Abstract
This paper draws on feminist and queer philosophers? discussions of precarity and employment, too often absent from disability studies, to explore the working lives of people with learning disabilities in England in a time of austerity. Recent policy shifts from welfare to work welcome more disabled people into the job market. The reality is that disabled people remain under-represented in labour statistics and are conspicuously absent in cultures of work. We live in neoliberal-able times where we all find ourselves precarious. But, people with learning disabilities experience high levels of uncertainty in every aspect of their lives, including work, relationships and community living. Our research reveals an important analytical finding: that when people with learning disabilities are supported in imaginative and novel ways they are able to work effectively and cohesively participate in their local communities (even in a time of cuts to welfare). We conclude by acknowledging that we are witnessing a global politics of precarity and austerity. Our urgent task is to redress the unequal spread of precaritization across our society that risks leaving people with learning disabilities experiencing disproportionately perilous lives. One of our key recommendations is that it makes no economic sense (never mind moral sense) to pull funding from organisations that support people with intellectual disabilities to work.
Highlights
Disability studies have always engaged with labour
Welfare interventions around employment access and support are reduced by austerity
Community partners worked as co-researchers at various points in the project as we discovered how disabled people with learning disabilities were participating in their communities, in public services and in social action
Summary
Disability studies have always engaged with labour. A leitmotif of the British social model of disability is that disabled people want to work but are not allowed (for example, Oliver 1996). Our research has demonstrated that is the meaning of precarity made coherent by people with learning disabilities but people so-labelled and their supporters have developed many imaginative ways of resisting precarity and working austerity. In addition to Work Choice, Access to Work offers employment funding to support disabled people once they find a job.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call