Vera Chouinard

‘Because they have all the power and I have none’: state restructuring of income and employment supports and disabled women's lives in Ontario, Canada

We examine the connections between neo‐liberal forms of state restructuring and intervention in disabled peoples lives, looking in particular at how these have affected disabled womens experiences of an income support program, the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP), in Ontario, Canada. We first outline why and how state programs have been re‐designed and implemented in increasingly harsh ways as a result of such neo‐liberal forms of state restructuring. Even groups formerly considered among the ‘deserving poor’ have found their access to social assistance diminished. We then argue that this is an outcome of state programs, policies and practices which are re‐asserting and more deeply entrenching ‘ableness’ as a necessary condition of citizenship, inclusion and access to justice. Finally, we illustrate how disabled womens lives and well‐being have been altered as a result of changes in the provision of these forms of state assistance using in‐depth semi‐structured interviews conducted with 10 women in Ontario.

Negotiating neoliberal environments in British Columbia and Ontario, Canada: restructuring of state^voluntary sector relations and disability organizations' struggles to survive

As the social programmes of the postwar welfare state have been dramatically cut back and transformed, many have looked to the voluntary nonprofit sector as the ‘beacon of hope’ in terms of delivering support and services to citizens in need of assistance. But at the same time as these organizations have been under mounting pressure to deliver support and services, they have also been subject to forces of change which limit their capacities to play this vital social role. In this paper, we examine how disability organizations in two Canadian provinces have been faring in increasingly harsh neoliberal environments. We look, in particular, at the ways in which these organizations are struggling to negotiate the pressures of diminished and inadequate funding, rising demand for their services, and changing regulatory relations with the state. Drawing on mail surveys of sixty-two disability organizations in the provinces of Ontario and British Columbia, we discuss the impacts that organizational survival strategies are having on clients, staff, volunteers and volunteerism, and on the operation and structure of such organizations. We show how disability organizations are experiencing significant pressures to change how they deliver services and supports to disabled people in need. These include pressures to diminish levels of service provision to clients, particularly those in greatest need, to reduce staffing levels and institute survival strategies that negatively impact working conditions, to rely even more heavily upon volunteer labour, and to modify their operations and organizations in a struggle to cope with harsh neoliberal conditions.

State formation and the politics of place: the case of community legal aid clinics

Abstract This paper develops a Marxist conception of the role of state formation in the ‘politics of place’ under capitalism. It argues that struggles over state formation shape possibilities for political practice by creating particular terrains of conflict over policies and procedures, by determining terms of access to the state, and by influencing subjective experience of the state and political life. Examples from the authors research on conflicts over state regulation of community legal clinics in Ontario, Canada, are used to illustrate this approach.

Use of medical tourism for hip and knee surgery in osteoarthritis: a qualitative examination of distinctive attitudinal characteristics among Canadian patients

BackgroundMedical tourism is the term that describes patients’ international travel with the intention of seeking medical treatment. Some medical tourists go abroad for orthopaedic surgeries, including hip and knee resurfacing and replacement. In this article we examine the findings of interviews with Canadian medical tourists who went abroad for such surgeries to determine what is distinctive about their attitudes when compared to existing qualitative research findings about patients’ decision-making in and experiences of these same procedures in their home countries.MethodsFourteen Canadian medical tourists participated in semi-structured phone interviews, all of whom had gone abroad for hip or knee surgery to treat osteoarthritis. Transcripts were coded and thematically analysed, which involved comparing emerging findings to those in the existing qualitative literature on hip and knee surgery.ResultsThree distinctive attitudinal characteristics among participants were identified when interview themes were compared to findings in the existing qualitative research on hip and knee surgery in osteoarthritis. These attitudinal characteristics were that the medical tourists we spoke with were: (1) comfortable health-related decision-makers; (2) unwavering in their views about procedure necessity and urgency; and (3) firm in their desires to maintain active lives.ConclusionsCompared to other patients reported on in the existing qualitative hip and knee surgery literature, medical tourists are less likely to question their need for surgery and are particularly active in their pursuit of surgical intervention. They are also comfortable with taking control of health-related decisions. Future research is needed to identify motivators behind patients’ pursuit of care abroad, determine if the attitudinal characteristics identified here hold true for other patient groups, and ascertain the impact of these attitudinal characteristics on surgical outcomes. Arthritis care providers can use the attitudinal characteristics identified here to better advise osteoarthritis patients who are considering seeking care abroad.

Pushing the boundaries of our understanding of disability and violence: voices from the Global South (Guyana)

Our knowledge about disabled people’s lives is largely based on research in the Global North. This article considers disability and violence in the Global South, specifically in Guyana. It aims to push conceptual and empirical boundaries of our understanding of violence and disability. Conceptually, it argues for a social model materialist theory of disability attuned to how material barriers to disabled people’s inclusion in society and space are reproduced through processes of exclusion unfolding across geographic scales ranging from the global, to the inter-personal and intra-personal. It argues that Lacanian psycho-analytic theory provides a complimentary lens for understanding why people engage in acts that construct disabled people as ‘deserving’ of violence. Empirically, the article broadens our understanding of disability and violence by focusing on poverty, violence as a cause of impairment and disability, and disabled women’s and men’s experiences of violence in a majority world context.

On the Dialectics of Differencing: Disabled women, the state and housing issues

In this article, I discuss how neoliberal state policies and practices and processes of negative differencing have contributed to growing economic and housing insecurity for citizens in need, in particular disabled women in need of provincial income assistance in Ontario, Canada. I argue that their increasingly insecure relationships to housing and home can be explained as outcomes of dialectical processes of differencing through neoliberal regimes of state rule. A key advantage of this approach is that it emphasises how growing economic and housing security for more affluent citizens is linked causally to increasing insecurity and misery for others. I begin by discussing how diverse relations to housing and home can be conceptualised as outcomes of dialectical processes of differencing in advanced capitalist societies. Next, I illustrate this approach by discussing how changes in state regulation of housing and income assistance programmes in the province of Ontario have worked to advantage more affluent citizens at the expense of disabled and other citizens in need. This is followed by a detailed analysis of regulatory processes shaping how women receiving provincial income assistance are negatively differenced and situated in relation to housing and home. Here I draw on interviews with women receiving provincial income support through the ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Programme). Las dialécticas de hacer diferencia: Mujeres discapacitados, el estados y asuntos de vivienda En éste artículo, discuto como los procesos, practicas y políticas neoliberalistas estatales de la producción negativa de diferencia han contribuido al crecimiento de inseguridad económica y de vivienda para ciudadanos marginalizados, especialmente mujeres discapacitados que requieren asistencia económica provincial in Ontario, Canadá. Argumento que las relaciones cada vez más inseguro a vivienda y hogar para éstas mujeres se pueden explicar como consecuencias de procesos dialécticos de hacer diferencia a través de regimenes neoliberalistas del estado. Una ventaja de ésta enfoque es que enfatiza como la aumentación de seguridad económica y de la vivienda para ciudadanos afluentes está entrelazado con indiferencia al crecimiento de inseguridad y desesperación para otra gente. Empiezo discutiendo como las diversas relaciones a viviendas y hogares se pueden conceptualizar como consecuencias de procesos de hacer diferencia en sociedades capitalistas avanzadas. Luego discuto, ilustrando ésta enfoque, como los cambios de reglas estatales de viviendas y programas de asistencia económica in la provincia de Ontario han ayudado más los ciudadanos afluentes a costa de los ciudadanos discapacitados y en necesidad de ayuda. Ésta discusión se sigue por un análisis detallado de los procesos que determinan como las mujeres que reciben asistencia económica se hacen diferente negativamente y se sitúan in relación a vivienda y hogar. Aquí utilizo entrevistas con mujeres que reciban asistencia provincial económica por el ODSP (Ontario Disability Support Program, Programa de Asistencia para Discapacitados de Ontario).

The elements of a positive workplace environment: implications for persons with disabilities.

A group of researchers from humanities, business, geography and rehabilitation science at McMaster University carried out a qualitative research study involving persons with disabilities in a south-western Ontario community. The study examined how persons with disabilities defined positive work environments both in paid work and volunteer activity. The study used a framework of organizational factors, social factors; social supports outside the workplace and individual characteristics. The study found that participants stressed the importance of positive attitudes, respect, understanding, communication and education as key components.

Placing the ‘mad woman’: troubling cultural representations of being a woman with mental illness in Girl Interrupted

In this article, I examine cultural narratives about the lives and places of women with mental illness in the commercial Hollywood film: Girl Interrupted (1999). In contrast to most of the disability studies literature concerned with cultural representation, this article explicitly examines how the spatiality of ‘mad womens’ lives is constructed through film. Drawing on post-structuralist, and feminist perspectives on disability, and on conceptual ideas from the limited social geographic literature concerned with the lives of persons with mental illness, I explore the contradictory cultural narratives about the lives and places of women with mental illness constructed through this film. This approach recognizes that representations of ‘mad women’ and their places in society and space involve contradictory, tension-laden relationships between spectator and cultural product, complex discursive negotiations of meaning, and gendered processes of meaning-making, in some ways affirming mad womens lives and in others perpetuating negative stereotypes about women with mental illness and where they belong.

Contesting disabling conditions of life in the Global South: disability activists’ and service providers’ experiences in Guyana

This article addresses an important gap in our understanding of issues of impairment and disability, namely challenges facing disabled activists and service providers in the majority world context of the developing nation of Guyana. The article argues that developing a southern standpoint on impairment, disability, disability activism and service provision requires a reframing of disability issues as matters of distributive justice and not only human rights. Challenges facing disability activists and service providers in Guyana included trying to combat internalized ableism, financial and cultural barriers to political engagement and visibility, tensions in claiming or rejecting disabled identities and difficulties in accessing foreign aid funding for disability initiatives. The article concludes by stressing the importance of rethinking how we do disability studies so that it allows critical analysis of the dynamics of a global capitalist corporeal class order in the context of the majority world.

Embodying Disability in the Global South: Exploring Emotional Geographies of Research and of Disabled People’s Lives in Guyana

Although an estimated 80 per cent of the world’s disabled people live in countries of the global South (Grech 2011), most of what we know about impairment and disability is based on experiences of the minority in developed western nations. And despite critiques of this western-centric focus of disability studies emerging in recent years (e.g. Grech 2011; Meekosha 2011; Meekosha and Soldatic 2011; Chouinard 2012, 2014), there remains a pressing need for analyses that situate processes giving rise to impairment and disability in the context of colonial and neo-colonial relations of power and a highly unequal global capitalist order. Further, as Soldatic (2013) points out, there is a need to unsettle western conceptions of impairment as ‘natural’ that render the production of impairment in the global South invisible and uncontestable in terms of transnational justice claims.