Suchergebnisse

When people are prevented from meeting their needs, the impact is disabling, whether in the immigration system or in the wider population. Drawing on many years of research and activism, this book argues that insights from the disabled people's movement, particularly the original Social Model of Disability, can be usefully extended to focus resistance on the disabling restrictions imposed on people subject to asylum and immigration controls.

While acknowledging the pain and discomfort of many impairments and of forced displacement, the book focuses on injustices that can be changed. It does not catalogue the hostility of the 'hostile environment'. Nor does it promote inclusive asylum restrictions. An unjust system is not transformed by including disabled people. Policies designed to deprive people of essential needs and to stoke hatred among the wider population are core elements of the rise of fascism. In this context, bringing together movements for disability and migrant justice could help build urgently needed solidarity and resistance with which to develop a society based on equity and common humanity.

Quotations and images are used to convey the messages and priorities of disabled people seeking asylum, ensuring that the book is both engaging and grounded in the insights of lived experience. This book will interest people seeking to improve social justice, including scholars of disability, migration, sociology and politics.

Struggles for survival and resistance -- Exceptions to universal rights and the promotion of individual responsibility -- Austerity, the hostile environment and entrenchment of individualism -- Implementation or resistance to the increasingly hostile environment -- Omission or distortion of insights from the disabled people's movement -- Extending the social model to build collective resistance -- Building a movement for justice.

Drawing on many years of research and activism, this book argues that insights from the disabled people's movement, particularly the original Social Model of Disability, can be usefully extended to focus resistance on the disabling restrictions imposed on people subject to asylum and immigration controls.

This final chapter considers murals as tools for research. It explores the design, rationale and impact of two research projects. One was focussed on the UK context, working with disabled people living in a wide variety of different circumstances (including asylum seekers, ex-service personnel, parents, people living in residential accommodation). The second was focused on the experiences of disabled people in Bolivia. In each place, people used imagery to convey their key messages. The images and ideas were brought together to create murals which were then installed in public spaces. Public opening events were organized, and more bespoke exhibitions of mural reproductions were taken to academic conferences, parliament and public events. The murals served as a tool for bringing people together, eliciting information, promoting research findings and enabling a power shift, such that those traditionally conceived of as research 'subjects' have greater control and ownership of the research output. The individual and collective impact of the murals is examined by considering the perceptions of those creating the artwork as well as those observing it. Murals sited in public locations facilitate the dissemination of the research findings in a far more accessible manner than is possible with a written report alone. This chapter calls for consideration of the epistemological value of such methods. In addition to any aesthetic qualities, it is argued that murals can be important mediums of communication and effective research tools, particularly where there are associated aspirations for social change.

Health. Disability. Vulnerability. These words are often used when discussing the risks of climate disruption. These discussions warn of the potential for climate impacts to "undermine 50 years of gains in public health" (as stated by the Lancet Countdown on Climate Change). Increasingly, such discussions also acknowledge climate injustice, examining who will benefit or lose out from climate change, how and why. The embodied vulnerability of disabled people is often assumed within such discussions, with less consideration of the social, economic or political conditions that create this vulnerability.
By bringing disability justice and disability studies into correspondence with care, environmental and climate justice scholarship, this reflective paper challenges the master narratives that blur differentiated experiences of disability and climate impacts into a single story of inevitable vulnerability. Recognising disabled people as knowers, makers and agents of change, it calls for transformative climate action, underpinned by values of solidarity, mutuality and care.