Collective Roots and Individual Choices: A Critical Reflection on Disability and Community in the 21st Century.

Hannah Morgan, Lancaster UniversityAlan Roulstone, Northumbria University

Our contention

• The apparent convergence of statutory and Disabled People’s Movement thinking masks significant threats to the expansion of meaningful independent living for disabled people particularly in the current economic climate.

• There is a very real risk that independent living will be ‘hollowed out’ through the atomising of choice(s) leaving little opportunity for solidarity and community (the building blocks of the disabled people’s movement).

Introduction

Convergence between disability movement’s claims for independent living with policy and practice discourse(s)

• Choice(s)• Rights• Self-determination• Recognition of the role of ULOs Underpinned by a presumption that personalisation will

end the enforced collectivism experienced by many disabled people by facilitating inclusion in mainstream places and spaces.

Collective roots emerging from enforced collectivism

A strong and sustained critique of the enforced and institutionalised segregation of disabled people formed the basis of the UK disabled people’s movement.

‘…it is essential that all disabled people join together in our own organisations so that there is a creative interaction between disabled people’ (Finkelstein 1987:4)

Roots Out

I was quite fortunate in a sense that I had problems after I became disabled about living in the community. I went to Le Court to live, which I didn’t want to do, because I thought it was an institution and it had all sorts of bad things that I didn’t particularly think were the sorts of things that I wanted to be doing. But, as it happened, there were lots of things happening at Le Court and I immediately got in touch with disabled people being active. There was an active residents’ committee, there was participation on the management committee, and disabled people were actually taking an active role in the running of the home and doing all sorts of things. So there was this kind of real positive feel to it even though it was a real institutional setting’ John Evans in Campbell & Oliver 1996:42)

Solidarity, Support and Community

• A shared identity based around a common experience of disablism formed the basis for collective action and the development of user-led organisations.

But:‘the disability community is not a monolith: the dimension of community claimed is about the shared politicization of personal lives, rather than necessarily about similarly lived experiences’ (McGuire 1994:112)

Enforced individualismFor many disabled people personalisation is increasingly synonymous with

individualisation:

I’d like to go out more and that, but I would need someone wid’ me. One day I might be able to do everythin’ myself, but at the moment that scares me. Dunno what I’d do all day, do you?

I’m not sure how closing the Centre is givin’ us more choice, we need time to think and get used to the idea of being out by ourselves. Have heard [Day Centre] will close – I dunno where that leaves me and that – need time to think an’ try things out an that. Am not ready just yet.

[Day Service Users, Local Authority B, NW England 2006]

Individuals in the community

‘There was a government initiative that we should be out in the wider community even though the community is not ready for disabled people. Lots of people say it is, but it’s not’‘They’ve moved us around ‘till they lose us’

(Day Services Users, Local Authority BNW England 2010)

Key challenges

• Accessibility of ‘mainstream’ community/ies and spaces– Hostility and unwelcoming communities– Impact of public sector retractment

(Roulstone and Morgan 2011)

• Which community/ies?– Dangers of communities within communities– In ‘the community’ but not ‘their’ community– Disability communities

ReferencesCampbell, J. & Oliver, M.(1996) Disability Politics: Understanding our past,

changing our future. Routledge, London. Finkelstein, V. (1987) ‘Disabled people and our cultural development’, Paper

presented at the first annual meeting of Disability Arts in London, Published in DIAL No. 8.

McGuire, J.F. (1994) ‘Organizing from diversity in the name of community: Lessons from the disability civil rights movement’ Policy Studies Journal Urbana: Spring 1994. Vol 22. pg. 112.

Roulstone, A. & Morgan, H. (2009) ‘Neo-Liberal Individualism or Self-Directed Support: Are We All Speaking the Same Language on Modernising Adult Social Care?’ Social Policy & Society 8:3 333-345.

Roulstone, A. & Morgan, H. (2011) ‘Accessible public space for the ‘not obviously disabled’? Jeopardized selfhood in an era of welfare retraction’ Paper presented at the Disability and Public Space Conference, Oslo April 2011.