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Janice McLauglin (she/her), Newcastle University

Janice’s work explores how childhood disability or illness is framed from within the worlds of medicine, community and family. The work has developed through partnership with disabled children and their families, organisations that advocate with them and other researchers. We examine the intersections of inequality, citizenship, identity, embodiment and care. Janice is Professor of Sociology at Newcastle University.

Bio: Professor of sociology at Newcastle University, whose work explores how childhood disability or illness is framed from within the worlds of medicine, community and family. The work has developed through partnership with disabled children and their families, organisations that advocate with them and other researchers. We examine the intersections of inequality, citizenship, identity, embodiment and care. 

For the video recording of this presentation, please see the online symposia page.

Introduction
I am going to focus on how critical disability studies is influencing  I am part of examining disabled young people’s transitions to adulthood. This work is hoping to understand better what happens to disabled young people during this time. We also argue that examining disabled young people’s lives can help research on youth transitions be more inclusive and expand their understanding of what happens to young people marginalised for a variety of reasons. It can help it to step outside prescriptive models of what adulthood looks like and what good transitions to it involve. I will discuss this in terms of 2 connected themes: the body and time.

The Body 
Critical disability studies writers argue that a dominant understanding in the global north is that being able bodied is both normal and idealised. All types of body outside the apparent norm are then seen as secondary, a misfit, monstrous or disposable. Such understandings position vulnerability and infirmity into a separate category of person. This framing disguises the reality that not just certain bodies fail (against normal measurements); all bodies do so, including some young bodies. This understanding is helpful in the way it can highlight the fictional status of normality, while also celebrating the other as a positive human possibility and body from which different imaginaries of our present and future can and do emerge. Connecting these ideas to disabled young people and transitions to adulthood we are considering how templates of ‘normal bodies’ and ‘normal adulthoods’ shape understandings of what are judged as the right kind of transitions and young people. The dominant policy narrative about youth transitions is that the goal should be independence and the pathway is education and the values of aspiration, self-reliance and responsibility.  When this policy frame is turned towards disabled young people the focus is on ensuring that disability is not a barrier to that existing goal. This is a problem because it often focuses on the disabled young person doing the work of removing barriers and having the right aspirations and right kind of body to succeed. It also does not consider alternative futures, possibilities and bodies that are not geared towards such narrow goals (McLaughlin, 2023). 

There are echoes between these arguments in critical disability studies with work occurring in critical youth studies to understand the significance of the body to youth identities and templates for the future. Normative framings of what normal adolescence is inform the social positioning of young people. Studying disability can help inform our understanding of this dynamic by thinking about the significance of embodied differences to what are judged as appropriate and inappropriate youth identities and futures. It can help us explore the complex work all young people, but particularly those in marginalised positions, are doing to manage difference. It also helps explain why for some the response is to seek the safety of being seen as normal.

Time
Critical disability studies also opens up altered ways of thinking about time. These ideas can help critical youth transitions research move beyond an approach to time, which is about looking forward, to allow for time that is non-linear and non-progressive. Here I am very much drawing from work by Barbara Gibson and colleagues (2009), particularly the work they have done with young people with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. They argue that the individualism of the usual life course associated with young people is fixed by ‘moral imperatives’ about spending time productively by working towards the future. In contrast, Gibson and colleagues argue that young people with Duchenne value ‘shadow-time’, that is time spent exploring different kinds of creative activities, being with people, and participating in care of both themselves and of others. Therefore, examining disability can help transitions research in its critical consideration of time as a regulatory dynamic policing possible ways of spending time and the value of different time practices (McLaughlin, 2020). 

Youth studies work is already exploring how ‘template’ transitions to adulthood are increasingly not the norm, as various socio-economic changes across the labour market, technology, education and cultural life mean transitions are more varied. Yet the templates remain and remain powerful in policy and as frameworks used to judge young people for not succeeding. Such judgements often target marginalised young people, including disabled young people, for not using time appropriately. Part of what critical disability studies can do is contribute to the critique of such templates and the regulatory ‘moral imperatives’ embedded within them. As youth studies reflects more on time, as well as capture the problems with thinking of time as a linear dynamic moving towards known futures, critical disability studies can also help us be more open to seeing the value in alternative ways of spending time and dwelling in space.  

Conclusion
Rethinking bodies and time through critical disability studies when thinking about disability and youth transitions contributes on various fronts. It can help us think about the relationship between bodies and time in shaping templates of the right kinds of disabled young people and the right kinds of transition approaches and outcomes. Disabled young people negotiate relational dynamics of inclusion and exclusion daily, bringing in their lived realities and strategies into critical youth transitions research can help produce more intricate understandings of how transitions can occur across different rhythms of time and through different connections/disconnections between actors. Critical disability studies can also help us think about alternative approaches to the body and time that escape the limitations of existing templates. Alternatives that emphasise interdependencies of people, technologies and communities across time and space. Instead of seeing young people as individuals striving forward our emphasis can be on young people as embedded in relational ties that create dynamics of belonging in the present as well as goals for a future. Critical disability studies work can support such endeavours by emphasising the relationality and interdependency of transition processes. 

References 

Gibson, B. E., et al. (2009). "'Futureless persons': shifting life expectancies and the vicissitudes of progressive illness." Sociology of Health & Illness 31(4): 554-568.

McLaughlin, J. (2023) “Bringing disability studies and youth studies together to enhance understandings of youth transitions.” Journal of Youth Studies, ,

McLaughlin, J. (2020) Valuing care and support in an era of celebrating independence: disabled young people’s reflections on their meaning and role in their lives. Sociology. 54(2):397-413. .