continued dominance of normative ideals of womanhood and the stigmatisation experienced when transgressing such. Jill's reflection that such acts are ‘the kind of things that women don’t usually do’ reveals an awareness of how dominant discourses of femininity render women's violence and gang involvement as transgressive. Her identity as both a woman and an ‘ex’ engaged in violence and criminality thus produces a lived experience of minoritisation. From a desistance perspective, such experiences of minoritisation can function as barriers to change, making it tougher to conform to heteronormative and patriarchal ideals which are typically constructed as normative for female desistance (Barr and Hart, 2022; Fredriksson and Gålnander, 2025).

Narratives of minoritisation in women's stories of change also intersect with other power positions and identities. However, the dominance and effects of these intersections vary depending on whether individuals are able to engage in identity passing. Simone, who has a Black African father and a white Swedish mother, offers an illustration of this dynamic:

I'm half African but I'm white so I have the privilege of not being exposed to racism […] So I can't say that I face that kind of discrimination in my life. But I'm very tattooed […], I have screaming pink hair. […] And not just tattoos; I have big lips, big breasts and I’ve had surgery and look a bit plasticky. And I have experienced discrimination, or prejudices, more based on the fact that I have chosen to look like that. Often it's thought that I have bad self-esteem or bad self-image and stuff like that but it's got nothing to do with that […] But if someone's looking, like many in society look at me and think she's a bad mother or she's a criminal or she's a drug addict. So I feel that people who choose to look like me can be counted as a minority because you're not a suitable part of society when you choose to look like this. That's how I reason anyhow.

Although Simone was born abroad and would in many contexts be categorised as mixed-race, her dominant experience of minoritisation is narratively constructed through her presenting a non-normative form of femininity. In turn, this expression means that ‘many in society’ judge her as a ‘bad mother’, ‘a criminal’ or a ‘drug addict’. An intersectional reading highlights how multiple identity positions combine to produce a lived experience of minoritisation. Crucially, however, identity passing must also be foregrounded to fully understand Simone's account. Her ability to pass as white affords her racial privilege and relative protection from racism, illustrating how passing can function as a means of evading certain forms of stigma (Khanna and Johnson, 2010). An additional layer of stigma is presented through Simone's identity as a mother; an experience commonly found among women with offending histories (Sharpe, 2015, 2023). Relating this to desistance, Simone's narrative demonstrates how intersectionality and processes of minoritisation shape both the possibilities for and barriers to change, linked to how stigma can be experienced but navigated, as well as how heteronormative expectations can be resisted, in women's desistance journeys (Fredriksson and Gålnander, 2025). Finally, Simone's account points to the relevance of tertiary desistance when exploring intersectional positions and desistance, as visible nonconformity may complicate processes of recognition and social acceptance, rendering identity reconstruction more challenging.

The role of passing also emerged clearly in relation to ethnicity. Beata is of Sámi origin, belonging to Sweden's Indigenous population and one of the country's five officially recognised national minority groups. When asked whether her minority position had affected her experiences within, or route out of, the criminal justice system, she reflected:

No, I don't think so…no. I think people found it annoying that I often stood up for Roma women, or black women, because they were treated so much worse. Sámi doesn't stand out in the same way, I mean I rarely spoke about it. I don't think I even mentioned my Sámi background to the staff [at the prison]. […] Above all it was Roma women, but also black women, who were treated very badly. I've lived in a lot of black communities […] on and off and stuff like that, so I took their side and that wasn't appreciated.

Although Beata belongs to a protected ethnic minority group in Sweden, it was not her own ethnic background that she positions as a cause for marginalisation. Rather, it was her experience of standing ‘up for Roma women, or Black women’ that she identifies as ‘wasn’t appreciated’. Central to this account is her ability to ethnically pass; Beata describes how not disclosing – or ‘even mentioning’ – her Sámi background enabled her to avoid direct experiences of minoritisation within prison. In contrast, she explicitly recognises that Roma and Black women did not have access to this form of privilege, thus highlighting the crucial role of visible minority status in shaping lived experiences of stigma and discrimination in the context of criminal justice. This observation speaks directly to critiques raised by Hübinette et al. (2023), who argue that the absence of equality data capturing how people are visually racialised risks obscuring how racism and discrimination operate in practice. Drawing on international research on racialisation and desistance (Glynn, 2013), such processes may in turn undermine individuals’ optimism in relation to desistance. Moreover, Beata's narrative reveals forms of solidarity across intersecting categories, as she chooses to use her passing privilege to ‘take their side’. From an intersectional perspective, this illustrates how different dimensions of identity can simultaneously generate solidarity and differentiation, while at the same time revealing the different hierarchical processes of minoritisation and stigma that are enacted within criminal justice contexts.

The theme of identity passing was, however, not limited to race and ethnicity, but also emerged in relation to sexuality. A few of the women in the study identified as lesbian or bisexual, positioning their sexuality as a minority status that intersected with other identity dimensions. However, none of the women described their sexual identity as a primary source of minoritisation or stigma. This was explicitly linked to the possibility of passing, as illustrated by Holly:

Well, no, no one has ever known that I am a lesbian. […] [How I’ve felt treated] has to do with the fact that you are an addict. […] I don't know, but you are a pain in the ass when you’re an addict, uh…I’ve got no direct memory of the police, but overall it's about how much these small little gestures mean, like at the detox, when they come in with an Easter egg, or drop off letters for you. You can really make a person feel valued or feel completely worthless through small gestures.

Holly's account provides another example of how an officially recognised minority status – in this case, lesbian sexuality – is not necessarily central to lived experiences of minoritisation when juxtaposed to other identity markers, such as ‘the fact that you are an addict’. In relation to women's desistance, this highlights how concealment and disclosure are not fixed strategies but are situationally constructed, particularly in relation to tertiary desistance and social recognition (Gjeruldsen et al., 2025). Furthermore, Holly's emphasis on the impact of everyday interactions underscores the relational nature of desistance, noting that ‘small gestures’ can make a person ‘feel valued or completely worthless’. This aligns with previous research showing that recognition and trust are central to tertiary desistance, particularly in overcoming stigma and sustaining positive change (Suzuki et al., 2024).

Research has shown that women with ‘ex’ identities often become highly skilled at navigating disclosure of their backgrounds (Gjeruldsen et al., 2025). However, access to such strategies may depend on the availability of resources to do so. Moa, who identifies as coming from a Finnish Traveller background, describes having taken active steps to reduce experiences of stigma and minoritisation linked to her family history; steps she positions as central to her desistance process:

Well, a lot of my relatives are criminals, and there's a lot of, you know, drugs and all that involved. I noticed that pretty quickly and that's why I changed my last name […] due to that my history followed me […] But also because the questions always came up, like: ‘Why are you doing this? Where's your family? Don’t you have any parents?’ And I didn’t really have that – my dad had been in prison since I was 2, and my mom passed away when I was 14. So that was never really there. […] I was pretty clear with the fact that I don’t identify with them, since I’d been living in Swedish families for as long as I can remember. I mean, I hadn’t lived like a Swede, but I wasn’t born into the same life that my relatives and my family had been. I kind of ended up in it on my own. […] Other than that, they [criminal justice actors] have been kind of… nice, or just neutral. It's not like I felt personally attacked. […] Also, because I applied for lots of jobs and didn’t even get a reply […] but if I have a Swedish last name that might help. And I was also doing a lot of sports, so through that my name became known […], like on lists and score tables and all that.[…] So I felt like, yeah, I wanted to break away somehow, and so I did.

In this excerpt, Moa touches on the challenges of navigating a stigmatised past, through her relatives and her name, but then how she actively took steps to disassociate from those. In terms of the interacting intersections of identity, in drawing on her having lived ‘in Swedish families’, she narratively constructs Swedishness as a form of respectability and contrasts it to her relatives’ criminalised identities. Furthermore, Moa also explicitly links her name change to experiences of racism during her desistance journey, particularly in relation to employment. Specifically, her belief that having a ‘Swedish last name might help’, illustrates how names function as racialised markers that intersect with structural barriers to reintegration. This aligns with desistance research highlighting how ethnicity and racism shape access to employment and other desistance-related resources (Calverley, 2013). Moa further demonstrates an awareness of these discriminatory processes, echoing findings from research with minoritised men that show how racism can shape perceptions of desistance opportunities (Glynn, 2013). In her case, changing her name – combined with her identification with having lived in Swedish families – enables a form of passing that helps her manage stigma and navigate structural barriers during her desistance journey. Moa's account of public sporting contexts, where her name becomes visible ‘on lists and score tables and all that’, further illustrates how tertiary desistance and social recognition may be experienced as conditional on intersectional factors, such as racialisation and family history.

Minority positions as hindering desistance: Loneliness, triple stigma and mistrust

When discussing their subjectively experienced minority positions, three key themes emerged as distinct hindrances to the women's desistance journeys. The first concerns women's perceptions, particularly pronounced among those who had immigrated to Sweden, that their route back to mainstream society was more difficult because they were not native to the country. This was closely intertwined with experiences of isolation and a lack of close social networks to support the desistance process. The following quotation from Maribel exemplifies this experience, in response to a question about whether, and in what ways, she views her immigrant status affecting her route out of crime:

Yes, I mean all the time, because I was so much by myself. Everyone else had some kind of network, like families, but I didn't. And that meant that you had to put on an extra thick skin to survive […] It's meant that it's been heavier and more difficult for me, I have not been able to lean on family and loved ones in the same way. [It's meant] that I have had to struggle and fight against everything by myself.

Having arrived in Sweden in her late teens and having established most of her social ties within drug-using and criminal contexts, Maribel describes her desistance process as particularly challenging, as she had very few pro-social relationships to draw upon. The relational dimensions of desistance, and the co-production of change within and between individuals (Weaver, 2015), are thus likely to be more difficult for desisters who cannot access pre-offending or family-based networks, a situation often linked to immigrant status. This, in turn, may result in isolation, which previous research has identified as one of the central ‘pains of desistance’, with potentially negative effects on the process itself (Nugent and Schinkel, 2016). From an intersectional perspective, it becomes important to recognise that such pains are unevenly distributed and may be intensified by intersecting social positions. Just as the ‘pains of desistance’ have been shown to be gendered (Barr and Hart, 2022; Petrillo, 2023), they are also shaped by intersecting axes of identity, such as migration status.

A second subtheme illustrating how self-identified minority positions can be experienced as barriers to desistance emerges through multiple layers of stigma. The following quotation from Madde, who has a father from Latin America and a Swedish mother, exemplifies this dynamic. In response to a question about whether, and in what ways, her mixed background has affected her route out of crime, she reflected:

[Yeah, it's meant] that I've had to face double prejudice, both linked to my cultural heritage and to my criminal background […] It's that combo, being a woman, being born abroad, and then there's a lot of focus on my background, it was a lot like this, like, ‘it would have been better if you were ethnically cleansed you criminal scum', stuff like that […] [And in my job] I'm held to a different standard, like ‘can you really trust her?’ […] I had maybe 2 or 3 extra interviews that the others didn't have, which were about my background […] So I know that I've gotten another standard, I know, like, would something disappear in the building they would come here first.

While Madde describes her experience as ‘double prejudice’, her account reveals what could more accurately be understood as triple stigmatisation. As she notes, ‘that combo, being a woman, being born abroad’, compounded by her identity as someone with a ‘criminal background’, has added challenges to her route out. Thus, the classic notion of ‘double deviance’ is intensified by the racialised dimension of her mixed heritage, resulting in a lived experience of triple deviance. Additionally, Madde's job within a governmental institution exposes her to heightened scrutiny, reinforcing this intersectional positioning. Being ‘held to a different standard’ and considered the first suspect ‘if something went missing’ illustrates a combined discriminatory practice based on Madde's intersecting identity markers, as well as being publicly and racially attacked on social media. From the perspective of tertiary desistance, Madde's narrative demonstrates an additional illustration of how access to social recognition and legitimacy is conditioned by multiple, intersecting identity factors. Her account underscores the importance of reading desistance through an intersectional lens, as failing to do so risks obscuring how structural inequalities can interact to reproduce exclusion and disadvantage for individuals seeking to move away from crime.

A third and final subtheme illustrating how self-identified minority positions are constructed as hindrances to desistance concerns trust and help-seeking. The data revealed a clear pattern suggesting that a minority identity can shape individuals’ levels of (mis)trust in authorities and, in turn, their openness to seeking support – both during active years and throughout the desistance process. Stella, who identifies as coming from a Swedish Traveller family, exemplifies this dynamic:

It goes back to childhood, it's upbringing, and it's sort of part of our culture. I come from a Swedish Traveller family. […] We weren’t supposed to have anything to do with authorities or healthcare institutions or anything like that […] Our family became split in this; one part felt more or less actively persecuted and discriminated against, while the other part did everything to fit in. […] Psychiatry has been quite awful for many. […] It's been a huge struggle, and there was an enormous amount of looking the other way from the authorities. And that's how it has been throughout my whole life. […] So yeah, I would probably never voluntarily contact the police – that's also one of those things I’ve carried with me since childhood, you know.

The Traveller community is among the groups that have experienced some of the most severe forms of discrimination, exclusion and racism at the hands of both the Swedish state and the wider public (Eriksson, 2015). Against this background of institutionalised oppression, Stella's deep-seated mistrust toward authorities and support systems can be understood as well founded. This collective, historical trauma continues to shape her relationship with institutions, resulting in persistently low levels of trust. For Stella, rejecting formal help-seeking has been a consistent feature of her life, during her years of substance use and offending as well as throughout her desistance journey. Her minority identity and its associated legacy of discrimination thus generate additional structural and emotional barriers to accessing desistance-related support. From the perspective of relational and tertiary desistance, this illustrates how historical processes of racialisation and marginalisation can disrupt the relationships of trust upon which engagement with support systems depends.

Minority positions supporting desistance: A ‘hook’ for change and a return to the authentic self

For a small number of women in the study, their minority identity was constructed as a potential resource within their desistance journeys. In these narratives, cultural heritage emerged as an opportunity to ‘get back to one's roots’ – aspects of self that had been neglected during periods of offending and addiction. A key example is Beata, who identifies as Sámi and whose experiences were discussed earlier in the article. When asked more specifically whether she felt her Sámi identity had affected her route out of crime, she reflected:

‘Yes, it's different from being an all-Swedish woman. Partly, man-woman relationships are more different in Sámi culture. […] The man has much greater authority, often also hereditary rights too, and it is natural that he owns a forest. […] [It's also a difference in] that I have sought my way back to my roots and felt that this is where I belong. […] I can also feel a sadness over a lost cultural heritage. Many years have been lost. […] During my criminal years there was never really any talk about Sámi origin and I had a kolt [traditional Sámi wear] but it didn't fit in size anymore and I just didn't care. But I have sewn up a kolt today and I participate in cultural events. I am also quite active in a Sámi association. So yes, of course it has contributed to my change process, and it has felt like that this is where I want to actually be’.

Here, ‘going back to one's roots’ functions as a hook for change – a source of meaning and belonging that supports identity transformation (Giordano et al., 2002). In line with narrative desistance theory, Beata frames her desistance as a process of reclaiming a more authentic self, a strategy previously identified among women seeking to resist stigma and restore moral worth (Stone, 2016). At the same time, her account reveals the complexities of this return; reconnecting with Sámi culture also entails navigating particular patriarchal norms, where ‘the man has much greater authority’ and unequal hereditary rights persist. Viewed through an intersectional lens, Beata's experience underscores how desistance must be situated within broader structural conditions, including those that reproduce gendered and cultural hierarchies, even within identity resources that are experienced as meaningful and restorative.

The notion of returning to a more ‘authentic self’ as part of one's desistance journey also appears in the narratives of Petra, Pia and Ritva, all of whom migrated from Finland to Sweden as young adults. Early in her interview, Petra described trying to smooth out her Finland-Swedish accent to avoid discrimination during her active years, explaining that she ‘tried to sound more Swedish’ in order to fit in. She linked her accent to repeated experiences of stereotyping and linguistic correction, which led her to actively suppress it. However, later in the interview, when reflecting on her desistance journey more specifically, Petra described a shift in how she related to her Finnish identity:

Absolutely [I’ve kept a lot of my original Finnish identity], yes, yes, really. I mean, when we’re travelling and people ask ‘where do you come from’, my friend often answers, ‘we are from Sweden’, while I say ‘we come from Finland but live in Sweden’. […] And with the language, I’ve actually started using more Finland-Swedish than I used to. […]

I: You don’t feel like it's something you need to hide?

Absolutely not. I think as you get older, you become more secure in it – like, ‘yeah, I have a Finnish accent!’

Petra's re-embracing of her accent, after years of attempting to conceal it, can be understood as an act of reclaiming a more ‘real’ or authentic self. This shift is achieved through a deliberate rejection of the linguistic passing she previously relied upon. Historically, Finns in Sweden have been constructed as socially inferior or ‘degenerate’ in comparison to native Swedes (Eriksson, 2015). Within this context, Petra's earlier linguistic passing functioned as protection against stigma, while her later pride in her accent signals a form of regained authenticity that reinforces her desisting identity.

Ritva similarly described a shift in how Finnish people are perceived in Sweden, which in turn had consequences for her relation to her own identity:

Earlier, being Finnish kind of meant ‘ah everyone is a boozer’ and everyone had low status – but that's not the case anymore. […] But nowadays, I get the feeling that one is… one is accepted in a completely different way. And now people even say it's really nice when we speak Finland-Swedish [laughs]; that definitely wasn’t the case before. I used to try to speak like Swedes, but then I thought ‘fuck it, why should I?’ [laughs]. […] So, Finland's position in Sweden has completely changed compared to what it was in the eighties [when I first arrived]. […] Or maybe I’ve gained another perspective, but I think it really is different. And of course, it affected me when I was at my worst – I think it matters where you come from. And Finns are really tough.

Ritva's account highlights how experiences of minoritisation, and the resources available for desistance, are shaped by shifting social, cultural and political contexts. As these narratives demonstrate, minority identities that once functioned primarily as sources of stigma may, over time, become resources for meaning, belonging and identity reconstruction. Reconnecting with an ethnic or cultural identity, as seen in the narratives of Ritva, Petra and Pia, can thus serve as a valuable hook for change within the desistance process. Age also emerges as a relevant intersecting factor, as growing older and more confident is described as enabling the women to reclaim previously concealed aspects of identity. Taken together, these narratives illustrate how desistance processes unfold within changing social and historical contexts and make visible how such broader conditions shape not only barriers to desistance but also the accessibility of desistance-supportive identities. However, these stories also raise critical questions about the relational nature of social hierarchies and exclusionary practices; if Finnish Swedes have moved upwards within these hierarchies, how are positions of marginalisation reconfigured, and importantly, with what consequences for desistance processes among the groups that are now occupying such positions?

Discussion and conclusion

This article set out to explore how minority positions shape women's routes out of crime, drawing on intersectional perspectives on desistance. Based on qualitative interviews with women in Sweden who self-identify as belonging to minority groups, the analysis demonstrates that minority status is not a singular or static condition, but a lived and relational process produced at the intersection of gender, ethnicity, criminal history, race, sexuality, age and family background. By highlighting how these intersecting dimensions position minority status as both a source of constraint and a potential resource – and at times both – in desistance processes, the findings align with the limited, but growing, body of scholarship examining how multiple identity markers shape women's desistance processes (e.g. Barr and Hart, 2022; Giordano et al., 2002; Low, 2024; Petrillo, 2023; Sered, 2021). By foregrounding women's own narratives of change and their perspectives on how minority positions shape desistance, this article contributes to diversifying desistance research while addressing a significant empirical and conceptual gap in the European context.

The findings highlight the continued force of heteronormative ideals in shaping women's experiences of desistance (Fredriksson and Gålnander, 2025), showing how women navigate intersecting processes of minoritisation along their desistance journeys. However, the impact of different identity positions was often mediated by the possibility of identity passing. Alignment with heteronormative ideals of ethnically white Swedishness emerged as particularly significant in securing social recognition within processes of tertiary desistance. These findings underscore the importance of empirically examining racialisation, discrimination and exclusionary practices – as contextually and culturally situated processes – that shape desistance experiences and opportunities. However, the results also demonstrate how women can find ways to actively navigate their minority position in terms of how and when it is enacted, in order to reduce its impact on their pathway, or alternatively be used as a position that can enable an ‘authentic self’ desistance narrative. It should be noted, however, that this is a privilege that the results suggest is specifically available to those women who can pass and align with ethnically white Swedish heteronormative ideals.

Intersecting minority positions were moreover found to intensify structural and relational barriers to desistance through experiences of isolation, layered stigma and mistrust of authorities. The ‘pains of desistance’ (Nugent and Schinkel, 2016) are thus shown to be unevenly distributed and exacerbated by intersecting aspects of identity, including gendered dimensions (Barr and Hart, 2022; Petrillo, 2023). These pains were especially prominent in the early phases of desistance, in which isolation is more acute, and the need to defy stigmatising stereotypes on multiple levels more obvious whilst in the process of forming a redemptive narrative (Stone, 2016). Furthermore, the findings emphasise the importance of situating desistance within broader collective and community-levelled experiences, particularly those marked by historical and institutional exclusion and discrimination, as such may shape desisters’ engagement with authorities. While tertiary desistance emerged as an important aspect of the women's pathways out of crime, experiences of recognition and belonging were shown to be conditioned not only by gendered ideals, but also by factors related to ethnicity, race and migration.

Taken together, the analysis illustrates how minority positions can generate both constraints and resources within desistance journeys, and points to the need for desistance-oriented research and practice that attends to structural inequalities, recognition and trust-building as intersectional phenomena. It further highlights the importance of policy-oriented work that examines how interventions can better integrate critical perspectives on systemic inequalities and create conditions for tertiary desistance in women's pathways out of crime. In the Swedish context, the development of equality data within criminal justice and social work systems would represent an important first step towards this, enabling more nuanced analyses of how different identity markers intersect within institutional contexts that shape the experiences of both current and future desisters.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

The author used ChatGPT (OpenAI, GPT-5.2, educational license) for linguistic editing assistance, including translation of data from Swedish and support with English language accuracy and readability. All outputs were carefully reviewed and revised by the author, who takes full responsibility for the final content.

ORCID iD

Linnéa Österman

Ethical considerations

This study was approved by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority (diarie no.2022-06229-01) on 2^nd February, 2023.

Consent to participate

Written informed consent was obtained from all respondents prior to the interviews.

Consent for publication

When respondents consented to participate, they also consented to the use of anonymised quotations in publications arising from the study.

Funding

The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Nordic Research Council for Criminology [grant number 20220002].

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to the sensitive nature of the qualitative in-depth interviews and the ethical requirement to protect participant anonymity. Participants consented to the publication of anonymised excerpts only, not entire interview transcripts. Further information may be obtained from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Author biography

Linnéa Österman is an Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Social Work at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She holds a PhD in Criminology from the University of Surrey (2016). Her research focuses on women's rights and experiences within criminal justice systems from feminist and international comparative perspectives, with a particular focus on female desistance. She also conducts research on restorative justice and critical pedagogy in locked institutions.

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