(DIS3) Decolonial and Transnational Disability Justice

In “Decolonising Disability,” Helen Meekosha has challenged the domination of the Global North in Disability Studies. What are the alternatives now? Topics include but are not limited to: national and regional alternatives; borders and migration; underdevelopment, resource extraction and the production of disability; international organizing; settler colonialism; “glocalism;” the limits of international solidarity; supply chains. Tags: Decolonization, Disabilities, Justice

Organizers: Chris Churchill, University of Lethbridge, Yiyan Li, University of Toronto; Chair: Chris Churchill, University of Lethbridge

Presentations

Carly Christensen, University of British Columbia; Leyton Schnellert, University of British Columbia

Shaping teacher education: Identity circles and disability justice

Often within university settings, specifically teacher education programs, disabled identities become decontextualized and considered from a deficit perspective (Purach et al., 2021). Within teacher education, a focus on social justice is gaining prominence, yet disabled identities often remain excluded. Considering disability to be a valued and intersectional identity essential to humankind involves a paradigm shift in teacher education (Ashby, 2012). There is a general lack of research concerning disabled teacher candidates’ experiences in teacher education programs, courses, and practicums (Strimel et al., 2023). Our research seeks to create more equitable teacher education guided by the principles of disability justice and insights of disabled teacher candidates. This research involves the University of British Columbias Rural and Remote Teacher Education (RRED) program, a pioneering hybrid model in British Columbia which enables candidates to remain in their communities for online coursework and practicums. The current cohort includes 25 teacher candidates who co-create the program alongside course instructors through iterative engagement in meetings, classes, and forums, offering both verbal and written feedback. This paper involves initial, ongoing, small-scale research that focuses on the experiences of a select number of teacher candidates self-identifying as disabled. We employed a Design-Based Research (DBR) approach (Rusek, et al., 2021), which is particularly effective for investigating educational practices within real-world settings. DBR is based on iterative design and feedback processes that deeply engage with social and contextual factors. We gathered data from teacher candidates through term-end focus groups, written reflections, and the curation of student portfolios. Using identity circles, the teacher candidates from equity-deserving groups in the rural and remote teacher education program contributed to the co-creation of inclusive design principles. In one of these identity circles disabled teacher candidates, faculty, and graduate students shared their experiences and ideas informed by disability justice. Equity-oriented design principles derived from the first iteration of this designed based research included: multimodality, accessibility, community, pedagogy and practice, predictability, and differentiation. In our second iteration of data collection after a semester striving to implement these principles, teacher candidates reported some success and the increased need for five themes in their coursework, program experience, and K-12 education. These themes were: removing barriers, taking a strengths-based approach, the social model of disability, student voice and use of language, and Universal Design for Learning. This research facilitates a more nuanced understandings of what it means to be a disabled teacher candidate and how teacher education can align with the principles of disability justice. Ultimately, this research contributes to a deeper understanding of inclusivity and equity in teacher education. It underscores the importance of recognizing disabled teacher candidates as key stakeholders in the discourse on educational diversity and justice. The insights gained here will inform future iterations of the RRED program, and UBC’s larger teacher education program, ideally paving the way for a more inclusive and equitable teacher education framework that recognized disability as a valued identity within the academy and profession.

---

Non-presenting authors: Hazel Ryan Sheehan, University of British Columbia; Andrea Kellaway, University of British Columbia; Joann Anokwuru, University of British Columbia; Shelley Moore, University of British Columbia

Erin Tichenor, University of Alberta

What does borderline do? Debility-capacity-BPD

Reclamation movements such as queer and disability pride have importantly shifted discourses about difference, and have pushed states to grant rights and accommodations. Still, people have been incorporated along lines of racial, citizenship, class, and gender advantage, into colonial states and neoliberal markets that rely upon the mass disablement of specific populations. The Euro-American nations that grants rights, while professing their progressive exceptionalism, are the same nations that debilitate populations through the endemic violence of racial capitalism and (settler) colonialism. These contradictions lead us to ask, what do rights-based movements do, and for whom? How are these movements co-opted, and on whose backs? This presentation builds upon Southern Disability and Mad scholarship to interrogate neoliberal reclamation, the “ascendency of whiteness” (Chow 2002) and the obscuring of structural violence in the context of ‘borderline personality disorder (BPD).’ Mainstream (white, elite) feminists have long denounced this highly contested psychiatric construct due to its misogynistic origins, gendered deployment, and rampant stigmatization. Mad-affirmative scholars have offered more nuanced accounts, reminding that borderline can be uniquely resonant and relieving, despite psychiatry’s harmful pathologization of ‘personality.’ Furthermore, borderline affects and worldviews can be valuable and insightful. Simultaneously, influencers are using social media to destigmatize, build awareness about, and even reclaim ‘BPD,’ albeit through psychiatric frames that emphasize the need for greater access to diagnosis and treatment. These destigmatizing movements are very different, and yet both seem to be located in elite spaces that often neglect analysis of how racial capitalism and (settler) colonialism produce psychological debilitation - including that which is pathologized as ‘BPD’ and treated by the psychiatric industrial complex. Universalizing assertions about “what should be done” with ‘BPD’ neglect the fact that ‘BPD’ seems to be a swift mechanism of social control for some, and a pathway to care, or even a neoliberal identity for others. Reclaiming borderline or ‘BPD’ without a geopolitical and intersectional analysis of how psychological debilitation and psychiatric labelling move disparately across the world risks propping up “acceptable” borderlines, while continuing to criminalize, pathologize, and/or neglect structurally vulnerable borderlines This presentation explores how we might affirm borderline subjectivities, while responding to distress with greater socio-political nuance. To do so, I conduct an ethology of borderline and ‘BPD,’ an analytical method I take up from French philosopher Gilles Deleuze. Rather than asking what these terms are, I ask what they do, for whom, in which contexts, and towards what ends. I draw in particular upon transnational theorist Jasbir Puar’s (2017) work on intersectionality, Deleuzian theory, and American Empire in the context of what she calls “assemblages of debility, capacity, and disability.” This presentation foregrounds her work to interrogate the relationship between affirming borderline and the limits of neoliberal analytics for ‘BPD.’ For Puar, debility is that which is naturalized and made endemic for precaritized populatations. Debilitation is an built-in mechanism of the neoliberal, colonial state, which makes specific populations “available for injury” while extracting their labor and targeting them for injury (and sometimes (re)capacitation). The problem is not capacitation, but who is capacitated, who is debilitated, and who is made to undergo repeated cycles of debilitation and capacitation, where the neoliberal state “produce[s], sustain[s], and profit[s] out of disability (Meekosha 2011:668). Reclaiming borderline must not obscure the psychological debilitation perpetuated by Euro-American powers whose power relies on the continuous traumatizing of subjugated populations, and the under- and over- treating of mental distress based on specific caluclations of extractability, profitability, and disposability. Am I suggesting that we “prevent” borderline? Or that we prevent the debilitation caused by the invalidation of borderline affects and worldviews, psychiatric violence, and structural oppression? I ultimately argue that we can de-pathologize neuro- and physical- diversity from European humanist norms, while preventing widespread corporate and state violence. Borderline does not have to be doomed to the trope of the “crazy ex-girlfriend,” but affirming borderline cannot be separated from preventing the psychological debilitation of overexploited populations - many of whom never get diagnosed, or only do so for corporate benefit. These arguments have implications for how we respond to borderline and madness more broadly and for how borderlines, particularly elite ‘BPD’ activists, might mobilize against debilitation and neo-colonial calls in global mental health agendas.

---

Non-presenting author: Tim Barlott, University of Alberta

Freda Okoma, University of Calgary

Shifting Paradigms: Exploring the Evolution of Canada's Immigration Policies for Disabled Immigrants

This paper aims to investigate recent updates in Canada’s federal immigration policies regarding their inclusivity towards immigrants with disabilities. Context: Historically, Canadian immigration policies have often excluded people with disabilities (El-sahib and Wehbi, 2012; Hanes, 2009; Wong, 2011). However, recent reforms, including the increase in the threshold for medical inadmissibility, signify a shift towards greater inclusivity (Government of Canada, 2018; Moving2canada, 2024). This paper seeks to answer two key questions: what changes have been made in the most recent updates to Canada’s immigration eligibility criteria, and how do these changes address the historical exclusion of immigrants with a disability? Method: The research will involve a policy analysis of key government documents detailing these updates, particularly the Canada Immigration Act. For instance, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has noted that a balance is in the works to both protect publicly funded health and social services by increasing the cost threshold for medical inadmissibility to three times the prior level as well as amending the definition of social and vocational services and personal (Moving2Canada, 2024). NVivo will be used for data analysis, applying a critical lens informed by disability and race studies. This approach is selected to comprehensively understand the intersectionality of the policies and their real-world implications. Implications: This paper contributes to the scholarly understanding of disability within the context of immigration. It holds significant implications for policymaking and advocacy, focusing on creating more inclusive and equitable policies. By emphasizing the complexity of experiences at the intersection of disability and race, the chapter adds a critical voice to the discourse on disability rights and immigration. This analysis aims to offer insights into the evolving landscape of immigration policies, advocating for a nuanced approach that acknowledges and accommodates the diversity of individuals seeking to make Canada their home.

---

Non-presenting authors: Alan Santinele Martino, University of Calgary; Katrina Milaney, University of Calgary

Valérie Grand'Maison, University of Guelph

Transnational Sphere of Feminist Disability Advocacy: Human Rights, Information, and Invisibility

I draw from Keck and Sikkink’s (1998) transnational advocacy networks to understand how groups of women with disabilities negotiate meanings and strategies related to the eradication of violence against women with disabilities with differently situated actors. Informed by transnational feminist scholars, a transnational lens signals a recognition of the heterogeneity of the conditions in which differently situated women live and advocate for justice and rights, shaped by historical and ongoing global processes of capitalism and colonialism, which leads to uneven power dynamics across civil society organizations. As such, I examine if, how, and why groups of women with disabilities build relationships across nations and how they broker power relations with various stakeholders in order to construct the transnational sphere of feminist disability advocacy. Given the centrality of information generation and dissemination among transnational advocacy networks, a transnational analysis reveals how the conditions in which differently situated women with disabilities, as well as their lived experiences, knowledges, and needs, inform their strategies of mobilization against gendered violence and towards justice for women with disabilities. In this paper, I conducted a literature review of academic, civil society, and international organizations’ literature to map the construct of the transnational sphere of feminist disability advocacy. Disabled women and their organizations collaborate to promote their rights and justice at international events, including those organized by the UN, regional or global conferences on disability and/or women’s issues, and policy forums. These events are an opportunity to create alliances with other disabled women’s organizations, disability and/or women’s organizations, as well as network with government officials, academics, human rights advocates, etc. These transnational advocacy networks allow disabled women to not only share information about their lives to various stakeholders (government agencies and international institutions), they influence the agenda and commitments of these policy-makers (Keck and Sikkink 1998). These spaces include side events at the Conference of State Parties to the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (CRPD), where civil society organizations, governments, and UN institutions come together to raise awareness, share knowledges and strategies, and build capacity to promote the rights and justice of diverse women with disabilities. Scholarly research illustrate that many disabled women’s organizations at the national and transnational levels rely heavily on human rights instruments and related processes, such as the CRPD and CEDAW, to put pressure on their nation-states to protect the rights of women with disabilities. . Soldatic (2015) notes that this type of transnational activism reifies nation-states and fails to challenge the transnational processes that affect marginalized groups. This argument negates the sharing of ideas, skills, and knowledges between disabled women that takes place in these processes and can have significant impacts in their lives, as well as local, national, and transnational advocacy. Indeed, Sally Merry examines how human rights related to violence against women shape individual and collective identities (2003) and local claims for justice (2006). This project contributes to expanding understandings of transnational disability justice, especially related to the mobilization of human rights, and the exchange of information.

Alfiya Battalova, Royal Roads University

Cripping disability engagement: a path forward for accessibility advisory committees

Historically, the municipal spaces have been sites of colonial practices characterized by the erasure of the bodyminds that were deemed unfit for the emerging urban environment. The principle of Nothing About Us Without Us (Charlton, 2000) has recently become more prevalent in the discussions of including the expertise and the lived experiences of people with disabilities. Similarly, planning and municipal governance have started acknowledging that our cities are on Indigenous lands, but beyond that basic recognition, municipalities still do a poor job of making space for Indigenous sovereignty, worldviews, processes, and protocols in the shared space of the city (Bouvier and Walker, 2018). The engagement is often tokenistic and restricted by the institutional frameworks of the municipal governance. The similar restrictions apply to disabled people who have been denied the right to the city. The introduction of the provincial accessibility legislation in British Columbia in 2021 has mandated the creation of accessibility advisory committees in municipalities. But the structures set up to promote participation create an illusion of inviting citizens with disabilities to participate in decision-making, but the range of participants and level of participation is limited by policymakers (Joiner, 2006). In a context where participation operates within policy prescription, the systemic barriers to meaningful participation are perpetuated (Edwards, 2008). People with disabilities express the importance of not only being able to articulate what matters to them but also whether the processes in place are meaningful, what their experiences being in these public spaces feel like, and whether they promote a sense of belonging (Milner and Kelly, 2009; Restall and Kaufert, 2011). Using the critical perspectives from disability studies, urban studies, and Indigenous studies, and an abductive analysis of 32 qualitative interviews with disabled committee members and city staff, this paper will unpack what meaningful engagement and participation mean using the critical disability and decolonial approaches (e.g., storytelling) in urban planning. For example, one of the aspects of deliberative process is the presence of emotion and affect. Looking at emotions in deliberation enables us to see the tension between the individual and the collective dimension of emotional experience, which becomes reflected both in how knowledge is produced and in what qualifies this knowledge as relevant (Durnová, 2015). In addition, when working to understand and support the most vulnerable members in the communities, organizations must put in the labor of listening to reduce power differentials. By providing systematic approaches to listening for discord, dissent, and other potentially hard-to-hear perspectives, civic listening has the potential to help organizations begin difficult conversations rather than avoid them - to face realities they may have shied away from in the past (Capizzo and Feinman, 2022). As well, storytelling as a research method contributes to capturing the polyphony of different voices in the planning processes (Ortiz, 2023). In the context of disability, understanding better the role of spatial design in the production of ability/ disability means the everyday expertise of people with disabilities should be recognized as knowledge that goes beyond generalizing the experiences of disability through codes, guidelines, models and checklists and towards inhabiting spaces with people with disabilities in order to design with them (Rieger, 2023).