Impasses of Disability Alliance Building in Bulgaria: Successful Phantom Activism and Toxic Grassroots Mobilization

Epistemic injustice as a bridge between medical sociology and disability studies

“…However, in CEE countries, disability rights activism has been weakened by both the state socialist suppression and postsocialist depoliticisation of civil society (Mladenov, 2018). In effect, ideas such as the social model of disability and independent living either did not establish themselves firmly in the mainstream disability discourses or were appropriated and misinterpreted by the dominant groups (for Bulgarian examples, see Dimitrova, 2020; Mladenov, 2018). Hence the relative insufficiency or inadequacy of the shared epistemic resources on which to draw in the struggle for epistemic justice in the disability area, as compared to Western European and North American contexts.…”

“…The third salient feature of the postsocialist context is the continuing weakness of disability rights activism, including a sheer absence of self-advocacy initiatives (Dimitrova, 2020). Grassroots disability organising and campaigning has been the main vehicle for overcoming the gap in collective epistemic resources concerning disability equality in the countries of the Western Europe and North America since the 1970s.…”

“…However, it is mostly through parental advocacy that the questions of disabled people's rights and welfare have been maintained in the mainstream of the public attention in Bulgaria's most recent history (Dimitrova, 2019(Dimitrova, , 2020. Using peer support, campaigning, and direct action, parents have cultivated and disseminated alternative epistemic repertoires concerning intellectual impairments, autism, attention deficiency and hyperactivity, self-advocacy, and legal capacity.…”

Special Issue Editorial

“…This is evidenced by parental mobilisations in recent years in the post-socialist countries of CEE (e.g. Dimitrova, 2020). These mobilisations have included protests, lobbying, and peer support that have criticised professional power, opposed neoliberal cuts, and demanded reformed public support for disabled people, including increase in disability benefits, funding for PA, and changes to legal capacity legislation.…”

Decolonising Disability in Contexts of Illiberalism and Social Abandonment: The Case for a Double-Edged Critique from the Postsocialist Margins

“…It recognises as worthy only those disabled people who are able to cope on their own in the open labour market. The work-based approach characterises postsocialist neoliberalisation and is evidenced in austerity measures, in workfare policies that make social support conditional on participation in paid employment (such as the Bulgarian 'Welfare to Work' programme -see Mladenov, 2017), and in toxic public discourses that measure human worth through productivity (Dimitrova, 2020).…”