Bringing Disability Studies and Youth Studies Together to Understand Disabled Youth Transitions

Description

In disability studies youth transitions has been conceptualised as a linear process moving towards a per-determined goal; with much of the focus on the transfer from child to adult services. In contrast youth studies, while not engaging with disability or disability studies, scrutinises the interplay between changing empirical contexts created by long term changes in labour markets and state approaches to welfare and the regulatory presence of societal norms about the ‘right kind’ of transitions and the ‘right kind’ of young adult citizens. This presentation makes the case for bringing youth studies and disability studies approaches together to generate a richer and more holistic understanding of disabled youth transitions. Bringing both bodies of work together can highlight how: (1) Material inequalities are still an important factor in disabled young people’s lives and that difficulties during the transition period can be felt across adulthood. (2) Family is increasingly significant - and problematic - as a resource in disabled youth transitions as forms of state support dwindle. (3) Normative embodied markers of transitions influence judgements made about disabled young people making their way towards adulthood. (4) Transitions policy and thinking is flawed when it focuses on disabled young people having the right kind of aspirations to make the right kind of transitions. This collaboration can produce a relational understanding of transitional processes, situating disabled young people in the social worlds they are embedded in and moves away from a linear understanding of time. The presentation will conclude by introducing a new UK based Economic and Social Research Council comparative study of the inequalities and diversities of disabled youth transitions, which will draw from both disability studies and youth studies to provide a richer and more holistic understanding of contemporary disabled youth transitions.

Period	11 May 2023
Event title	Nordic Network on Disability Research
Event type	Conference
Location	Reykjavík, IcelandShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International