Re-Claiming Disability: Identity, Procedural Justice, and the Disability Determination Process

Abstract

This research highlights the crucial role of an intimate link between a disabled person's self-identity and the perceived fairness of legal procedures. In doing so, it brings to the foreground a wholly ignored aspect of procedural justice. Earlier researchers have failed to delve into the role identity politics plays in the relationship between the institutions and the beneficiaries of their services, and the way different members of a group understand and define themselves. This research explores the way people with disabilities in the United States, with different kinds of disability identities, experience and evaluate the procedure of claiming Social Security benefits. The findings suggest that disabled people who identified with the social model of disability (as opposed to the medical-individual models) hold a critical view of the procedure for retaining benefits. They felt they had no control over it, could not voice their opinions, were mistreated by representatives, and had to present an image that was not necessarily true of their disability. They also saw the procedure as discouraging them from participating fully in the labor market, and consequently integrating better in society, an idea that was not present among disabled people who identify with medical-individual models. Exposing this relationship between the way people perceive themselves and the way they experience and evaluate legal procedures can contribute to the creation of better policies, while improving communication between the state and members of the disability community, along with other marginalized groups.

Hostile, Benevolent, and Ambivalent Ableism: Contemporary Manifestations

“…Among the groups stereotyped as both incompetent and cold are the homeless, drug addicts, and those receiving government assistance (including those with various impairments)—characterized as “free‐loading” at the expense of others. Similarly, people with disabilities who are homeless, underemployed, or receive benefit subsidies are also portrayed as competing for limited resources (Dorfman, forthcoming, ). In nationally representative surveys, 16% of those polled admitted to being angry when inconvenienced by another's disability, and 9% said they resented those assumed to be getting special privileges (Taylor, Wurf, Harris, & Associates, ).…”

Disability Discrimination, Medical Rationing and COVID-19

“…This is reflective of a now-outdated understanding of disability, known as the medical model, which viewed people with disabilities as objects of pity rather than as rightsholders (Kanter 2003). By associating the experience of disability as a medicalised experience, people with disabilities were 'othered' and differentiated from those ablebodied members of society on the basis that they were different or abnormal (Shakespeare 1994), subsequently legitimising the marginalisation and oppression of persons with disabilities around the world (Dorfman 2017;Stein and Waterstone 2006). This conception of disability as a negative trait was further perpetuated by the widespread institutionalisation of people with disabilities which saw them removed from general society and subjected to forced medical treatment or even sterilisation of women and girls.…”

The ‘compliant’, the ‘pacified’ and the ‘rebel’: experiences with Swiss disability insurance

“…A fourth type of research brings to light the diversity of recipients' lived experiences. As people navigate through the obstacle-laden process that disability policy puts them through (Revillard 2017), their perception and reception of this policy can take various forms depending on their disability model of reference (Dorfman 2017), gender, age, type of health impairment, socio-professional status and type of employment (Angeloff 2011). The experience of work rehabilitation is also interwoven with a range of relationships that individuals cultivate with themselves, with society, and with their past, current and future lives, that give rise to different 'narratives of identity work' (van Hal et al 2012).…”