Valuing Care and Support in an Era of Celebrating Independence: Disabled Young People’s Reflections on Their Meaning and Role in Their Lives

Abstract

The right to a supported independent life is a central dimension to disability politics. This focus has been used to challenge institutionalised living and the exclusion of disabled people from areas such as education and employment. The importance given to independence has also led to a critique of care. This critique has been a point of contention between disability studies and feminist theorising. In this article I argue it is important to return to these debates because contemporary conditions mean advocacy of independence is being co-opted into rhetorics of self-sufficiency. At the same time care on its own does not offer a productive alternative. The article draws from an ESRC project undertaken with disabled young people to advocate for the importance of both supported independence and of support being caring. It concludes by arguing that an expansive welfare state is required to create the conditions that can make that possible.

How do research participants with age-related vision loss talk about their experiences? A secondary discourse analysis of published qualitative extracts

“…Accordingly, independence is not necessarily about self-sufficiency, in terms of managing on one's own or doing everything for oneself, but more about being in a position to make one's own decisions and access appropriate support (Beresford, 2012). From this perspective, social or material support from others can strengthen wellbeing and empowerment, rather than being a marker of dependence (McLaughlin, 2020).…”

Introduction to special issue: New dialogues between medical sociology and disability studies

“…More recently, encouraged by the desire to critique the self-sufficiency narrative embedded in neoliberal welfare reform (as discussed in the article by Porter et al [2023]), feminist medical sociologists and others have sought to bring back the language of care. This emerges out of a concern that the focus on support has instrumentalised the personal interactions involved in providing support and that one way to challenge the current hegemony of neoliberalism-in which 'independence' is valorised-is to shift the focus towards a recognition of interdependency where care is integral (McLaughlin, 2020b;Ward, 2015;Williams, 2001). Two articles in this issue, by examining the possibility of producing 'care' in different settings, seek to show how practices can be caring in both institutional spaces and embodied intimate interactions.…”

Moderating Contentious Care Relations: Meat Consumption among Finnish Consumers

“…Nowadays research on care flourishes within various fields, with topics ranging from how care intertwines with the more-than-human in our technoscientific worlds (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017) to how a politics of care can reproduce inequalities within immigration policies (Ticktin, 2011). However, it has been argued that care has not received sufficient sociological attention (Aulenbacher et al, 2018), though researchers have begun to fill this gap recently (Alacovska, 2020; McLaughlin, 2020).…”