Youth and Disability

A Challenge to Mr Reasonable

Jenny Slater

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780815392163
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134791095
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

In this ground-breaking book, Jenny Slater uses the lens of 'the reasonable' to explore how normative understandings of youth, dis/ability and the intersecting identities of gender and sexuality impact upon the lives of young dis/abled people. Although youth and disability have separately been thought within socio-cultural frameworks, rarely have sociological studies of 'youth' and 'disability' been brought together. By taking an interdisciplinary, critical disability studies approach to explore the socio-cultural concepts of 'youth' and 'disability' alongside one-another, Slater convincingly demonstrates that 'youth' and 'disability' have been conceptualised within medical/psychological frameworks for too long. With chapters focusing on access and youth culture, independence, autonomy and disabled people's movements, and the body, gender and sexuality, this volume's intersectional and transdisciplinary engagement with social theory offers a significant contribution to existing theoretical and empirical literature and knowledges around disability and youth. Indeed, through highlighting the ableism of adulthood and the falsity of conceptualising youth as a time of becoming-independent-adult, the need to shift approaches to research around dis/abled youth is one of the main themes of the book. This book therefore is a provocation to rethink what is implicit about 'youth' and 'disability'. Moreover, through such an endeavour, this book sits as a challenge to Mr Reasonable.

Chapter 1

Disabled People in (Neo)liberal Times (or, Disability as Unreasonable)

The aim of this book isn’t particularly one of policy interrogation. This is not to say, however, that social, political and cultural contexts are not important. As outlined in the Introduction, setting ‘disability’ in social, political and cultural contexts is one of the overarching aims of a disability studies project (Goodley 2011). This book was mainly written in the north of England between September 2010 and August 2014, with three months spent doing fieldwork in Iceland between February and May 2012. In May 2010, four months before my youth and disability project began, and amidst the ‘global financial crisis’, a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government ended the 12-year reign of New Labour in the UK.¹ Following the work of previous Conservative Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major, between 1998 and 2010 New Labour enforced a series of backhanded privatisations (Roulstone and Prideaux 2011). Schools were re-branded as academies and affiliated with big businesses, whilst agendas such as Every Child Matters conceptualised the child as entrepreneurial (Goodley and Runswick-Cole 2011a). However, since the arrival of the coalition government neoliberal mantras of ‘individuality, personal fulfilment and entrepreneurial responsibility’ (Sothern 2007: 147) have become louder and stronger. At the time of writing, Britain’s public services are being eroded as local councils make significant cutbacks. This, of course, has political consequences which impact upon young and disabled people. It also impacts upon the way in which researchers go about researching ‘youth’ and ‘disability’. The aim of this chapter is to begin unpicking both previous research around ‘youth’ and ‘disability’ as well as the context in which the young disabled people I spent time with were living (an unpicking that will continue into Chapter 2).

I contextualise this book in what are recurrently deemed ‘neoliberal times’, and begin this chapter by further exploring the term ‘neoliberalism’. To do this, I consider the relationship between ‘liberalism’ and ‘neoliberalism’ further. I agree with Sothern (2007) that this relationship is one which is often neglected and I therefore start with a discussion of ‘liberalism’. I find that much disability studies research around youth makes an argument of ‘liberal acceptance’: that disabled young people are ‘just the same as everybody else’. Yet, as I go on to think more about the neoliberal context, I worry that an argument of ‘sameness’ can play into the hands of politicians who are trying to justify public-service cuts through neoliberal rhetoric. Therefore, this chapter argues that we need to be wary of liberal arguments which aim to counter neoliberal doctrine, as they often fail to include those most precariously positioned. I thus explain why I will follow Sothern (2007) in complicating the distinction between the ‘liberal’ and the ‘neoliberal’ by employing the phrase (neo)liberalism.

Liberalism, Disabled Young People, and the Rhetoric of ‘Sameness’

Last week I shared with my friend Hari a discussion I’d had with my family around queer relationships. The conversation in question was similar to the story I shared in the introductory chapter: there was an insistence that, so long as they’re not hurting anybody, other people’s relationships (whatever they may look like) shouldn’t be anything to do with anyone except those involved – we should just let people get on with it. Hari’s response was that I was lucky to have such a ‘liberal’ family. In some ways Hari was correct, I am lucky, as my discussion in the introductory chapter identified, my family made it very easy for me to talk to them about my own queer relationships. Yet, my family’s relationship with ‘liberalism’ is one I’d contest; what it means to be ‘liberal’ needs some further investigation.

Scott and Marshall (2009: 415) identify liberalism as being about ‘the free exercise of religion, speech, and association’. In my conversation with Hari, he was identifying the ‘liberal’ argument of personal freedom that my family were using. The ‘empowerment’, ‘equality’ and ‘freedom’ we may associate with liberalism are largely accepted as a ‘good thing’ within capitalist democracies (Sothern 2007). As a politically-left, queer woman it would perhaps be assumed I would agree with the argument that people’s relationships (whatever they may look like) are ‘their own business’. And, to an extent, I do. Yet, the situation is more complicated than this liberal statement allows. The public/private divide is loaded with power dynamics, not all of which have positive implications for marginalised groups (Sherry 2004). As I discussed in the introductory chapter, the liberal argument that we should all just be able to ‘get on with stuff ’ doesn’t problematise (in this case) the pervasiveness of heteronormativity (the expectation of heterosexuality, which is projected as the ideal), or the differing degrees of privilege other intersecting identities create. This means a) those who don’t identify as heterosexual are positioned as Other; and b) those deemed outside ‘liberally accepted’ homosexuality remain peripheral (Warner 2003, also discussed in Chapter 6 of this book).

The above is a deliberate simplification used to exemplify the common-sense usage of the word ‘liberal’. If we continue to interrogate ‘liberalism’ from its roots we can see more contradictions emerging. The eighteenth century, known as the Age of Enlightenment, saw the American and French revolutions, where French people overthrew the monarchy and American people declared independence from British colonial rule (which was also functioning under a monarchy). This meant a change, from a sovereign rule by divine right, to the creation of a ‘representative democracy’. For Americans, two (continually prevailing) mantras of liberal democracy came out of this. Firstly, Thomas Jefferson’s (1776) statement in the American Declaration of Independence that ‘all men are created equal’; and secondly, a system based on the law of ‘one man, one vote’. You may have already noted here the gendered pronouns used to found liberal democracy: ‘All men are created equal’; ‘one man, one vote’. Furthermore, there was another overt contradiction within this ideology. Gender aside, although all men were supposedly created equal, this was also the time of the slave trade. The valid subject of liberal freedom and democracy, therefore, was not only male, but also white.

Why I am giving this history lesson? Surely things are different now? We are living in the post-civil rights era. There have been feminist movements. Our Western civilisations are based upon democracies where men and women have the vote, despite colour. Liberalism has moved on from its origins and is now about personal freedom and equality to which we are all (man and woman; white and black), entitled to: right?! Elements of this are true. Social movements, such as civil rights movements, feminist movements, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*² (LGBT*), queer movements and disabled people’s movements have argued that those considered Other (people of colour, women, queer and intersex people, and disabled people) should be embedded and given equal rights within this liberal democracy (Davis 2002; Erevelles 1996; Sedgwick 1990). This has been done by arguing these subjugated positions into a rhetoric of ‘sameness’, ultimately boiling down to the argument that fundamentally, biologically, we are the same as you, and should therefore enjoy the same freedoms (Erevelles 1996). Liberal feminists, for example, have argued that women’s biology should be no less valued than that of men; anti-racist scholars and activists have argued that there is no correlation between ‘race’ and ‘ability’ (Erevelles 1996); and, recently, queer activists have argued that LGBT* people should have the same right to marriage as heterosexual people (Sullivan 2004). Perhaps most pertinently for our ‘youth’ and ‘disability’ discussions, disabled people, through an argument of equality (Crow 2012), ‘have demanded the right to be regarded as valued participants within mainstream society’ (Erevelles 1996: 519).

Erevelles (1996), however, has concerns about the sustainability of an argument of ‘sameness’ for disabled people. She highlights that when not coming in direct relation to disability, arguments of ‘sameness’ often function at the expense of disabled people. Historically, for example, people of colour were viewed as less ‘intelligent’ than white people. In order to counter their positioning as subordinate, anti-racist activists have (rightly) denied any correlation between ‘race’ and ‘intelligence’ by arguing that there is no biological difference between themselves and white people. Yet, through doing so, rather than recognising the shared historical oppressions between people of colour and disabled people (further investigated in Chapter 2), some anti-racism activists separate themselves from disabled people. Furthermore, Erevelles (1996) points out that an argument around a lack of ‘biological difference’ is harder to maintain for disabled people than those fighting for and from other identity positionings. Denying biological difference through an argument of sameness means that if barriers to sameness are removed, and some disabled people continue to fail, blame can be placed upon individuals meaning their ‘exclusion from culture is more justified than ever’ (Ferguson and Ferguson 2001: 84).

This critique becomes pertinent when we consider the in/exclusivity of disabled people’s movements. It has been argued that disabled people with labels of ‘intellectual impairment’ have been left aside by both disabled people’s movements and disability studies (Boxall, Carson and Docherty 2004; Goodley 2001; Walmsley 2001). This is not an argument unique to conversations of disability. Similar arguments have been made by activists and scholars working from other identity positionings. Black feminists such as Crenshaw (1989), hooks (1994) and Lorde (2012), for example, point out that liberal feminist movements work on ideals of ‘whiteness’, and a theorising of gender which is not intersectional and which therefore excludes the combination of racism and sexism experienced by black women. Queer scholars and activists have noted that the focus on marriage equality in liberally based LGBT* and queer movements privileges homosexual people willing to fit into heterosexual frameworks at the expense of those unwilling/unable to comply (McRuer 2006; Warner 2003). Furthermore, often when claiming to address LGBT* issues, the experiences of trans* people are left aside (Collins 2011; Waite 2013). Arguments of liberal acceptance can mean fighting for the rights of the ‘dominant, often white, male, “normal” subject’ (Davis 2002), at the expense of other ways of being. Rather than challenging dominant ideals, we are all expected to ‘fit into’ the very ideals that have served to exclude us. Thus, for Sothern (2007: 147) an ‘intolerability towards difference’ is apparent in both ‘liberal’ and ‘neoliberal’ doctrine. In Chapter 2 I will propose that an argument that disabled young people are ‘just the same as everybody else’ fails to challenge (neo)liberal ideals of the pedestalled adult subject. For now, however, I turn to further explore why it might be both tempting and dangerous to employ a liberal argument of sameness in neoliberal times. I begin by further outlining the term ‘neoliberal’.

What is ‘Neoliberalism’, Anyway?

Peck and Tickell (2002: 380) write that ‘neoliberalism seems to be everywhere’. By this, they not only mean that neoliberalism infiltrates all aspects of life – something we will think more about throughout the book – but that it is continually evoked as ‘the explanatory term for contemporary forms of economic restructuring’ in academic texts (Larner 2003: 509, original emphasis). Although Peck and Tickell (2002) ground their work in geography, the same statement could be made about disability studies; neoliberalism is repeatedly cited as the grounding political context to be considered. For example, in 2012 the Lancaster Disability Studies Conference (arguably the largest UK-based disability studies conference) chose Disability, Poverty and Neo-Liberalism as the conference theme. This is understandable; neoliberalism is usually (for good reason) evoked as a political context which disabled people do not fare well within and it therefore requires interrogation. Yet terms such as ‘neoliberalism’, ‘neo-liberalism’, ‘global neoliberalism’ and ‘neoliberal capitalism’ are often used seemingly interchangeably, with little explanation. The way we define our terms makes a difference to the argument we are making (terms are played around with and redefined throughout the book). I want to explain through the rest of this chapter why I find it useful to follow Sothern (2007) in evoking the term (neo)liberalism.

Neoliberalism is largely associated with the politics of the right. It involves an economic restructuring through a (rhetorical, at least – considered further below) weakening of the state in favour of big business, competition and the global free-market economy (Peck and Tickell 2002). The turn to neoliberalism is usually attributed to the late 1970s and 1980s, and the rule of Reagan (in the USA) and Thatcher (in Britain). This era saw an upsurge in free-market thinking. In Britain, for example, Thatcher privatised over 50 previously state-owned companies including British Transport Docks, British Telecoms, British Gas, British Steel, as well as water and electricity. Such a neoliberal positioning – complete domination of the free market – is often seen as oppositional to a post-war state of affairs where the welfare state was strong. In fact, whereas it is often assumed that the post-war years were built on ‘pulling together’ and a sense of community, in a 1987 interview with the magazine, Woman’s Own, Thatcher famously proclaimed that ‘there is no such thing as society’ (Keay 1987).

Thatcher’s statement sums up a neoliberal politic of personal responsibility. Yet Sothern (2007) argues that positioning neoliberalism as anti-society does not sufficiently capture the pervasiveness, complexities or contradictions of neoliberal doctrines. If we continue our brief history, the merits of Sothern’s argument become clearer. Thatcher was followed by another Conservative Prime Minister, John Major, until 1997 when New Labour took power, with Tony Blair as Prime Minister. A New Labour government, however, did not mean a return to the previous era of a strong state. Instead, during the 1990s and into the 2000s, the neoliberal doctrine continued, albeit less overtly (Peck and Tickell 2002; Roulstone and Prideaux 2011; Yates and Roulstone 2012). Rather than complete privatisation, New Labour argued for a ‘third way’ where the private and public were brought together (Owen and Harris 2012). Privatisation was more ‘backhanded’: previously state-run schools, for example, were granted ‘academy status’, freed from local authority control and often sponsored by big businesses. This gave (amongst other things) academies more freedom over the curriculum, the opportunity to employ non-qualified teachers, less obligations in terms of teachers’ pay scales and conditions, and more choice over which students they allowed in (ALLFIE’s 2012, positionality statement on academies gives a good account of what this means for disabled students). Similarly, parts of the National Health Service (NHS) became subject to a ‘creeping privatisation’; services such as catering and cleaning, for example, were tenured out. The overall (neoliberal) message of the Labour government was that work should pay – and it was the responsibility of the individual to be a player in the market (Owen and Harris 2012). For sceptics, however, this meant the removal of life-sustaining supports and services.

We begin to see here some links between ‘liberal’ arguments of equity and inclusion and ‘neoliberal’ discourses of personal responsibility. Disabled people have, for good reason, argued that they should have equal access to the economy – and this means, amongst other things, removing barriers to work (Oliver 1990). Attempts have been made to answer (or, to the more sceptical, pacify) these cries through legislation. For example, in the UK, the Equality Act 2010 means that an ‘employer has to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to avoid you [disabled people] being put at a disadvantage compared to non-disabled people in the workplace. For example, adjusting your working hours or providing you with a special piece of equipment to help you do the job’ (DirectGov 2011). Although on the surface this seems good, we yet again say hello to our friend Mr Reasonable. The demand of access must be a ‘reasonable’ one. We know from the social model that the problem is one of inaccessible working practices and environments, not one of individual bodies (Oliver 1990). Yet, Mr Reasonable’s most able response to the question of access is to individualise: ‘you cannot access work due to disability. But, as we are Reasonable Men, we will meet your individual access demands, if they too are Reasonable’. As Titchkosky (2011: 77) tells us, seeking reason for demands of accessibility means that ‘whether or not the reasons for lack of access are judged good or bad, the social activity of people seeking reasons fosters the sensibility that lack of access is reasonable’. As a result, the bodies of those for whom work remains inaccessible, are deemed unreasonable; ‘“naturally” a problem for some spaces’ (Titchkosky 2011: 35). Although the parameters may be slightly widened, the changes made through ‘neoliberal’ rationales, based on ‘liberal’ arguments of equity, mean that the problem of structures and systems which imagine a narrow range of ‘able’ bodies and subjects is sustained.

I return to questions of ‘access’ in Chapter 5. For now, however, I want to continue our journey on the (partially accessible) train of (neo)liberalism. One may imagine that since the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition took power in 2010 (led by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron) the return to neoliberalism would be overt. To an extent this is true, using the ‘financial crises’ as justification, the coalition has rolled out what they have termed ‘welfare reform’ in order to cut public spending. With this, the aim to shrink the welfare state – which as Owen and Harris (2012) point out, is a key feature of neoliberal policies – has been made clear. This has, of course, impacted on young and disabled people. In 2012, research done by Scope told us that ‘disabled people and their carers have seen their income collectively cut by £500m in the past two years’ (P. Butler 2012b). In the same year a report from The Institute for Fiscal Studies warned that those hardest hit by The Coalition’s austerity programme were families with children; those least well-off, losing out most of all (Elliott 2012). Families with disabled children, it has been consistently shown, are proportionally more likely to live in poverty than those without (Every Disabled Child Matters 2007, 2011; Sharma 2002). Recent research highlighted that one-in-seven working families with disabled children and one-in-four without work are missing meals (Every Disabled Child Matters 2012), whilst one-in-six working and one-in-three non-working families with disabled children are left unable to pay to heat their homes (Every Disabled Child Matters 2012). These harsh political times were the backdrop to the research drawn upon in this book.

Although we can draw parallels between retrenchment (the reduction of public spending) now and in the 1980s, the rhetoric through which retrenchment is happening is different. Unlike in 1978 when Thatcher asserted that that there is ‘no such thing as society’ (Keay 1987), in 2010 David Cameron announced his plans for ‘The Big Society. Through The Big Society, emerging in a dramatically altered political landscape post-Thatcher, Cameron shifted the goal posts. Cameron’s argument was that a reduction in spending didn’t need to mean a closure of services, but a shift in relations. For example, whereas previously it was the state’s responsibility to provide public services...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• About the Author
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Theoretical Perspectives
• 1 Disabled People in (Neo)liberal Times (or, Disability as Unreasonable)
• 2 Youth as Border Zone, Disability and Disposability (or, Challenging Youth as Becoming-Reasonable Adult)
• 3 The Making of Un/Reasonable Bodies at the Border Zone of Youth
• 4 From Adulthood Independence to Continuing Relational Autonomy
• 5 Negotiating Space and Constituting ‘Problems’: Access at the Border Zone of Youth
• 6 Dis/abled Youth, Bodies, Femininity and Sexuality: Having Difficult Conversations
• 7 The Limits of ‘Sameness’: Goodbye Mr Reasonable
• References
• Index