People with intellectual disability in neoliberalizing community spaces

Abstract

This paper analyzes how personalized disability support interacts with the uneven and incomplete neoliberalization of community organizations and how this affects access and inclusion for people with intellectual disability. In many countries, the introduction of individual budgets for disability support has shifted some responsibility for community inclusion onto individuals with disability and their carers. Concurrently, geographers have shown that community organizations have adopted commercial and bureaucratic qualities while continuing to facilitate opportunities for active citizenship and participation. This paper highlights how personalized disability support funding interacts with community organizations that have adopted some neoliberal ideas about responsibility and entrepreneurialism. Drawing on in-depth interviews with people with intellectual disability and the managers of community centres in the state of Victoria, Australia, the paper analyzes how the resultant community spaces shape the terms on which people with intellectual disability participate. The paper demonstrates that individual support packages issued by the federal government turn people with disability into entrepreneurial employers and that this comes up against a branch of community organizations that has come to understand its responsibility for inclusion in entrepreneurial terms. The paper offers avenues for future geographical work on disability inclusion and for understanding neoliberalization that go beyond direct state interference.