This article is rooted in the narratives of four disabled people with obvious impairments within higher education institutions (HEI). Their lived experiences highlight how the adoption of the neoliberal agenda by HEIs has ensured the continued exclusion of disabled academics. This article shares how the implementation of mainstream business structures, and the business ethos, has been experienced by disabled academics seeking equality of education and professional academic opportunities. It demonstrates the personal impacts that can occur when institutions vehemently value income over inclusion and when academic staff adhere to these standards. If the doors to academia were closed to disabled people in the past, neoliberalism has surely locked them.

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Understanding disabled youth activism is key for improving young disabled people’s participation in politics and social change. Young disabled people require opportunities to situate historical and biographical experiences within broader socio-economic contexts. This will lead to a politicised consciousness surrounding disability, emancipation and social justice. This article presents empirical data from the first study on young disabled people’s contemporary position within the UK Disabled People’s Movement. It critically assesses three areas pertinent to youth activism: activist membership, social movement organisation and future considerations for activism. This allows for an exploration of how young disabled activists navigate collective action, influence activist claims and demands and understand the issues for sustaining a disabled people’s social movement. The article illustrates young disabled activists’ desire to disrupt their current position within the UK Disabled People’s Movement and bring into focus a future where young disabled people’s contributions to activism and social movements are accessible, valued and influential. The article argues that a failure to support young disabled people’s participation within social movements will have an adverse impact on their political identities.

This article presents an original and critical interrogation of how disabled activists establish claims and coordinate activities to progress the independent living agenda. The article achieves this by employing Beckett and Campbell’s (2015) concept of ‘oppositional device’, which is used to understand resistance practices and the technologies of power that coalesce around disabled people’s collective action. The article argues that the independent living concept could, similarly, be understood as an oppositional device and this holds potential for furthering the emancipatory claims of disabled people’s social movements. This allows for an understanding of Independent Living Movements as assemblages of technologies that open heterotopias, which engage in the experimentation of what disabled people can be and do through the ideas of independent living. The article draws on empirical data from a study exploring young disabled people’s views and experiences of disability activism across Europe to evidence the claims made.