Alter-European Journal of Disability Research最新文献

The perception of vibrations is an essential component of the subject's experience for the apprehension of his environment. This article presents a conceptual reflection on the conditions of possibility of the experience of vibrations in the field of music, at the intersection of bodily, psychosocial, technological and semiotic mediations. Based on three exploratory experiences, this study aims to articulate a psychological and semiotic approach to sensory experience with scientific and technological advances in the fields of acoustics and music. Vibrations are studied as a potential “sensory feedback” and “information channel” for intersubjective communication in the shared musical experience by disabled and non-disabled people. The musical practice has an exemplary character and generalizable in certain aspects to any demanding activity of everyday life, in an individual or collective situation.

This article offers a contribution to understanding how both disablism (the direct experiences of exclusion and discrimination faced by disabled people) and ableism (the norms and codes that shape our understanding of dis/ability) can manifest in the lives of students attending Higher Education. I use two case studies to illustrate how ableism and disablism manifest in particular ways. This is based in my research with people living with chronic illnesses in England and Portugal. I argue that being attentive to the conditions that produce barriers and exclusion for people living with chronic illnesses attending Higher Education continues to be imperative in order to tackle such barriers, particularly in contexts like Portugal, where such barriers remain prominent. In addition, understanding and unravelling the norms and codes that affect our understanding of normalcy and disability is equally fundamental in order to continue to enable true equality for disabled people.

As a result of the collaborative national research on complex disability situations, which he conducted between 2010 and 2013, the author returns to method elements regarding the survey of people without access to a typical communication. The article discusses the conditions of a “semaphoric” approach (Delion, 2006) in meeting with a person with multiple disabilities with significant communicative limitations, and co-constructing possible “spaces” for discussion and observation of the shared experience of emotions.

In the second half of the 20th century, all welfare states introduced social policies to help disabled persons. Yet since the 1970's, social protection devices have been the object of two criticisms. Disabled persons movements and the disability studies denounce both the underlying domination and paternalism and the forms of segregation that fuel the dependency and passivity of the beneficiaries of such devices. More recently, neoliberal activation policies have been trying to restrict access to these devices, believing that because they encourage people to take advantage of national solidarity, they constitute an obstacle to self-determination. These two lines of criticism converge to consider forms of protection as forms of alienation; they associate emancipation with the exercise of autonomy and the defence of human rights on the one hand, and with individual accountability on the other. By revisiting certain forms of protection related to French public policies – such as the introduction of social minima – and to civil society (associative work in particular), and by referring to different empirical studies, I will attempt to shed light on the conditions for forms of social protection that are sources of emancipation. I will show that they take place in arrangements that combine local care between peers with financial support from public policies. In this way I hope to make a modest contribution to Nancy Fraser's project to forge “a new alliance between social protection and emancipation”.

The aim of this article is to examine how different ideological perspectives on Swedish disability policy, are reflected in the experiences of disabled people and their families personal assistants. Personal assistance provided within the family can be seen as a hybridization between publicly regulated and paid work performed in the private family sphere, and thus conflicting norms and practices may coexist. In Sweden, family members of the assistant user can be employed as paid personal assistants. Many users combine personal assistance from family members with non-family assistance. Approximately 20–25% of the employed personal assistants are relatives of the assistance users. The empirical data consists of qualitative interviews with seventeen adult users and twenty-three family members employed as PAs with different types of family ties; parent-child relationships, sibling relationships and partner relationships. The findings show that family assistance could entail advantages such as personalised services, to combine instrumental and emotional assistance as well as achieving a power-balance between the parties. But there were also disadvantages, such as unwanted or enforced dependency, with a risk for both parties to be ‘locked up’ in the family. In an overall analysis, we distinguished three broad approaches towards family assistance, family as a substitute, family as a supplement and family first.

Sweden, like other Western countries, has a disability legislation that coexists with the Active Labour Market Policies. ALMP address a discourse emphasizing the importance of the able and productive ‘citizen-worker’, who is expected to craft his/her own success through meaningful personal goals and ambitions. This discourse also impacts disability groups who are actualized for support-to-work interventions, such as people with high-functioning autism (HFA). The objective of this paper is to analyse how narratives targeting ambitions and self-realisation in work life are expressed by individuals with HFA in relation to the citizen-worker discourse. This ethnographic study comprises 26 qualitative interview narratives by 11 participants with HFA. Findings indicate that the participants have developed a strong citizen-worker identity. The will is an essential point of gravity, expressed through notions of individual meaningfulness and ambitions of being perceived as resources in any vocational context. Barriers to these ambitions are experienced as personally counteractive support-to-work practices. These results suggest that disability legislation and policies are caught in a mantra of stagnating normalisation, resulting in disability-worker interventions that are incompatible with meanings emphasized in the citizen-worker discourse, which is the new ‘normal’ of today.