Disability, Spaces and Places of Policy Exclusion

Geographies of disability have become a key research priority for many disability scholars and geographers. This edited collection, incorporating the work of leading international disability researchers, seeks to expand the current geographical frame operating within the realm of disability. Providing a critical and comprehensive examination of disability and spatial processes of exclusion and inclusion for disabled people, the book uniquely brings together insights from disability studies, spatial geographies and social policy with the purpose of exploring how spatial factors shape, limit or enhance policy towards, and the experiences of, disabled people. Divided into two parts, the first section explores the key concepts to have emerged within the field of disability geographies, and their relationship to new policy regimes. New and emerging concepts within the field are critically explored for their significance in conceptually framing disability. The second section provides an in-depth examination of disabled people's experience of changing landscapes within the onset of emerging disability policy regimes. It deals with how the various actors and stakeholders, such as governments, social care agencies, families and disabled people traverse these landscapes under the new conditions laid out by changing policy regimes. Crucially, the chapters examine the lived meaning of changing spatial relations for disabled people. Grounded in recent empirical research, and with a global focus, each of the chapters reveal how social policy domains are challenged or undermined by the spatial realities faced by disabled people, and expands existing understandings of disability. In turn, the book supports readers to grasp future policy directions and processes that enable disabled people's choices, rights and participation. This important work will be invaluable reading for students and researchers involved in disability, geography and social policy.

Karen Soldatic is an International Researcher in Disability Policy Studies at the University of New South Wales, Australia and an Adjunct Research Fellow of the Centre of Human Rights Education, Curtin University, Australia. Hannah Morgan is Lecturer in Disability Studies in the Department of Sociology and member of the Centre for Disability Research at Lancaster University, UK. Alan Roulstone is Professor of Disability Studies, University of Leeds, UK and has held senior posts in a number of universities.

Introduction: Disability, Space, Place and Policy: New Concepts, New Ideas, New Realities Alan Roulstone, Karen Soldatic and Hannah Morgan Section 1: Conceptualising Disability: Spaces and Places of Policy Exclusion 1. Space, Place and Policy Regimes: The Changing Contours of Disability and Citizenship Rob Imrie 2. Emplacing Disabled Bodies/Minds in Criminal Law: Regulating Sex and Sexual Consent in Ireland's Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 1993 Claire Edwards 3. The Spaces of Poverty: Renegotiating Place and Disability in the Global South Shaun Grech 4. Accessible Public Space for the 'Not Obviously Disabled': Jeopardized Selfhood in an Era of Welfare Retraction Alan Roulstone and Hannah Morgan 5. Temporalities and Spaces of Disability Social (In)Security: Australia and the UK Compared Chris Grover and Karen Soldatic Section 2: Experiencing Disability, Experiencing Space and Place 6. Part of the Problem or Part of the Solution? How Far do 'Reasonable Adjustments' Guarantee 'Inclusive Access for Disabled Customers'? Donna Reeve 7. Biographies of Place: Challenging Official Spatial Constructions of Sickness & Disability Jon Warren & Kayleigh Garthwaite 8. Shaping Local Ethical Spaces of Care and Caring for People with Learning Disabilities Edward Hall 9. Institutionalised Lives and Exclusion From Spaces of Intimacy for People with Learning Difficulties Andrea Hollomotz and Alan Roulstone 10. Eroding the 'Places' of Support: Emerging Geographies of Support for People with Intellectual Disabilities Andrew Power