Karen Soldatic | Toronto Metropolitan University (original) (raw)

Books by Karen Soldatic

Social Work Education The International Journal , 2023

The world is experiencing an accelerating digital transformation. One aspect of this is the imple... more The world is experiencing an accelerating digital transformation. One aspect of this is the implementation of algorithmic decision-making, often supported by Artificial Intelligence. Algorithmic systems have the potential to change the meaning of critical elements of the engagement between social workers and people who need support. At the same time, social workers are increasingly being required by their agencies to integrate such abstracting technologies and techniques evermore comprehensively into their professional practice. This integration also creates tensions for training future social workers. It requires on the one hand directly responding to an old but intensifying tension between training students technically, and, on the other, providing the pedagogical tools for finding some critical distance from those same technologies and techniques. The article works through this tension of technique/critique, and a second associated tension between deploying technologies of mediated engagement and being present ‘in the room’ (presence/mediation). The consequences of how both tensions are handled, we suggest, are being intensified through the technologization of service-delivery. The article suggests ways of approaching a technical-critical pedagogy that responds to this complexity by being practice-embedded and theoretically engaged.

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Cambridge University Press, 2022

Human Rights and Social Work: Towards Rights-Based Practice helps students and practitioners unde... more Human Rights and Social Work: Towards Rights-Based Practice helps students and practitioners understand how human rights concepts underpin the social work profession and inform their practice. This book examines the three generations of human rights and the systems of oppression that prevent citizens from participating in society as equals. It explores a range of topics, from ethics and ethical social work practice, to deductive and inductive approaches to human rights, and global and local human rights discourses. The language, processes, structures and theories of social work that are fundamental to the profession are also discussed. This edition features case studies exploring current events, movements and human rights crises, including the Black Lives Matter movement, the Northern Territory Emergency Response, and homelessness among LGBTIQA+ young people. This edition is accompanied by online resources for both students and instructors. Human Rights and Social Work is an indispensable guide for social work students and practitioners.

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Routledge, 2021

Drawing on rich empirical work emerging from core conflict regions within the island nation of Sr... more Drawing on rich empirical work emerging from core conflict regions within the island nation of Sri Lanka, this book illustrates the critical role that women with disabilities play in post-armed conflict rebuilding and development.

This pathbreaking book shows the critical role that women with disabilities play in post-armed conflict rebuilding and development. Through offering a rare yet important insight into the processes of gendered-disability advocacy activation within the post-conflict environment, it provides a unique counter narrative to the powerful images, symbols and discourses that too frequently perpetuate disabled women’s so-called need for paternalistic forms of care. Rather than being the mere recipients of aid and help, the narratives of women with disabilities reveal the generative praxis of social solidarity and cohesion, progressed via their nascent collective practices of gendered-disability advocacy.

It will be of interest to academics and students working in the fields of disability studies, gender studies, post-conflict studies, peace studies and social work.

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Global Perspectives on Disability Activism and Advocacy, 2020

This book explores the diverse ways in which disability activism and advocacy are experienced and... more This book explores the diverse ways in which disability activism and advocacy are experienced and practised by people with disabilities and their allies.

Contributors to the book explore the very different strategies and campaigns they have used to have their demands for respect, dignity and rights heard and acted upon by their communities, by national governments and the international community. The book, with its contemporary global focus, makes a significant contribution to the field of disability and social justice studies, particularly at a time of major social, political and cultural upheaval.

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Social Suffering in the Neoliberal Age: Classificatory Logic and Systems of Governance: Book of Abstracts , 2019

This symposium examines neoliberal systems of governance and its daily practices of managing, reg... more This symposium examines neoliberal systems of governance and its daily practices of managing, regulating and subordinating individuals, peoples and communities. While it is well established within the international and national research that neoliberal systems of population management target the poor, the marginalised and the stigmatised, there has been a comparatively smaller body of research examining its interlocking practices for those who occupy the fringes or margins of multiple disadvantage. In Australia and other Anglophone countries, research is beginning to attend to people defined as homeless, disabled, and unemployed – and as often occupying more than one of these categories. Yet, to date, there has been little critical examination of the ways in which these ‘identity categories’ intersect, interplay, overlap; governed at distinct policy crossroads in the social security system (for example, some Indigenous Australians are simultaneously governed by disability, income management and the Community Development Programme). Increasingly, and precisely through such classificatory procedures themselves, such persons emerge as a sub-class within the general logic of neoliberal classification regimes. This two-day symposium aims to bring together, for the first time in Australia, divergent research, scholarship and narratives that have been critically engaging in this area. The national symposium provides a unique opportunity to work across disciplinary and categorical boundaries, and examine research narratives in collaboration with community members.

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Disability and Neoliberal State Formations explores the trajectory of neoliberalism in Australia ... more Disability and Neoliberal State Formations explores the trajectory of neoliberalism in Australia and its impact on the lives of Australians living with disability, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It examines the emergence, intensification and normalisation of neoliberalism across a 20-year period, distilling the radical changes to disability social security and labour-market law, policy and programming, and the enduring effects of the incremental tightening of disability eligibility carried out by Australian governments since the early 2000s.

Incorporating qualitative interviews with disabled people, disability advocates, services and the policy elite, alongside extensive documentary material, this book brings to the fore the compounding effects of neoliberal reforms for disabled people’s wellbeing and participation. The work is of international significance as it illustrates the importance of looking beyond the UK, EU and the USA to critically understand the historical development and policy mobility of disability neoliberal retraction from smaller economies, such as Australia, to the global economic centre.

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This first-of-its kind volume spans the breadth of disability research and practice specifically ... more This first-of-its kind volume spans the breadth of disability research and practice specifically focusing on the global South. Established and emerging scholars alongside advocates adopt a critical and interdisciplinary stance to probe, challenge and shift common held social understandings of disability in established discourses, epistemologies and practices, including those in prominent areas such as global health, disability studies and international development. Motivated by decolonizing approaches, contributors carefully weave the lived and embodied experiences of disabled people, families and communities through contextual, cultural, spatial, racial, economic, identity and geopolitical complexities and heterogeneities.

Dispatches from Ghana, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Venezuela among many others spotlight the complex uncertainties of modern geopolitics of coloniality; emergent forms of governance including neoliberal globalization, war and conflicts; the interstices of gender, race, ethnicity, space and religion; structural barriers to redistribution and realization of rights; and processes of disability representation. This handbook examines in rigorous depth, established practices and discourses in disability including those on development, rights, policies and practices, opening a space for critical debate on hegemonic and often unquestioned terrains.

Highlights of the coverage include:

• Critical issues in conceptualizing disability across cultures, time, and space

• The challenges of disability models, metrics, and statistics

• Disability, poverty and livelihoods in urban and rural contexts

• Disability interstices with migration, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality

• Disability, religion and customary societies and practices

• The UNCRPD, disability rights orientations and instrumentalities
• Redistributive systems including budgeting, cash transfer systems and programming

• Global South–North partnerships: intercultural methodologies in disability research.

This much awaited handbook provides students, academics, practitioners and policymakers with an authoritative framework for critical thinking and debate about disability, while pushing theoretical and practical frontiers in unprecedented ways.

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The mapping, control and subjugation of the human body and mind were core features of the colonia... more The mapping, control and subjugation of the human body and mind were core features of the colonial conquest. This book draws together a rich collection of diverse, yet rigorous, papers that aim to expose the presence and significance of disability within colonialism, and how disability remains present in the establishment, maintenance and continuation of colonial structures of power. Disability as a site of historical analysis has become critically important to understanding colonial relations of power and the ways in which gender and identity are defined through colonial categorisations of the body. Thus, there is a growing prominence of disability within the historical literature. Yet, there are few international anthologies that traverse a critical level of depth on the subject domain. This book fills a critical gap in the historical literature and is likely to become a core reader for post graduate studies within disability studies, postcolonial studies and more broadly across the humanities.

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Papers by Karen Soldatic

Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies

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Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2023

This article focuses on uses and experiences of everyday sensory technologies by racially and eth... more This article focuses on uses and experiences of everyday sensory technologies by racially and ethnically diverse persons with disabilites, bringing our research to the junction of critical technology studies, migration studies, and critical disability studies. We draw on a large-scale qualitative project that involves new and second-generation migrants with disabilities from a socio-economically disadvantaged area in Sydney, Australia. Findings show the negotiated exchanges of inclusion and exclusion that disabled people from diverse racial and ethnic minority backgrounds encounter with sensory and other technologies. While such technologies have rightfully been criticized for their roles in the surveillance, regulation, exclusion, and financialization of disability and ethnically diverse groups, these negotiations show how processes of agency, awareness, and peer support produce and in turn benefit from encounters with technology in complex ways. We argue the continued emergence of automation warrants both critique and cautious ongoing experimentation.

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Journal of Family Violence, 2023

Purpose This article uses an Indigenous concept of family violence as a frame to interrogate int... more Purpose

This article uses an Indigenous concept of family violence as a frame to interrogate interviews held with Indigenous LGBTIQSB + people in Australia. The article reorients family violence away from Western heteronormative framings and aims to contribute towards a new conversation about family violence.
Methods

A qualitative thematic analysis was used to analyse 16 interviews with Indigenous LGBTIQSB + people in the state of New South Wales, Australia. This is one of a series of articles that provide preliminary findings from a research project into the social and emotional wellbeing of Indigenous LGBTIQSB + young people living in New South Wales.
Results

The interviews highlight the complex impact family violence on Indigenous LGBTIQSB + youth. The article shows differences in reactions between family and community in urban settings with those experienced in rural settings highlighting intergenerational differences, with older family members such as grandparents, more likely to exhibit negative reactions and behaviours. These experiences are interconnected as many young people were living in urban areas while extended family often lived in rural or remote communities.
Conclusions

The findings of this study demonstrate the intersectional nature of family violence highlighting the fact that Indigenous LGBTIQSB + young people are integral parts of extended kinship networks, families and communities and are deeply impacted by any acts of family violence. The study’s findings also support current research into family and community violence for LGBTIQ + people that shows the differential behaviours and actions of rural and urban families as well as the different reactions between generations within families.

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LGBTQ+ Family: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2022

There is no research into the experiences of Indigenous LGBTIQSB + young people and their mothers... more There is no research into the experiences of Indigenous LGBTIQSB + young people and their mothers in the country now known as Australia. Based on a series of nine narrative interviews with young LGBTIQSB + people living in New South Wales, this article is the first to discuss Indigenous LGBTIQSB + children’s relationship with their Indigenous mothers. Indigenous mothers have been framed in ways that justified targeted settler state interventions situated within broader racialised biopolitical governance practices and the regulation of Indigenous lives. The findings of this research project provide a counter narrative to the current framing of Indigenous mothers and families as dysfunctional and in need of intervention by state and welfare agencies. Indigenous LGBTIQSB + young people speak to their experiences of coming out and the ways their Indigenous mothers defended, affirmed and advocated for them. Participants spoke of how Indigenous mothers provided them with protective skills and strategies that allowed them to effectively navigate close and extended familial and community contexts. This article demonstrates the significance of Indigenous mothering practices and values for the wellbeing of their LGBTIQSB + children.

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Qualitative Inquiry, 2022

This article makes two key contributions to methodological debates in automation resea... more This article makes two key contributions to methodological debates in automation research. First, we argue for and demonstrate how methods in this field must account for intersections of social difference, such as race, class, ethnicity, culture, and disability, in more nuanced ways. Second, we consider the complexities of bringing together computational and qualitative methods in an intersectional methodological approach while also arguing that in their respective subjects (machines and human subjects) and conceptual scope they enable a specific dialogue on intersectionality and automation to be articulated. We draw on field reflections from a project that combines an analysis of intersectional bias in language models with findings from a community workshop on the frustrations and aspirations produced through engagement with everyday artificial intelligence (AI)–driven technologies in the context of care.

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Social Work Education The International Journal , 2023

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Cambridge University Press, 2022

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Routledge, 2021

It will be of interest to academics and students working in the fields of disability studies, gender studies, post-conflict studies, peace studies and social work.

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Global Perspectives on Disability Activism and Advocacy, 2020

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Social Suffering in the Neoliberal Age: Classificatory Logic and Systems of Governance: Book of Abstracts , 2019

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Highlights of the coverage include:

• Critical issues in conceptualizing disability across cultures, time, and space

• The challenges of disability models, metrics, and statistics

• Disability, poverty and livelihoods in urban and rural contexts

• Disability interstices with migration, race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality

• Disability, religion and customary societies and practices

• The UNCRPD, disability rights orientations and instrumentalities
• Redistributive systems including budgeting, cash transfer systems and programming

• Global South–North partnerships: intercultural methodologies in disability research.

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Routledge Handbook of Disability Studies

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Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 2023

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Journal of Family Violence, 2023

Purpose This article uses an Indigenous concept of family violence as a frame to interrogate int... more Purpose

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LGBTQ+ Family: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2022

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Qualitative Inquiry, 2022

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Health and Human Rights Journal, 2022

The human rights of both LGBTIQ+ and Indigenous peoples are far from realized. When conjoined, in... more The human rights of both LGBTIQ+ and Indigenous peoples are far from realized. When conjoined, intersecting identities reveal how racism and queer phobia affect well-being, negating the right to health and resulting in devastating impacts on people’s social, cultural, and emotional well-being. This paper documents the lived experiences of a sample of young gender- and sexuality-diverse Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples from a research project conducted in New South Wales, Australia. Their perspectives reveal how, for this cohort, discrimination and privation is manifest at the family, community, and institutional levels. This paper informs an understanding of human rights as experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTIQ+-identified peoples, where racism and queer phobia are evident in the spheres of education, employment, and service provision. Adopting a critical human rights stance, our analysis illustrates how settler colonialism manifests through the processes and outcomes of settler colonial institutions and structures.

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Journal of Global Indigeneity, 2022

Although previous research indicates a positive relationship between community belonging and well... more Although previous research indicates a positive relationship between community belonging and well-being in Indigenous Australian contexts, little is known about how this relationship is experienced by Indigenous Australians who are gender and/or sexually diverse. Drawing from qualitative interviews with LGBTIQ+ Indigenous youth, we explore concepts of belonging and connectedness and how these concepts relate to their identities and lived experiences of ‘community’. Although many participants shared similar experiences of conflict and isolation from their Indigenous kinship or geographically located communities, they also emphasised the importance and collective transformative potential of Indigenous LGBTIQ+ community-building that is aroused when forging new communities of belonging and connectedness.

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Sexes, 2022

Access to adequate and appropriate service provision has a direct positive impact on health and w... more Access to adequate and appropriate service provision has a direct positive impact on health and wellbeing. Experiences of inaccessible, discriminatory, and culturally unsafe services and/or service providers are considered a root cause for the health inequalities that exist among Indigenous queer youth. Experiences of discrimination and cultural inappropriateness are commonplace, with Indigenous queer youth noting issues related to access to services and treatment, stereotyping, and a lack of quality in the care provided, which discourage Indigenous people from accessing care. This paper examines the perspectives of Indigenous LGBTIQ+ youth and health service providers to identify what challenges, obstacles and opportunities are currently being faced and what could be implemented to improve the health and wellbeing outcomes for Indigenous LGBTIQ+ youth in the future.

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AJIL Unbound, 2022

Pons, Lord, and Stein's article entitled “Disability, Human Rights Violations, and Crimes Against... more Pons, Lord, and Stein's article entitled “Disability, Human Rights Violations, and Crimes Against Humanity,” offers a timely and comprehensive analysis of the necessity to legally frame and approach crimes against persons with disabilities across the globe as crimes against humanity (CAH). National public inquiries examining the systematic violations against persons with disabilities repeatedly demonstrate how, despite efforts to report such heinous crimes, these violations remain largely ignored and nearly always unprosecuted. In the Global South and East, violations may be accentuated as complex historical, economic, (geo)political, cultural, ideological, spiritual, and even religious beliefs come into play alongside shifting landscapes of civil unrest, war, and state militarization. Within such contexts, legal measures for the protection of persons with disabilities, particularly for minority communities, meet extraordinary barriers. In this essay, we identify a number of core issues that constrain the possibilities of investigation and prosecution of CAH committed against persons with disabilities living in the Global South and East. Even though such laws are largely grounded in practices and institutions of the Global North, this essay emphasizes the need to ensure that accountability efforts for CAH perpetrated against persons with disability are rigorous in their design, robust in their application, and recognize the heterogeneity of persons with disability on a global scale.

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Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services, 2022

There is an absence of research into the effectiveness of service provision for First Nations LGB... more There is an absence of research into the effectiveness of service provision for First Nations LGBTIQSB+ young people in Australia. To address this gap, interviews were conducted in Australia to highlight young people’s perspectives on essential components of service provision. Participants expressed their concerns about the ongoing impact of implicit and explicit settler-colonial heteronormativity and racism on services providing support for young First Nations LGBTIQSB+ peoples. Although set in Australia, this research supports the body of international research. This research has the potential to create policies and practices centered on the voices and needs of First Nations LGBTIQSB+ youth.

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New Media & Society, 2022

Disability is a longstanding area of digital inclusion finally emerging out of the shadows. In th... more Disability is a longstanding area of digital inclusion finally emerging out of the shadows. In this paper, we argue that a critical understanding of digital media from the perspectives of disability and intersectionality will offer generative insights for framing the terms and agenda of digital inclusion in the next decade. With a focus on the area of automated decision-making (ADM) in social and welfare services, we reflect upon the controversial 2015-2020 Australian government program widely known as 'Robodebt' that recovers putative debts from support recipients-and we discuss implications for indigenous Australians with disabilities in particular. We contrast the 'Robodebt' program with explicit digital inclusion policy on disability in Australia, noting that such digital inclusion policy does not specifically acknowledge yet alone address ADM or other aspects of automation. Here there is a major opportunity for overdue acknowledgement of disability and intersectionality to spur and shape an affirmative and just agenda on people with disabilities' digital inclusion, ADM, and other associated areas of automated technologies.

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Studies in Social Justice, 2021

In this paper, I explore the ways in which settler-colonial states utilize the category of disa... more In this paper, I explore the ways in which settler-colonial states utilize the category of disability in immigration and Indigenous population regimes to redress settler-colonial anxieties of white fragility. As well documented within the literature, settler-colonial governance operates a particular logic of population management that aims to replace longstanding Indigenous peoples with settler populations of a particular kind. Focusing on the case of Australia and drawing on a range of historical and current empirical sources, the paper examines the central importance of the category of disability to this settler-colonial political intent. The paper identifies the breadth of techniques of governance to embed, normalize and naturalize white settler-colonial rule. The paper concludes with the suggestion that the state mobilization of the category of disability provides us with a unique way to identify, understand and analyse settler-colonial power and the interrelationship of disability, settler-colonial immigration regimes and Indigenous people under its enterprise.

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Social Inclusion, 2021

There is little known about the social, cultural and emotional wellbeing (SCEWB) of Aboriginal an... more There is little known about the social, cultural and emotional wellbeing (SCEWB) of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTIQ+ young people in Australia. What research exists does not disaggregate young people's experiences from those of their adult Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander LGBTIQ+ peers. The research that forms the basis for this article is one of the first conducted in Australia on this topic. The article uses information from in-depth interviews to inform concepts of social inclusion and exclusion for this population group. The interviews demonstrate the different ways in which social inclusion/exclusion practices, patterns and process within First Nations communities and non-Indigenous LGBTIQ+ communities impact on the SCEWB of these young people. The research demonstrates the importance of acceptance and support from families in particular the centrality of mothers to young people feeling accepted, safe and able to successfully overcome challenges to SCEWB. Non-Indigenous urban LGBTIQ+ communities are at times seen as a "second family" for young people, however, structural racism within these communities is also seen as a problem for young people's inclusion. This article contributes significant new evidence on the impact of inclusion/exclusion on the SCEWB of Australian First Nations LGBTIQ+ youth.

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Arvanitakis, J. Ed. (2021) Sociologic: Analysing everyday life & culture (2nd edn), 2021

Book Chapter on Social Movements in Arvanitakis, J. Ed. (2021) Sociologic: Analysing everyday lif... more Book Chapter on Social Movements in Arvanitakis, J. Ed. (2021) Sociologic: Analysing everyday life & culture (2nd edn)

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University of Colombo Review, 2020

Disability Exclusion during the Coronavirus Pandemic(COVID-19) in Sri he effects of the COVID-19 ... more Disability Exclusion during the Coronavirus Pandemic(COVID-19) in Sri he effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on persons with disabilities are beginning to emerge in the global south. This exploratory article documents and examines how the critical impacts of COVID-19 further restrict the mobility of persons with disabilities as they negotiate their survival through government and health restrictions. It draws on preliminary insights from two case studies of women with disabilities from different ethnic backgrounds, whose experiences are situated within a broader set of implications for persons with disabilities facing COVID-19. Specific challenges were the lack of access to essential services, the aggravated impact of the inability to work, obtain aid packages, and access to education and information. These experiences were heightened by their position as disabled, gendered, rural, low-income individuals who are at greater risk because of structural exclusion. They face a higher rate of poverty and exclusion that undermines government public health protections aimed at reducing the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. They require, therefore, additional and more targeted forms of assistance. Our preliminary findings are located within a broader legal framework in order to open up the possibilities for advocacy on systemic change and real social inclusion that can have lasting effects on the everyday lives of persons with disabilities. The article argues that government responses to protect and uphold the dignity of the People, as stipulated in the Constitution, must include specific provisions for persons with disability to ensure their legal mobilization and advance universal disability rights.

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Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine, 2020

There has been scant exploration of the social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB) of young Indigenous... more There has been scant exploration of the social and emotional wellbeing (SEWB) of young Indigenous populations that identify as LGBTQA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer/Questioning, Asexual +). Given the vulnerability of this cohort living in Western settler colonial societies, wider investigation is called for to respond to their needs, experiences and aspirations. This paper summarizes existing research on the topic highlighting the lack of scholarship on the intersection of youth, Indigeneity, LGBTQA+ and SEWB. The paper takes a holistic approach to provide a global perspective that draws on an emerging body of literature and research driven by Indigenous scholars in settler colonial societies. The paper points to the importance of understanding converging colonial influences and ongoing contemporary elements, such as racism and marginalization that impact on young Indigenous LGBTQA+ wellbeing.

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Disability and Animality Crip Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies, 2020

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Journal of Family Studies, 2020

Almost a quarter (23.9%) of Indigenous Australians report living with a disability. While most of... more Almost a quarter (23.9%) of Indigenous Australians report living with a disability. While most of them are cared for at home by female family members, there is limited understanding and insight into their lives. There is even less known about Indigenous primary carers who often also live with a disability and/or serious health condition requiring ongoing medical healthcare and support. This paper explicitly explores Indigenous disabled carer experiences who are navigating complex infrastructures of social protection for those that they care for and to gain support for their own health and disability needs as a disabled carer. The paper illustrates the significant disadvantages they experience given their regional locations of residency and the historicity of disability-carer support availability. Drawing upon their narratives from semi-structured interviews and yarning circles, three significant themes emerge: (i) Extended carer responsibilities for the family, (ii) Challenges applying for and receiving financial support as carers to support their own wellbeing as a disabled person and the disabled family member they cared for, (iii) Living in unsuitable accommodation.

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Australian Journal of Social Issues, 2020

This article presents and analyses population data on the Liverpool area of Greater Western Sydne... more This article presents and analyses population data on the Liverpool area of Greater Western Sydney, identifying trends with significant policy implications. Liverpool city is home to one of the highest concentrations of Australia's recent arrivals, many of whom have refugee backgrounds. From those who arrived under Australia's post‐Second World War resettlement programme to new arrivals, it is also home to a rich diversity of sociocultural and linguistic communities at different stages of settlement. Demographic data show significant relationships between age, country of origin, year of arrival and need for assistance variables, many of which are either qualitatively distinct or quantitatively different from other regions in Sydney, New South Wales and Australia. Building on this analysis, the article further identifies significant policy issues in relation to disability, care and support. While Western Sydney has figured prominently in national and state public‐policy directives, particularly in relation to economic growth, public infrastructure and transport mobility corridors, the analysis presented here illustrates that national policy directives for socioeconomic imperatives, such as the appropriate uptake of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, are critical to facilitate social sustainability, cohesion and equity within the region.

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Australian social work, 2020

Many Australians living with a disability find themselves recipients of Newstart Allowance when a... more Many Australians living with a disability find themselves recipients of Newstart Allowance when applying for the Disability Support Pension (DSP). Newstart Allowance is designed as a short-term payment for people looking for work, with a lower fortnightly payment and limited medical and transport subsidies compared to the DSP. This paper describes the financial challenges of living with a disability while on Newstart Allowance. With a focus on the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (Indigenous) Australians from two regional towns, qualitative semistructured interviews and focus groups documented experiences of 39 community members and 21 medical and nonmedical service providers supporting clients living with a disability on Newstart Allowance. Four themes were identified: (i) living with severe financial hardship, (ii) challenges complying with the DSP application, (iii) being financially penalised for not complying with Newstart Allowance conditions, and (iv) supporting community members to manage severe financial stress. Although people living with a disability on Newstart were experiencing severe hardship and poverty, there was limited participation of Centrelink-employed social workers within their described experiences with Centrelink. We argue that social workers can work to humanise human service settings and potentially help to mitigate these financial challenges.

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We explore how disability, as it occurs among human animals, is juxtaposed, transposed and erased... more We explore how disability, as it occurs among human animals, is juxtaposed, transposed and erased in similar ways to its appearance (and disappearance) in the non-human animals that sit at the centre of neoliberal capitalist production. Taking cues from dairy and non-dairy marketers which alternately present the dairy cow as layabout grazer or as extreme worker, we explicate how the normative codes of farm production and the interspecies relational nature of the slaughterhouse are deeply enmeshed with broader neoliberal regimes of work, welfare and the intensification of work for both human and non-human animals. We describe four instances where neoliberal logic determines the relationship between disability and productivity as it manifests among farmed animals, in human animals and between human and non-human animals. Among farmed animals, the spectrum of biological diversity is narrowed by the killing of animals that are deemed ‘productively disabled’, while impairment is genetically engineered to create ‘hyperproductive’ beings. At the same time, impairment that is created via intensive farming practices is normalised and made invisible. In the slaughterhouse, with the unrelenting demands of low-cost, high-output production, the highly exploitable, low-paid human workers who perform ‘meat work’ suffer injury, ill-health and impairment. Finally, neoliberal welfare-to-work regimes reclass humans who receive disability support pensions as unemployed so they can be transferred to lower paid unemployment benefits and compelled to move in and out of low-waged, precarious work. We follow this with a discussion of the processes that make visible or invisible certain types of work performed by certain types of body, and the productive value that neoliberalism places on this work. We conclude by asking how interspecies disability solidarity can be used to resist the neoliberal logic that deems some bodies ‘non-productive’.

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Symposium: Call for papers for symposium + edited volume TASA Critical Disability Studies (CDS) ... more Symposium:
Call for papers for symposium + edited volume
TASA Critical Disability Studies (CDS) Thematic Group
Friday 19 June, 2015,
UNSW Kensington Campus
Centre Lecture Block Theatre 4 (ground floor)

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"Our paper looks at the intersectionality of disability and gender in the specific contexts of ‘t... more "Our paper looks at the intersectionality of disability and gender in the specific contexts of ‘the rural’ and the armed conflict-affected areas of the country, particularly the interaction with the law. In-depth interviews and focus group discussions were conducted among rural women with disabilities in the North Central and Eastern provinces, including women who acquired disabilities resulting from the internal conflict. Legal literacy, administrative discretion in disability-related welfare programmes, and transitional justice and reconciliation emerged as the most prominent themes in the interviews. We analyse these issues using a rights framework in an attempt to highlight some of the vulnerabilities of women with disability in the rural and war-affected contexts. The paper also reflects on a few instances where those vulnerabilities have been overcome through collective action".

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In this paper, we undertake a comparative analysis of disabled women in Australia and the UK navi... more In this paper, we undertake a comparative analysis of disabled women in Australia and the UK navigating a range of welfare spaces and places as their disability identity is questioned with the intensification of neoliberal austerity. Despite the time differences of the intensification of neoliberal welfare restructuring within these two nation-states, the interviews reveal that disabled women in both Australia and the UK are made to feel ashamed of their bodies, their economically constrained choices and their identity as a disabled working class woman living on welfare. The paper illustrates the affect effects of shaming as a key public emotion drawn upon by neoliberal nation states to further stigmatise, and in some instances, criminalise, bodies that are already highly marginalised by their identity of being a poor working class disabled woman surviving on welfare.

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The OECD recently stated that ‘disability policy has become a key economic policy area in most OE... more The OECD recently stated that ‘disability policy has become a key economic policy area in most OECD countries’. Disability has become central to economic policy debates in Australia, Britain, Canada and the USA. This international and national shift is occurring simultaneously with the dawn of the global recognition of disability rights and the international ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), the first international convention of the 21st century.

In Australia almost 19% of the overall population has a disability. The prevalence of disability in Australian society is expected to steadily rise with the onset of medical life-sustaining interventions and an ageing population. While there is a higher incidence of disability in regional areas, as a percentage of the population, the vast majority of the Australian disability population resides in urban areas where there is an uneven distribution and availability of specialist support and services.

Drawing upon research interviews with people with disability living in rural and urban Australia, this paper will explore their experience of Australian disability social security policy as it has become a core economic concern of the Australian policy landscape. The paper will discuss the ways in which people with disabilities are required to negotiate social security regimes to maintain a sense of wellbeing as the Australian welfare has become much more restrictive and punitive in its approach to ‘managing disability’. The research presented incorporates the findings of two large scale research projects – a current ARC project on disability in rural Australia, and a recently completed project on changing Australian disability social security regimes.

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The research entailed a four-stage process that significantly focused on building the ... more The research entailed a four-stage process that significantly focused on building the research capacity of women with disabilities and their advocates, enabling their participation in the project as expert knowers of the interstice of gender and disability under transitional arrangements. Spanning a period of more than 12 months of fieldwork, the outcome of the research is a clear set of recommendations to advance the rights of women with disabilities in law, policy and institutional practice

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Overview of plenaries and discussions of a two day national workshop exploring issues facing the ... more Overview of plenaries and discussions of a two day national workshop exploring issues facing the future (re)production of the social science workforce and impact upon 'the problem of society'.

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Health Sociology Review, Jan 1, 2010

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British Journal of Social Work, Jan 1, 2012

Book Review of Understanding Disability Policy, Alan Roulstone and Simon Prideaux, Bristol, Polic... more Book Review of Understanding Disability Policy, Alan Roulstone and Simon Prideaux, Bristol, Policy Press, 2012

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