Alan Roulstone

Between hate and vulnerability: unpacking the British criminal justice system’s construction of disablist hate crime

Hate crime is now an established term in the fields of racist and religious attacks and is acknowledged in the cultural proscription against attacks on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender men and women. Disabled people, as so often is the case, are late in being afforded statutory recognition in hate crime. This can be explained in terms of wider constructions of disability and more pernicious and muddled constructions of disabled people as categorically ‘Vulnerable’. This construction has arguably weakened the impetus to introducing hate crime provisions and legal justice for disabled people. There is now ample evidence of hate crime being evident and pervasive in the lives of many disabled people. By drawing on two English studies of disablist hate crime, this paper draws out key aspects of hate crime policy and practice, and challenges the constructions of disability, hate and vulnerability currently operating.

Disabling Pasts, Enabling Futures? How Does the Changing Nature of Capitalism Impact on the Disabled Worker and Jobseeker?

Disability scholars have invested much in a stage theory of capitalism, which affords little scope for disabled workers and job seekers this side of Socialism. Parallel discussions of choices and empowerment rarely penetrates the world of paid employment. Mainstream policy writers meanwhile have been concerned with an atheoretical appraisal of enhancing access to and retention of employment. Neither approach has entered into an examination of the changing nature of employment and the impact of wider relationship between state and capitalism. In this way, the important shift to new social movements in progressing identity and social rights may have overlooked the monumental, but not irreversible loss of power in the enabling state and of old social movements. The article offers a starting point in our understanding of the changing nature of employment, its likely impact on disabled people, whilst asking for a reappraisal of the possible links between old and new social movements.

Developing an Evidence Base for Violent and Disablist Hate Crime in Britain Findings From the Life Opportunities Survey

In the context of there being little robust U.K. data on disabled people’s exposure to violent crime and hate crime, we examined self-reported rates of exposure over the preceding 12 months to violent crime, hate crime, and disablist hate crime in a newly established survey, the U.K.’s Life Opportunities Survey. Information was collected from a nationally representative sample of 37,513 British adults (age 16 or older). Results indicated that (a) disabled adults were significantly more likely to have been exposed over the previous 12 months to violent crime (adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 2.33, 95% confidence interval [CI] = [2.08, 2.61]) and hate crime (adjusted OR = 2.58, 95% CI = [2.17, 3.07]) than their non-disabled peers, (b) the differential risk of exposure to violent crime was particularly elevated among disabled adults with mental health problems (adjusted OR = 6.26, 95% CI = [5.01, 7.82]), (c) the differential risk of exposure to hate crime was particularly elevated among disabled adults with mental health problems (adjusted OR = 10.70, 95% CI = [7.91, 14.47]) or cognitive impairments (adjusted OR = 6.66, 95% CI = [3.95, 11.22]), and (d) these effects were strongly moderated by poverty status with no increase in differential risk of exposure for disabled adults among more wealthy respondents.

Disabled people and self‐directed support schemes: reconceptualising work and welfare in the 21st century

This article critically explores and adds to research on the social benefits of self‐directed support schemes for disabled people and their families. We argue that, although research to date has defined the benefits of such services within conventional ‘cost–benefit’ frameworks, this approach has failed to address the more significant challenge to traditional models of welfare and, particularly, the role of users of these schemes as employers. The article begins the process of repositioning understandings of welfare and work with reference to self‐ directed support services. In so doing we argue that future research and policy should be based on a more thorough analysis of the less acknowledged socio‐economic costs and benefits of these developments for users, their families, personal assistants and local/national economies.

Personal Independence Payments, welfare reform and the shrinking disability category

The question of who counts and how we construct just who can ‘be disabled’ is central to our concerns in disability studies. As Stone makes clear, disability is exactly what a state deems it to be; the very malleable nature of the category has been exploited to widen or more commonly to narrow just who counts as disabled. This article will apply and adapt Stone’s thesis to current plans to revise the Personal Independence Payment extra costs benefit. Using official and disabled people’s narratives, the article will make clear the force with which new definitions of disability are being put forward. This process arguably risks doing state violence to a number of disabled people. These reforms have also used the language of independence in a way that fundamentally distorts the origins and potential of the term in an enabling society.

Social policy and transitions to training and work for disabled young people in the United Kingdom: neo-liberalism for better and for worse?

Although New Labour distanced itself from the neo-liberal ‘underclass’ discourses of its predecessors, its approach to disabled young people maintained key aspects of neo-liberalism, particularly an emphasis on individuals’ human capital, aspirations and self-investments as causes of and solutions to disabled young people’s unemployment. This is also apparent in early Coalition government statements. Since the 1990s, policies have focused on providing individually-tailored advice, developing individuals’ skills, and motivating appropriate self-investment. We examine recent evidence that highlights a number of problems with this focus. Notably, it entails a simplistic and individualised notion of ‘barriers’ to employment that cannot account for the complex impacts of disablement and inequality; moves towards open-market models of training and work support create perverse incentives that divert support away from those most in need; employment success is dependent on unpredictable local opportunity structures; and the focus on paid employment undermines other social contributions made by disabled young people.

More policies, greater inclusion? Exploring the contradictions of New Labour inclusive education policy

The era of New Labour government has witnessed unprecedented growth in inclusive education policies. There is, however, limited evidence that policies have increased disabled children’s inclusion. This article explores reasons for this contradiction. Drawing on sociological insights, it is argued that New Labour policies on inclusive education take their cues from wider neo‐liberal constructions of social exclusion; ideas that point to the personal deficits of the excluded rather than social barriers and inequalities that systematically exclude. Increasingly narrow definitions of educational success are likely to add to this exclusion. This mirrors New Labour’s broader social inclusion agenda in emphasising ‘conditional’ inclusion and an increasingly utilitarian approach to social policy. New Labour, it is argued, needs to review the lessons of history in reducing disabled children’s educational exclusion if real progress is to be made. Warnock’s recent attack on the principle of inclusive education makes this review all the more urgent.

Enterprising? Disabled? The status and potential for disabled people’s microenterprise in South Korea

This article explores the position, potential and scope for self-employment and microenterprise for disabled South Koreans. The chronic barriers experienced in disabled people gaining paid work suggest that self-employment and enterprise might offer a good alternative to paid work. The self-determined nature of running a microenterprise has been shown to connect with disabled people who may not conform to standardised notions of body and brain that underpin many mainstream work contexts. Despite this promise, several barriers continue to beset disabled people’s access to micro-enterprise activity; barriers ranging from Confucian precepts, to employment protections that are geared largely towards paid employment and to the lack of training, finance and business support for disabled people starting up and sustaining microenterprise in Korea. The extension of legal protections, meaningful start-up subsidies, better business support and bridges between paid work and microenterprise are all seen as important policy correctives that would better support disabled people.

‘Stuck In The Middle With You’: Towards Enabling Social Work with Disabled People

This article explores progress to date in embedding enabling social work understandings and practices with disabled people by reviewing the UK social work curriculum. Based on these observations and the ideas from UK disability studies, it will offer possible solutions or at least better pathways to enabling practice with disabled people. As Meekosha has pointed out in a global context, to date social work has been experienced as an ambivalent practice [Meekosha, H. & Dowse, L. (2007) ‘Integrating critical disability studies into social work education and practice: an Australian perspective’, Practice, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 59–72], often both enabling and disabling; an intervention that can both lock and unlock resources, and challenge and reaffirm traditional notions of the ‘disability problem’ [Finkelstein, V. (1993) ‘Disability: A Social Challenge or an Administrative Responsibility?’, in Disabiling Barriers ‐ Enabling Environments, eds J. Swain, V. Finkelstein, S. French and M. Oliver, Sage Publications in association with the Open University, London]. Social work also has the potential to both challenge, but also be an (inadvertent) apologist for contemporary social support and welfare systems. Indeed it is clear that social work as a profession and social care as a policy area have been the poor relations of healthcare and health professions [Kings Fund (2011) Social Care Funding and the NHS: An Impending Crisis?, Kings Fund, London]. Viewed anthropologically, social work remains a largely non-disabled workforce ‘ministering’ to disabled clients (BCODP, 1997). This might reinforce the perception of ‘us and them’ in some social work encounters. As Paul Longmore questioned, can we begin to go ‘beyond affliction’ (2003) in our work with disabled people? Can social work help support the collective struggles of disabled people or is their role inevitably to reinforce that of individual(ised) clients? The development of the personalisation agenda and self-directed support is clearly welcome in this context [DoH (2006) Our Health, Our Care, Our Say: A New Direction for Community Services, Department of Health, London; DoH (2007) Independence, Choice and Risk: A Guide to Best Practice in Supported Decision-Making, Department of Health, London; DoH (2009) Personalisation of Social Care Services, Department of Health, London]. Such developments reflect the changing service user–professional relationship. The temptation to see these developments as the icing on the social support cake needs, however, to be resisted. Arguably, with the increased rationing of social support, the continued role of social workers in assessment and monitoring of support could be seen to require a yet more reflexive and enabling professional education and training in an age of austerity, one where previously supported disabled people are being told that their needs can no longer be met.

The question of access: disability, space and meaning

The Question of Access is a book which aims to convey the constructions of access in the context of higher education in Canada and which engages with deeply held (but disavowed) notions of who belo...