Mental health, availability to participate in social change, and social movement accessibility

Abstract

People with illnesses and disabilities routinely face obstacles to political participation, including participation in social movements. Conventional social movement studies primarily theorize impediments to social movement participation in terms of personal constraints, as implied by the term “biographical (un)availability.” However, studies in disability, health, and illness resist locating disability-related constraints solely within the individual, pushing fields to ask how environments can be disabling in and of themselves. Thus, by extending social movement theory through this Disabled/Crip/Mad lens, this article attempts to balance the notion of personal biographical availability or constraints with the notion of what the author calls “movement accessibility.” Drawing on data from almost ∼130 respondents, this article develops a framework for understanding how movement accessibility might be deepened within social movement contexts.