Projects / Programmes
Disability Ethics: Social Identities of People with Disabilities in the Theory and Practice of Social Work
| Code |
Science |
Field |
Subfield |
| 5.07.00 |
Social sciences |
Criminology and social work |
|
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| S214 |
Social sciences |
Social changes, theory of social work |
| Code |
Science |
Field |
| 5.09 |
Social Sciences |
Other social sciences |
Disability ethics; social identities; biological and social reproduction of people with disabilities; types of disablement and support in social work theory and practice; the ethics of care; social inclusion and cohesion; intersectionality of gender, ethnicity and disability.
Researchers (6)
| no. |
Code |
Name and surname |
Research area |
Role |
Period |
No. of publicationsNo. of publications |
| 1. |
22929 |
PhD Liljana Rihter |
Criminology and social work |
Researcher |
2011 - 2014 |
0 |
| 2. |
29374 |
PhD Ana Marija Sobočan |
Criminology and social work |
Researcher |
2011 - 2014 |
0 |
| 3. |
04998 |
PhD Mirjana Ule |
Sociology |
Researcher |
2011 - 2014 |
0 |
| 4. |
24374 |
PhD Špela Urh |
Criminology and social work |
Researcher |
2011 - 2012 |
0 |
| 5. |
00317 |
PhD Darja Zaviršek |
Criminology and social work |
Head |
2011 - 2014 |
4 |
| 6. |
23048 |
PhD Jelka Zorn |
Criminology and social work |
Researcher |
2011 - 2014 |
0 |
Organisations (2)
Abstract
The research project is a discursive and an intersectional analysis of social identities of people with disabilities and a theoretical implication of disability ethics in social work. Disability ethics will be defined as the understanding of embodied experiences from the perspective of disabled persons and the effects of the interrelations of the body as a material fact, identity as socially constructed and disability as a contextualized experience. The research will analyse how do gender, ethnicity and dominant discourses in the field of social work and social policies influence each other, and what kind of identities they produce. The research will focus on yet unexplored areas in Slovenia: the biological and social reproduction of people with disabilities. In the area of biological reproduction the research will look at the forms of disablement as well as forms of support. Forms of oppression are: sterilizations without an informed consent; the deprivation of persons’ legal capacity and the ‘defect’-discourse in reproductive medicine. Forms of support involve: support to people with disabilities to become parents, support for children with disabilities and forms of formal and informal care-work for people with disabilities and those who care for them. Biological reproduction is tied to the question to what extent are people with disabilities, especially those with intellectual impairments, infantilized as persons, who cannot and should not have a family. In the area of social reproduction the research will analyse their participation in paid, unpaid and hybrid forms of employment and work, and will analyse the influences of the work on everyday lives of disabled persons, inclusion and consequently social cohesion. The research will pay a special attention to the question weather in Slovenia too, the work ethics allow people with disabilities mainly to be engaged in various forms of unpaid labour, while in the arena of paid employment they remain subjugated to precariousness, dismissals and transfers to segregated working places. Experiences of ethnic minorities with impairments who need continuous care, and those who are care providers like migrant-workers in domestic care work will be analysed. Furthermore, the analysis will take into account the experiences of women and men with disabilities in paid and unpaid work, in regard of their reproductive rights and in relation to family life. The comparative research will look at the Slovenian situation in a wider context of the region, Europe and worldwide, as the trends in disability ethics are global, while their local variants hold interesting perspectives. The research will include a life-course perspective and will introduce it to social work theories in Slovenia: this perspective accentuates the importance of those professional interventions, which are sensitive to the quality of each person’s life in a longer time-span. The research will show how the key analytical categories such as gender, ethnicity and age affect the construction of social identities of people with disabilities. Such intersectional analysis will enable the researchers to contextualize social experiences of disability in relation to various personal circumstances and will contextualize various ethical dilemmas. Disability ethics are, together with the intersectional approach, the theoretical point of departure, as well as a method of research, enabling a detailed analysis of biological and social reproduction of people with disabilities. The original qualitative findings and quantitative data will be gathered for Slovenia, but compared and analysed within a global perspective. Each data will be contextualised in time and space in order to understand the construction of local-specific social identities. The theoretical analysis will also serve to reflect upon the disparity between the actual rights of people with impairments and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
Significance for science
The research project impacts social and natural sciences. The research itself belongs to the scientific field of disability studies, hence it contributes to the development of this field, as well as others: 1. Influencing social work, medicine, psychology, physiotherapy, special pedagogy, architecture and urban planning. In Slovenia, the research developed or introduced scientific methods that impact how the afore mentioned disciplines and professions understand various physical, sensory and intellectual disabilities and how can – with a contemporary understanding of handicap – these disabilities be reduced or even eliminated (theories of space emphasizing the importance of ‘universal design’; theories of inclusion, diversity; theories of social construction of the body, theories of gender in intersection with disability; theories of community care; theories of independent life; theories of deinstitutionalization, stigma, identity; disability ethics). Professional practice in the afore mentioned disciplines can with the help of new theoretical concepts become a part of system change, necessarily followed by health and social policies and legislative changes. The completed research should be a catalyst for changing the relationship between professionals and people with disabilities (through higher education of professionals) and along with this a reduction in the historical power relations, lying at the core of health and social systems in postsocialist countries (the professional, holding the knowledge and the user, having the experience). The research result are important, as they offer a possibility to reappraise the attitude towards disability on the personal level (attitude towards ‘difference’; reflexion of ‘difference’ as a racist concept; rethinking the concept of empowerment, advocacy). The research findings disclose the hybridity of identity positions (a rise in the number of persons with disabilities who are professionals and researchers). At the same time, the research also exposes handicap as a consequence of social inequalities on a structural level (impossibility of education, employment, inaccessibility of technical aids for deprivileged social classes, the importance of physical adjustments in rural environments, of language adjustments of professionals; of adjustments in public transportation and non-profit housing opportunities). 2. Influencing sociology, history, legal studies, anthropology. Also these social sciences are presently increasingly occupied with the question of historical construction of a ‘healthy’ body in different contexts and historical periods. This research contributes to these theoretical exertions. The issue of the formal status of people with disabilities, especially intellectual disabilities, is a great challenge for contemporary legal studies. The latter is manifested as ambivalent, as in the formal sense the people without legal capacity (people with disability are often barred of legal capacity, especially in post-socialist countries, unlike in Western countries and North America) are deprived of certain basic rights of adult subjects (voting right, a right to marry, to parent etc.). The research project supports the direction in legal sciences, which emphasizes that keeping people with disabilities in the formal frame of minors or non-adults, is outdated (the Slovenian prolongued parental rights for instance). 3. The presence of Slovenian scientists in the international arena. In this respect, the research has reached, even exceeded it’s aims, as it involved organizing a distinguished scientific conference and the first issue of the scientific journal Socialno delo in English language with over a half of international contributors.
Significance for the country
The project is of high importance for the development of Slovenia. Slovenia is one of the signatory countries not only of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (even if with fundamental translation errors) but also of the optional protocol, which is the binding international document in the field of human rights of disabled people. Slovenia needs to implement in practice what was signed. Implementation of the Convention in Slovenia is modest and slow; the research results of the project disclosed many flaws and identified, where more thorough changes need to be introduced by state institutions. Some of the key research findings, important for the implementation of the international document in Slovenia are: the field of segregated workplaces and a reduction in the number of employed people with disabilities; the field of occupational nature of employments of people with intellectual disabilities, who often don’t perform tasks, appropriate to their intellectual abilities; the problem of continued institutionalization of people with disabilities in social care; the field of violence against women with disabilities, suffering violence in private sphere without any possibilities for housing independence; poor capacities of media to report on violence; problems of children in foster care and problems of people with disabilities among the Roma ethnic minority; a needed rise in tertiary education of students with disabilities and the issue of barriers they encounter. All of these are also areas covered by the Convention, with expectations for amelioration of present results on the national level. The principal implementers of the Convention, which will use the research findings, are: Ministry of Labor, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, Directorate for invalids; Social Chamber; the Association of Centres for Social Work, Association of Social Institutions of Slovenia, The National Education Institute of the Republic of Slovenia, Universities and Ministry of Education, Science and Sport; Social Work Centres, Municipalities, Employment Service; institutions for lifelong learning etc. These will be able to benefit from the openly available quantitative and qualitative research data from this project. To summarize, the project is important in Slovenia because: -it facilitates the improvement of data bases in the field of people with disabilities; -it enhances and supports the implementation of the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities; - aids higher social cohesion of Slovenian society; -enables greater visibility of people with disabilities and a better understanding of their life situations from the user perspective; -assists the development of inclusive forms of social work support for people with disabilities (in the field of family and employment; Roma children; children in foster care; disabled student etc.); -encourages anti-discriminatory media representations of people with disabilities. The research data allow for a comparative analysis with international research in the field of disability studies. This is important for understanding the position of Slovenia in the wider international space and to answer the question of what is the position of people with disabilities compared to other European and non-European countries. The research findings are openly available in the journal Socialno delo (Social Work; available also in English, vol.53, nr.3-5, 2014), in an audio book of the international symposium Social Suffering: Social Work in Alliance with People with Disabilities in Times of Crisis (online, 2013); in a scientific monograph Nasilje nad ženskami v Sloveniji ( Violence against women in Slovenia) and international collections of scientific papers. Slovenia is implementing Article 4 of the Convention, demanding that countries fund research in the field of people with disabilities.
Most important scientific results
Annual report
2011,
2012,
2013,
final report,
complete report on dLib.si
Most important socioeconomically and culturally relevant results
Annual report
2011,
2012,
2013,
final report,
complete report on dLib.si
