Abstract
In this chapter I discuss the particular situation of being at the intersection of disability and child poverty. I then give a thick description that shows what it is like to be a nondisabled white girl living in poverty with two parents with disabilities—I give my own story. Then I offer some empirical facts to demonstrate the problems distilled from the thick description: custody challenges, child as carer, unemployment, charity, and lack of choice. I then discuss stigma from a theoretical point of view. I put forward a view of ontological vulnerability that is more expansive than Martha Fineman’s or Catriona Mackenzie’s using Judith Butler’s and Jackie Leach Scully’s work on vulnerability. After that I offer some ways to combat stigma of children in poverty and disability. It is upon this that I construct an alternative political vision that would value human need and be responsive to vulnerabilities without erasing or assimilating difference.
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Notes
- 1.
Notably, I want to retain a positive view of disability in this chapter, although I will mostly be discussing the way in which adults and children are oppressed with regards to their disability status. I affirm it as a political identity with its own rich sociocultural and political dimensions. This will be tricky because the issue of becoming-disabled comes up in this piece, as something that is a result of other kinds of oppression—for example, socioeconomic status and race. So how do we maintain a positive disability identity while still naming and recognizing the fact that certain other intersecting oppressions make one more susceptible to becoming disabled, implying that it were something that no one would want to have come upon them? I’m not sure if I’m graceful enough a scholar to do this. Therefore I note it as a tension in this work at the outset.
- 2.
- 3.
See Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (1997) for use of the term ‘normate’ to describe the gaze of those whose bodies are unmarked by stigmatized identities such as disability, race, or gender.
- 4.
In the United States we have a department of Child Protective Services and an Adult Protective Services as well. Both of these departments are social services that pertain in the former, to children and, in the latter, to the elderly and adults with disabilities. These services do work well sometimes but can also be exploited by people with interests in institutionalizing children or adults with disabilities and the elderly.
- 5.
See Prout and James (1997) for an explication of the “dominant framework” theory in sociology and psychology regarding children’s development. Childhood is seen as a time of developing or becoming, until adulthood when we move to being considered developed fully. See Michael Wyness (2012) for sharp critique of the problems with the dominant framework.
- 6.
Susan Wendell (1996) theorizes that disability is a stage of everyone’s life, if we are lucky enough to live that long.
- 7.
- 8.
See Charles Mills (1997) for an account of the United States’ system of white domination over people of color.
- 9.
- 10.
See Rich (1986) for an explanation of the problem of centering whiteness in analyses.
- 11.
See Wendell (1996) for an account that lies neither on the social model or the medical model, but is a hybrid view of both. The social model posits that impairments are health problems residing within the body or mind, but disabilities are a social phenomenon—they arise from the social environment. For example, a wheelchair user is only disabled in places where there aren’t adequately cut curbs or ramps for wheelchair access. For more information on the social model see Shakespeare in Davis, ed. 2017, Oliver 2004, and Union of the Physically Impaired Against Segregation 1975. The medical model, which is largely outdated in the literature, though still quite in when it comes to common opinion, posits that disabilities are wholly biological phenomena, which need to be treated or cured through modern medicine.
- 12.
It is not only in the US that we see poverty having a bidirectional relationship with disability. WHO states this is the case worldwide and thus argues that disability is a development issue.
- 13.
Young says there are five ‘faces’ of oppression: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism and violence. I prefer her definition of oppression because it emphasizes the systematic nature of oppression and how it reproduces itself through cultural and political institutions.
- 14.
A thick description is an account from one child, individual, or family that describes their lived experiences, in this case, of a child living in poverty with parents with disabilities. Schweiger and Graf say “a single story of a family or individual is not more than that, but it is ‘thick,’ as is every individual life and it also makes the injustices of living in poverty more visible and tangible.” (Schweiger and Graf 2015, 108) Thick descriptions can capture the particularities of a social phenomenon that make the description more robust, salient, felt, in the reader. Though no thick description can give a full account of what something is like, individual detailed accounts are helpful in that they show rather than straightforwardly tell (as numbers can in statistics) what the experience of living under such and such kind of circumstances is like. They convey some of the differences of experiences and ways oppression can manifest itself in the story of a single person or family.
- 15.
See https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/social-care-and-support/young-carers-rights/ for an explanation of the rights of the child carer and for more information on eligibility for compensation.
- 16.
See Parson 2014 for a critique of neoliberalism and its entanglement with charity. See specifically, the change in tax code that has made it profitable for corporations to give food waste—unused food—to food banks and charitable organizations who distribute food to people in poverty.
- 17.
See Wolff in this volume for a discussion of these kinds of deprivations and problems with lack of choice.
- 18.
There is a lot of discourse about what poor people need versus what they might want or enjoy, with the implication that they do not deserve any little luxuries in life. Just google ‘food stamps lobster,’ ‘food stamps steak,’ or even ‘food stamps birthday cake’ and dozens of sites and videos show up, many of them using the term ‘welfare queen,’ which is a derogatory term usually implicating a woman of color on welfare who is ‘too lazy’ to work and ‘just has lots of children’ who ‘live off the system.
- 19.
To quickly give a sketch of an answer to three, four, and five I’ll say 3. Turn nonpermitted dependencies into permitted dependencies (see below for definitions of permitted and nonpermitted dependencies); 4. Access and accessibility, dignity, and care are other ethical concepts that an ethics of vulnerability must address and; 5. Involve the subjects in knowledge production and planning in attempts to ameliorate their situations. For example, if you’re studying how to respond to child poverty, ask the children who are poor. Involve them in creating solutions and that will avoid problems with unwarranted paternalism or coercion.
- 20.
Healthcare is actually not a permitted dependency in the US.
- 21.
The “old policy” of offering free and reduced priced lunches is the policy still in place in most communities in the US.
- 22.
For more on the term ‘misfit’ see Garland-Thomson (2011).
- 23.
I do not intend to make claims about who is most vulnerable, as in which social location faces the most oppression. Such questions don’t come with generative answers. I just mean to note that focusing on populations and intersections of oppression that are made to be very vulnerable by our social configuration is something that is generative for thinking politics in new ways.
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Gorman, S. (2019). Disability and Child Poverty. In: Brando, N., Schweiger, G. (eds) Philosophy and Child Poverty. Philosophy and Poverty, vol 1. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22452-3_11
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