Transnationalising Disability Studies: Rights, Justice and Impairment

Abstract

<p>In this paper we aim to explore the realm of impairment in terms of its politicization under transnational claims for justice. The realm of disability rights and justice has been a central theme in disability analytical inquiry and by disability movement actors engaged in struggles of disability affirmative politics. Within this frame, there has been an increasing amount of disability scholarship and activism at the transnational sphere. In fact, since the ratification of the UNCRPD (2006) greater transnational alliances have become a central feature to advancing disability affirmative claims for rights and justice.  While welcomed, we argue that within the transnational realm, the focus on disability alone critically marginalizes those groups engaging in repertories of action within the <em>logos </em>of impairment as transnational claims for disability justice tend to naturalise impairment and negate the production of impairment under global structural processes of violence. To address this issue, we suggest that the growing scholarship on transnational theorizing and activism within disability needs to respond to these claims for justice and rights. To conclude we argue that transnational theorizing and praxis is in fact, a <em>double move</em> – an affirmative politics of disability rights and justice and a transformative politics of impairment.</p> <p><strong> </strong></p> <p><strong>Keywords: </strong>impairment, justice, rights, disability politics, majority world, justice, North–South power relations, Southern epistemologies</p>

Disability and Poverty in the Global South

“…The rights-based approach in development, though, has not been without its critics, from within development or from the peripheries. Much of this critique of the RBA has various serious implications for disabled people: lack of guidelines on how to implement it; implementation problems, including cultural and contextual insensitivity; lack of government funds, strategy and commitment and ineffective monitoring and enforcement (Uvin, 2004); the problem of universality versus cultural relativism (Hansen and Sano, 2006); power biases towards the global North and cultural imperialism (Grech, 2009;Katsui, 2012;Soldatic and Grech, 2014); and the lack or absence of poor people in the design and implementation of policies and poverty-reduction strategies (Hickey and Mohan, 2004). But, and yet again, a critique of the rights-based approach and how it interacts with and impacts disability, if it does at all, comes up short in disability and development circles, a critique all too relevant as the CRPD gains ground, at least discursively (see below).…”

Theorising Disability Care (Non-)Personalisation in European Countries: Comparing Personal Assistance Schemes in Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom

“…The theory proposed by critical theorist Nancy Fraser can be very fruitful for disability policy analyses (for analyses in the Western capitalist context: Dodd, 2016;Knight, 2015;Mladenov, 2016; for analyses in the global context: Soldatic, 2013;Soldatic & Grech, 2014; for care policy: Swaton, 2017; for personal assistance: Mladenov, 2012;Mladenov, Owens, & Cribb, 2015;Owens, Mladenov, & Cribb, 2017). According to Fraser (2003), there are generally two dimensions of social justice: recognition justice and redistributive justice.…”

Disabled mobility and the production of impairment: The case of Australia's migration policy framework

“…Excluding the production or creation of impairment from the UNCRPD implicitly signals ‘who is of value or which bodies and minds matter and which do not’ (Soldatic, : 748). The exclusion of the production of impairment from the UNCRPD could benefit the Global North, making the UNCRPD ‘a derivative of broader relations of power’ (Cutler, 2003: 62 cited in Soldatic and Grech, ). As Farmer (2005: 7 cited in Meekosha and Soldatic, : 1386) suggests

[h]uman rights violations are not accidents; they are not random in distribution or effect.

…”

“…Soldatic suggests ‘Article 18 is central to ensuring the protection and securing the rights of disabled refugees, and enforcing another state, in which the disabled refugee is not yet a citizen, to their just claim for settlement’ (: 746). ‘This has particular implications for the free movement of disabled people across borders, whether this is forced migration such as disabled refugees and asylum seekers [and/or] for disabled citizens who are seeking to make claims against a state to which they are not a citizen’ (Soldatic and Grech, ).…”