The Portuguese Disabled People’s Movement: development,demands and outcomes

The increased variety of social conflicts in the post-1960?years resulted in the extension of the individual’s participation in the state’s activity. This change was mirrored by the emergence of new social movements and the related expansion of the notion of citizenship. New groups of people, including disabled people, have emerged claiming citizenship rights. In order to do this, disabled people started to coalesce into uni-impairment and multi-impairment groups and organisations to denounce social exclusion and legal oppression, as well as to demand rights as citizens. Partially based on my research about social citizenship and the Disabled People’s Movement, this article investigates, firstly, the seeds and development of the Portuguese Disabled People’s Movement, secondly, its aims, demands and action strategies and, finally, its impact in the lives of disabled people in Portugal.     

‘Unjust,inhumane and highly inaccurate’: the impact of changes to disability benefits and services – social media as a tool in research and activism

This article details research carried out as part of an MA in Social Research at the University of Leeds (UK). The research was concerned with two key issues: documenting the impact of recent cuts in benefits and services on disabled people; and the role of disabled people’s organisations in responding to this impact. It also explored the use of social media in recruiting research participants. Working with Hammersmith and Fulham Action on Disability, the experiences of 95 disabled people were gathered using focus groups and an online questionnaire distributed via social media. The use of social media to gather participants is something I felt was particularly interesting in relation to disabled people, especially in light of social media’s role in current disability rights campaigns, and a method I feel should be explored further.     

Losing Ground: Social Policy and Disabled People in Great Britain, 1980-90

This paper reviews some of the major themes of social policy in Britain over the past decade and examines in detail the impact on disabled people in three major areas: employment; income and social security provision; and the organisation and delivery of health and social welfare services. It will be argued that, despite some superficial similarities between the demands of disabled people and the rhetoric of the New Right for reductions in dependency and control by the state, the dominant policy themes of free market forces, privatisation and reductions in the scope of welfare state services have not served disabled people's interests well. Moreover, attempts to “protect” disabled people within a much reduced welfare state have not been effective and have in any case had the unwelcome consequence of increasing the scrutiny and control exercised by professionals and others. This stands in contrast to the alternative policy agenda articulated by disabled people themselves, which stresses autonomy, integration, an end to discrimination, and rights—to equal chances in employment, to an adequate level of income, and to services which enhance personal choice and facilitate independent living.     

New policies,old ideas: the question of disability assessment systems and social policy

This paper reports on qualitative content analysis research and critically analyzes the state’s intention to use the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health as a tool to develop a national disability assessment system that will guide social policy developments, and particularly the allocation of pensions and benefits to disabled people. The work uses Cyprus as an example, and reviews the most important issues arising from a recent study prepared by the Department for Social Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities. The most important points stemming from the analysis are grouped and discussed in such a way as to shed light upon the most controversial aspects of the proposed assessment system, such as the definition of disabled people in national laws, and the implications of associating social policy with the assessment of disability and functioning. The discussion addresses issues that are of interest at international level.     

Moving the Boundaries of Feminist Social Work Education with Disabled People in the Neoliberal Era

Until recently social work education in Australia has either marginalised or neglected disability by omission. Given the increasing number of disabled people in the community, the teaching of social work within a disability studies emancipatory paradigm as an essential part of the curriculum is long overdue. As many social work educators have suggested, we are at a critical moment in Australia, where the policy environment in which social work is embedded has largely been reframed in line with neoliberal trends. For disabled people, this has meant an ongoing state campaign to diminish disability entitlements, from decreasing disability social security regimes through to the rationalisation of adult disability support and care schemes. Social workers are negotiating the competing demands of these policy constraints alongside the needs of the disabled people they work with. New moral dilemmas have emerged where they are actively faced with the question of ‘who to serve?’.     

Disabling Pasts,Enabling Futures? How Does the Changing Nature of Capitalism Impact on the Disabled Worker and Jobseeker?

Disability scholars have invested much in a stage theory of capitalism, which affords little scope for disabled workers and job seekers this side of Socialism. Parallel discussions of choices and empowerment rarely penetrates the world of paid employment. Mainstream policy writers meanwhile have been concerned with an atheoretical appraisal of enhancing access to and retention of employment. Neither approach has entered into an examination of the changing nature of employment and the impact of wider relationship between state and capitalism. In this way, the important shift to new social movements in progressing identity and social rights may have overlooked the monumental, but not irreversible loss of power in the enabling state and of old social movements. The article offers a starting point in our understanding of the changing nature of employment, its likely impact on disabled people, whilst asking for a reappraisal of the possible links between old and new social movements.     

Social policy and transitions to training and work for disabled young people in the United Kingdom: neo-liberalism for better and for worse?

Although New Labour distanced itself from the neo-liberal ‘underclass’ discourses of its predecessors, its approach to disabled young people maintained key aspects of neo-liberalism, particularly an emphasis on individuals’ human capital, aspirations and self-investments as causes of and solutions to disabled young people’s unemployment. This is also apparent in early Coalition government statements. Since the 1990s, policies have focused on providing individually-tailored advice, developing individuals’ skills, and motivating appropriate self-investment. We examine recent evidence that highlights a number of problems with this focus. Notably, it entails a simplistic and individualised notion of ‘barriers’ to employment that cannot account for the complex impacts of disablement and inequality; moves towards open-market models of training and work support create perverse incentives that divert support away from those most in need; employment success is dependent on unpredictable local opportunity structures; and the focus on paid employment undermines other social contributions made by disabled young people.     

Back to the future,disability and the digital divide

The aim of this article is to explore disability and the digital divide using a quantitative methodology. The research investigates what impact digital technologies have had in improving the life-chances for disabled people from deprived neighbourhoods in the northeast of England. The study explores how disabled people engage with digital and assistive technologies in order to overcome disabling barriers and social exclusion. Unfortunately, the analysis found no evidence that digital and assistive technologies had any impact on reducing social exclusion for disabled people. In fact, the research discovered that these technologies seemed to construct new forms of disabling barriers as a consequence of the digital divide.     

Disability and the promises of technology: Technology, subjectivity and embodiment within an order of the normal

The topic of this article is the promises of technology for disabled people. The starting point is that disabled is not something one is but something one becomes, and, further, that disability is enacted and ordered in situated and quite specific ways. The question, then, is how people become, and are made, disabled - and, in particular, what role technologies and other material arrangements play in enabling and or disabling interactions. Drawing on a study of the uses of new technologies in the lives of disabled people in Norway, and recent work in disability studies as well as social studies of science and technology, this article explores precisely what positions and capacities are enabled; how these are made possible in practice; the specific configuration of subjectivity, embodiment and disability that emerges; and the limits to this mode of ordering disability and its technologies. The argument is that in this context the mobilization of new technologies works to build an order of the normal and turn disabled people into competent normal subjects. However, this strategy based on compensation achieves its goals only at a very high price: by continuing to reproduce boundaries between abled and disabled, and normal and deviant, which constitute some people as disabled in the first place. There are thus limits to normalization. And so, notwithstanding their generative and transformative power, technologies working within an order of the normal are implicated in the (re)production of the asymmetries that they and it seek to undo.     

The Dialectics of Multiple Identities and the Disabled People's Movement

This paper explores the issue of commonality and difference in the disabled people's movement in relation to ethnicity, gender sexuality, age and class. Hitherto, disability academics have either ignored or tagged on the experience of disabled black and minority ethnic people, women, older people, and gay men and lesbians. When they are discussed, they have more often than not been discussed separately - for example, disabled black people's experience has always been discussed separately, disabled women, disabled gay men and lesbians and disabled older women. Hence it is not surprising if 'simultaneous oppression' is perceived to be the unique experience of a minority of disabled people. Here, I suggest that it is, in fact, the experience of a majority of disabled people since the majority is not a homogenous mass of disabled white heterosexual middle-class young men, but individuals from diverse backgrounds with a wide range of identities and experiences, and to accept that their only concern is disability is to fall into the same trap as the general population most of whom only see the impairment and not the person. It is imperative to note, however, that the blame does not lie with the social model of disability, as it is sometimes assumed, for that is merely a conceptual tool. The paper discusses the concept 'simultaneous oppression' as applied to the experience of black women and later disabled black people. It is suggested that this is too simplistic an analysis to capture the day to day experience of those who possess negatively labelled multiple identities. An alternative framework is suggested to link the experience of different groups of disabled people and, hence, offer a common ground for unity in the disabled people's movement.     

From Welfare to Work? Social Policy for Disabled People of Working Age in the United Kingdom in the 1990s

Disabled people of working age have been at the heart of recent welfare restructuring in the United Kingdom, but this has received little attention from mainstream social policy analysis. Both Conservative and Labour governments have introduced measures to promote labour force participation among disabled people, whilst discouraging dependence on welfare benefits. Whilst this new approach has been justified in terms of reducing poverty, its underlying imperatives are essentially inegalitarian. The welfare reform process has been driven by a number of official concerns including a perception of unsustainable fiscal pressures and a belief that perverse incentives in the social security benefit system have undermined economic efficiency. Moreover, it has been legitimated by an ideology of citizenship, which has shifted the moral responsibility for needs satisfaction away from the state to the individual. The paper concludes by identifying a better approach to welfare reform for disabled people of working age.     

The changing landscape of public service delivery systems for disabled people in China: a Shanghai case study

This article will consider the current development of an emerging contract culture for the delivery of social services and its impact on disabled people in China. The discussion is based on an original qualitative study in Shanghai. The past 30 years have seen dramatic changes in China, which in parts have led to improvements in the lives of disabled people. The China Disabled Persons’ Federation (CDPF) became a key player in delivering these changes with the government. However, the CDPF is being criticized by disabled people for being too bureaucratic and not being effective enough in its delivery of services. One of its responses is to work with newly emerging not-for-profit organizations (NPOs) of and for disabled people. The CDPF has now begun to contract the delivery of some services to such NPOs. It is hoped that this may improve their effectiveness but the development of a contract culture in the delivery of services for disabled people may also be seen to pose a threat.     

Law and Older People—The Rise and Fall of Israel's Senior Citizens' Act

Within the broad and complex framework of those Israeli laws that relate to the social welfare of the older population, this article uses a case study approach to focus on Israel's Senior Citizens' Act of 1989. During its hitherto brief life, this law has undergone numerous transformations, additions, and deletions as well as successes and failures. At the time of its enactment, many hoped that this law would considerably bolster the rights of older people. Echoing legal and political theories of the 1980s, it seemed to reflect the fact that politicians were sensitive to the potential power of the pensioner vote, while echoing the approach to social engineering that advocated the use of the law both as a means for social change and a symbol of power. As of today, however, this article argues that the law has failed to realize what were declared to be its objectives. Instead of promoting social change and providing older people with political power, the Senior Citizens' Act has become an empty symbol that hides the fact that the older generation in Israel still lacks the real political power it needs in order to use the law to improve society's treatment of older people.     

Disability Culture and Cultural Competency in Social Work

Despite recognition of the importance of cultural and social diversity in social work education and practice there is a dearth of social work literature related to disability culture. A review of disability studies literature indicates that the disabled people's movement already affirms and celebrates the existence of disability culture as characterized by several agreed upon assumptions: disability culture is cross-cultural; it emerged out of a disability arts movement and its positive portrayal of disabled people; it is not just a shared experience of oppression but includes art, humour, history, evolving language and beliefs, values and strategies for surviving and thriving. Essentialist concepts of culture, as represented in assimilationist and pluralist social work approaches, provide social workers with the false belief that there are cultural competencies that one can develop that are sufficient to become more culturally sensitive. However, analysis of the critical theory underpinning disability culture demonstrates that an understanding of cultural politics is fundamental to social work education if it is to support the work of the disabled people's movement in demystifying and deconstructing the norms, discourses and practices of dominant culture which are represented as neutral and universal.     

The end of an era? The resignation of Iain Duncan Smith,Conservatism and social security benefits for disabled people

Iain Duncan Smith resigned as the UK’s Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in March 2016. While not invisible from the debate following his resignation, the fact that changes to social security policy for disabled people were central to Duncan Smith’s time as Secretary of State and central to his (at least public) reasons for resignation was lost in a focus on the internal machinations of the UK’s Conservative Party. In this short article, Duncan Smith’s resignation is used to examine the location of additional cost social security benefits for disabled people in Conservative thinking in contemporary Britain.     

Disability, Dependency and the New Deal for Disabled People

The emergence of the 'New Deal' and its attendant claim to be part of a new political and social future based on the 'third way' seems to offer formerly excluded people new horizons for social inclusion. This paper provides a critical exploration of the likely impact of the 'New Deal' for disabled people. The paper contextualises the 'New Deal' in the wider ideology and rhetoric of 'Welfare to Work'. In doing so, it highlights similarities between 'New Deal', 'Welfare to Work' and the victim blaming ideas which characterised discussions of a growing 'social underclass' in the 1980s. By looking at the way the disability problem is framed within the 'New Deal' and 'Welfare to Work', it will be argued that it is unlikely to address the nature of employment barriers, indeed risks seriously misrepresenting the causes of disabled people's economic and social exclusion. In this way, its ideological underpinnings may simply reaffirm disabled people's economic and social dependency.     

'Out of Place', 'Knowing One's Place': space, power and the exclusion of disabled people

Disabled people are marginalised and excluded from 'mainstream' society. In general, our understanding of the processes of exclusion is grounded in time and history. In this paper, it is argued that space, as well as time, is instrumental in reproducing and sustaining disablist practices. Disability has distinct spatialities that work to exclude and oppress disabled people. Spaces are currently organised to keep disabled people 'in their place' and 'written' to convey to disabled people that they are 'out of place'. Furthermore, social relations currently work to spatially isolate and marginalise disabled people and their carers. Disability is spatially, as well as socially, constructed. It is contended that an understanding of society's reaction to, and the experiences of, disability should be framed within an approach that combines a spatialised political economy with social constructivism. Unlike neo-Marxist approaches this approach is centred on notions of power rather than capital. Using this approach, the spatialities of disability are explored.     

Disabled People,Health Professionals and the Social Model of Disability: Can there be a research relationship?

The social model of disability is proposed as an alternative to models that have viewed disability as an individual, rather than a socio-political issue. The use of this model to guide both research theory and practice is proposed in order to equalise research power relationships, and involve and empower disabled people. Health professionals have traditionally reinforced the medical model of disability in both research and practice, and this has been seen as contributing to the oppression and marginalisation of disabled people. If the social model is to achieve wider dissemination, it would appear important to develop a dialogue between disabled people and health professionals. However, because of negative perceptions it can be difficult for health professionals to find an appropriate position in relation to disabled people, research and the social model of disability. While not denying the past, it appears essential to look at ways in which disabled people and health professionals can work together to overcome the oppression and marginalisation that has been linked to the provision of health services.