CWS between empowerment and oppression

Abstract

Novel model of collaborative workspaces (CWS) in the form of coworking spaces has become an important place of encounters and collaborative engagement especially in the start-up scene. The coworking spaces do not only offer the actual physical space for freelancer and entrepreneurs, they also provide an important place of encounter where new collaborations are found and support networks are built. Semi-formal events, an abundance of occasions and spaces for leisure activities and interactions but also specifically work-related networking events and workshops on entrepreneurship round up the packages that are offered in such spaces. The overall atmosphere and motto is characterized by a demonstratively liberal and often also diversity-sensitive ‘woke’ culture. However, following an in-depth and multi-year case of a female intersectional entrepreneur (queer, neurodivergent and with migration background), this presentation brings light to the highly difficult environment that such a CWS brings to the actual empowerment process of a ‘multiply diverse’ entrepreneur. Taking the concept of power geometries from feminist geography into consideration and with an intersectional feminist lens, it tries to uncover how the different collaborative workspaces have impacted the trajectory of an intersectional entrepreneur over the process of empowering and disengaging from the collaborative workspace as part of a transnational family business space to further empowering but also experiencing backlashes as an entrepreneur herself in the diversity business in the coworking space. It questions the potentials but also limitations of the emerging trend of community-based entrepreneurial coworking spaces between the intentional diversity agenda and the actual lived experience of diversity in practice.