Disabling Disabled Young Adult Transitions: Contemporary Experiences of Precarity Uncertainty, and Intersectionality in Youth Transitions

Description

The challenges disabled young people face as they move towards adulthood have been well documented. These challenges have been impacted by the changing socioeconomic context of youth transitions in general and the greater precarity and uncertainty experienced by many young people. This presentation, based on an ESRC project, brings disability studies and youth transitions research together, to explore what disabled young people in the North East of England and central Scotland are experiencing as they move towards adulthood. It is a co-produced project involving disability and youth organisations and disabled young people in its development and design and includes a range of methods, including interviews and creative activities with disabled young people, as well as interviews with people who have a disabled young person within the family and key actors in organisations who support disabled young people. The presentation will report on the first wave of interviews with disabled young people. We explore the social and political conditions in which stories are being shared with us to understand the many accounts that are of extremely difficult school experiences, housing and financial insecurity in childhood and as they move towards adulthood, mental health issues associated with long term social marginalisation and for some subdued expectations that the future will lead to any change. Our overall argument is that the extent of the difficulties and trauma that some disabled young people experience are reflective of the long-term weakening of the welfare state, increased precarity and uncertainty within youth transitions and the continued intersectional presence of disability inequalities. These dynamics shape the stories being told, while the disabled young people maintain situated agency in how they respond within their lives and as active story tellers.

Period	4 Sept 2024
Event title	Disability Studies Conference
Event type	Conference
Location	Leeds, United KingdomShow on map