Spatial Marginalization of Emotional Support: Understanding Public Response to Animals on Airplanes

Abstract

In early 2020, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced a revision to its Air Carrier Access Act to exclude emotional support animals (ESAs) from “service animal” designation. These animals are not considered trainable: They are unable to perform a service, under the legal regulation. We examine commentary on newspaper articles regarding ESAs on airplanes using qualitative coding and data science techniques to assemble narratives dictating attitudes toward ESAs. We identify three narratives within the discourse that dispute the validity of emotional impairment and ESAs and express mistrust and disdain of those claiming a need for ESA companion. Working at the intersection of critical animal and disability geographies, we show how a neoliberal exclusionary discourse on ESAs is driven by an underlying essentializing distinction between debility and health, and the framing of mental and emotional impairment in terms of an individual’s personal responsibility for their health. Moreover, the popular and legal discourse on ESAs creates a sharp distinction in what kind of relationships we can have with animals in particular places. In challenge to these ableist and speciesist discourses, we articulate interspecies interdependence that reframes ESAs as not just furry (or scaly) entitlements, but as guides to a spatial ethic that challenges curative approaches to mental health and promotes a fluid notion of the place of animals and interdependent relationships with them.