Disability Research in the Global South: Working from a Local Approach

Abstract

This chapter will look at ways of building into the research itself notions of rights and the power to sustain the work outside the context of the northern researchers who are likely to be the grant holders. We note the obstacles and barriers currently preventing the full enjoyment of rights by people with disabilities in the global South, by exploring how increasing participation and decision-making power in monitoring rights can lead to more sustained social change.

Walking into the unregulated slum for the first time and as the only non-Indian participatory action researcher, I thought I had some ideas for getting children with disabilities into pre-schools and schools. I stepped cautiously through the sewage running on the pathways (in my sandals). And tried not to look horrified by the live wires hanging down nearly to the pathway and the children romping around those wires. I held the grant along with my Indian partner who ran a disability organization. But I was not in charge of the project—I had lots of ideas but I had been approached only after there was a pretty concrete plan for the work. I was technical support. That project (lasting five-plus years and still ongoing) taught me a lot. It was not my first experience in international North–South work but one in which I was able to reflect on the meaning of emancipatory research and the role that northern researchers can play constructively and proactively. (Marcia Rioux, unpublished field notes)