Introduction

This is the second chapter addressing the research question, ‘How do older people experience disability and processes of disablement, and what meanings do they make of those experiences?’ It discusses how participants in the present study experienced disability and disablement in interactions with their contexts – social, economic, physical, cultural and political. The chapter starts by returning to the issue of a ‘disability’ identity introduced in Chapter 3 by way of background. I then discuss findings which suggest that participants perceived themselves as more or less disabled due to a range of contextual factors: social/ familial factors; support and care; physical environments; and sociocultural meanings in everyday interactions. Participants could be disabled by factors that disable people of all ages, such as inaccessible homes and environments, and through being marginalised or excluded in interactions with others.

Experiencing disability with ageing (DwithA) could be perceived as entering a socially discredited or devalued category – a transition, therefore, experienced not just at a bodily level, but also at a social, cultural and political level. An inverse process meant improvements in aspects of life for some participants ageing with disability (AwithD), even if life was challenging in many ways and often because earlier life had been marked by a sense of exclusion or confinement. The chapter then discusses how participants related to a disability identity and how some people were in the process of negotiating a disability identity in response to perceptions of being discriminated against or excluded, and some were developing a new sense of belonging with other disabled people.

Theoretical background: disability identity

Disability identity was originally associated with membership of a shared collective, understood as a somewhat fixed or stable phenomenon (Watson, 2002: 513). Oliver (1996: 5) suggested there were three elements to a disability identity: presence of impairment; experiencing externally imposed restrictions; and self-identification. Disability is now recognised as involving a variety of intersectional experiences, and many people experiencing impairment do not identify as ‘disabled’ or engage with activism (Riddell and Watson, 2003; Ridolfo, 2010). Studies with younger disabled people suggest that most did not incorporate disability within their identity; instead, they sought to be part of the mainstream (Priestley et al, 1999; Watson, 2002). Thus, disabled people often emphasise what they have in common with non-disabled people, seeking inclusion and equal status, not separation (Shakespeare, 2014a).