The literature on disability rights intersects with different disciplines such as law, sociology, social policy, political science, and of course disability studies. For this reason, it is highly diverse in its methods and approaches, and the dialogue between these various strands is not always easy.
This is a list of significant resources that deal with the issues of disability rights, their diffusion at the national level and across borders as well as the limits they have met in this process. Although most references are in the English language, a few are in French as the coordinators of this themed section come from France – a country where the debate on disability rights has produced some relevant literature as well. This list also covers other countries than the U.S and the U.K to better reflect the diversity of cases featured in this themed section.
A history of the Models of Disability
Batavia, A. I. and Schriner, K. (2001) ‘The Americans With Disabilities Act as engine of social change: models of disability and the potential of a civil rights approach’, Policy Studies Journal, 29, 4, 690–702.
Oliver, M. (1990) The Politics of Disablement, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Oliver, M. (1996) Understanding Disability: From Theory to Practice, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Roulstone, A. and Prideaux, S. (2012) Understanding Disability Policy: Social Issues, Policy and Practice, Bristol: The Polity Press.
Shakespeare, T. (2013) Disability Rights and Wrongs Revisited, London: Routledge.
Stone, D. (1984) The Disabled State, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Thomas, C. (2007) Sociologies of Disability and Illness. Contested Ideas in Disability Studies and Medical Sociology, London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ville, I., Fillion, E. and Ravaud, J-F. (2014) Introduction à la Sociologie du Handicap, Louvain-La-Neuve: De Boeck.
The struggle for the ADA and the potential/limits of the politics of rights
Bagenstos, S. R. (2009) Law and the Contradictions of the Disability Rights Movement, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Barnartt, S. N. and Scotch, R. K. (2001) Disability Protests: Contentious Politics 1970–1999, Washington D.C.: Gallaudet University Press.
Barnes, J. and Burke, T. F. (2014) How Policy Shapes Politics: Rights, Courts, Litigation, and the Struggle over Injury Compensation, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Burns, K. K. and Gordon, G. L. (2010) ‘Analyzing the impact of disability legislation in Canada and the United States’, Journal of Disability Policy Studies, 20, 4, 205–18.
Emens, E. F. (2012) ‘Disabling attitudes: U.S. disability law and the ADA Amendments Act’, The American Journal of Comparative Law, 60, 1, 205–33.
Engel, D. and Munger, F. (2003) Rights of Inclusion: Law and Identity in the Life Stories of Americans with Disabilities, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Erkulwater, J. (2006) Disability Rights and the American Social Safety Net, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Fleischer, D. Z. and Zames, F. (2001) The Disability Rights Movement: From Charity to Confrontation, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Hamilton-Krieger, L. (2003) Backlash against the ADA. Reinterpreting Disability Rights, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Kruse, D. and Schur, L. (2003) ‘Employment of people with disabilities following the ADA’, Industrial Relations, 42, 1, 31–66.
Levitsky, S. R. (2014) Caring for Our Own: Why There is No Political Demand for New American Social Welfare Rights, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Maroto, M. and Pettinicchio, D. (2014) ‘The limitations of disability antidiscrimination legislation: policymaking and the economic well-being of people with disabilities’, Law and Policy, 3, 4, 1–24.
Scotch, R. (2001) From Good Will to Civil Rights: Transforming Federal Disability Policy, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
The diffusion of the Rights Model of Disability
Arnardóttir, O. M. and Quinn, G. (2009) The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities: European and Scandinavian perspectives, Leiden: Brill.
Baudot, P.-Y. (2014) ‘Who's counting? Institutional autonomy and the production of activity data for disability policy in France (2006-2014)’, Participazione e Conflitto. Rivista Scientifica di Studi Sociali e Politici, 7, 2, 294–313.
Bell, D. and Heitmueller, A. (2009) ‘The Disability Discrimination Act in the UK: helping or hindering employment among the disabled?’, Journal of Health Economics, 28, 2, 465–80.
Birtha, M. (2013) ‘Nothing about CRPD Monitoring without Us: a case study on the involvement of the disability movement in policy-making in Zambia’, African Disability Rights YearBook, 115–38.
Cantor, J. D. (2008) ‘Defining disabled: exporting the ADA to Europe and the social model of disability’, Connecticut Journal of International Law, 24, 399–433.
Chiriacescu, D., Barral, C., Arnould, C., Bouffioulx, E., Castelein, P. and Cote, A. (2015) ‘Analyser les procédures et les modalités d’évaluation du handicap à la lumière de la Convention des Nations unies relative aux droits des personnes handicapées : proposition de guide méthodologique’, ALTER - European Journal of Disability Research/Revue Européenne de Recherche sur le Handicap, 9, 1, 34–50.
Dammame, J. (2013) ‘La socialisation de la notion de handicap en droit de la non-discrimination’, Journal Européen des Droits de l'Homme, 4, 836–56.
Halvorsen, R., Hvinden, B., Bickenbach, J., Rodriguez, A., Waldschmidt, A., Sturm, A., Karacic, A. and Dins, T. (eds.) (2017) The Changing Disability Policy System. Active Citizenship Policy in Europe, London: Routledge.
Harpur, P. (2012) ‘Embracing the new disability rights paradigm: the importance of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities’, Disability and Society, 27, 1, 1–14.
Heyer, K. (2015) Rights Enabled. The Disability Revolution, from the US, to Germany and Japan, to the United Nations, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Kelemen, R. D. (2011) Eurolegalism. The Transformation of Law and Regulation in the European Union. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Kelemen, R. D. and Vanhala, L. (2010) ‘The shift to the rights model of Disability in the EU and Canada’, Regional and Federal Studies, 20, 1, 1–18.
Lawson, A. (2008) Disability and Equality Law in Britain: The Role of Reasonable Adjustment, Oxford, Hart Publishing.
Lawson, A. and Gooding, C. (2005) Disability Rights in Europe: From Theory to Practice, Portland: Hart Publishing.
Mabbett, D. (2005) ‘The development of rights‐based social policy in the European Union: the example of disability rights’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 43, 1, 97–120.
Meekosha, H. and Soldatic, K. (2011) ‘Human rights and the global south: the case of disability’, Third World Quarterly, 32, 8, 1383–98.
Mittler, P. (2015) ‘The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Implementing a paradigm shift’, Journal of Policy and Practice in Intellectual Disabilities, 79–89.
Sabatello, M. and Schulze, M. (2013) Human Rights and Disability Advocacy, University of Pennsylvania Press.
Soldatic, K. and Grech, S. (2014) ‘Transnationalising disability studies: rights, justice and impairment’, Disability Studies Quarterly, 34, 2.
Stoll, J. (2015) ‘The German disability movement as a transnational, entangled new social movement’, Moving the Social, 53, 63–86.
Vanhala, L. (2015) ‘The diffusion of disability rights in Europe’, Human Rights Quarterly, 37, 4, 831–53.
Waddington, L. (2005) ‘Implementing the disability provisions of the framework employment directive: room for exercising national discretion’, in Lawson, A. and Gooding, C. (eds.), Disability Rights in Europe: From Theory to Practice, London: Hart Publishing, 107–34.
Waddington, L. (2006) From Rome to Nice in a Wheelchair: The Development of a European Disability Policy, Maastricht: Europa Law Publishing.
Waldschmidt, A. (2009) ‘Disability policy of the European Union: the supranational level’, ALTER - European Journal of Disability Research/Revue Européenne de Recherche sur le Handicap, 3, 1, 8–23.
Winance, M., Ville, I. and Ravaud, J-F. (2007) ‘Disability policies in France: changes and tensions between the category-based, universalist and personalized approaches’, Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 9, 3–4, 160–181.
Rights versus austerity
Burke, T. F. (2004) ‘The European Union and the diffusion of disability rights’, in Levin, M. A. and Shapiro, M. M. (eds.), Transatlantic Policymaking in an Age of Austerity: Diversity and Drift, Washington D.C: Georgetown University Press, 158–76.
Miller, P. and Hayward, D. (2016) ‘Social policy “generosity” at a time of fiscal austerity: The strange case of Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme’, Critical Social Policy, 37, 1, 128–47.
Pinto, P. (2011) ‘At the crossroads: human rights and the politics of disability and gender in Portugal’, ALTER: European Review of Disability Research, 5, 2, 116–28.
Soldatic, K. and Chapman, A. (2010) ‘Surviving the assault? The Australian disability movement and the neoliberal workfare state’, Social Movement Studies, 9, 2, 139–54.
Veck, W. (2014) ‘Disability and inclusive education in times of austerity’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 35, 5, 777–99.
