1st Edition

Disability and Neoliberal State Formations

By Karen Soldatic Copyright 2019
    178 Pages
    by Routledge

    178 Pages 3 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Disability and Neoliberal State Formations explores the trajectory of neoliberalism in Australia and its impact on the lives of Australians living with disability, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It examines the emergence, intensification and normalisation of neoliberalism across a 20-year period, distilling the radical changes to disability social security and labour-market law, policy and programming, and the enduring effects of the incremental tightening of disability eligibility carried out by Australian governments since the early 2000s.





    Incorporating qualitative interviews with disabled people, disability advocates, services and the policy elite, alongside extensive documentary material, this book brings to the fore the compounding effects of neoliberal reforms for disabled people’s wellbeing and participation. The work is of international significance as it illustrates the importance of looking beyond the UK, EU and the USA to critically understand the historical development and policy mobility of disability neoliberal retraction from smaller economies, such as Australia, to the global economic centre.

    List of figures; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations and acronyms; Chapter 1: Introduction: Disability and the Australian State; Chapter 2: Technologies of Disability Reclassification; Chapter 3: Moralising the Disabled Subject: Resentment, Disgust and Shame; Chapter 4: Neoliberalising Disability Temporal Relations; Chapter 5: Indigenous Disability in Regional Australia; Chapter 6: Conclusion: Disability and the Neoliberal State; References; Index



    Biography

    Karen Soldatic is an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow (2016–2019) at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. She was awarded a Fogarty Foundation Excellence in Education Fellowship for 2006–2009, a British Academy International Fellowship in 2012 and a fellowship at The Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University (2011–2012), where she remains an Adjunct Fellow. Her research on global welfare regimes builds on her 20 years of experience as an international, national and state-based senior policy analyst, researcher and practitioner. She obtained her PhD (Distinction) in 2010 from the University of Western Australia.