‘There is always this feeling of otherness’: exploring the lived experiences of visually impaired immigrant women in Canada

Abstract

This paper explores the experiences of immigrant women with visual impairment in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) of Canada. Conceptually, the paper draws from feminist disability theory and critical scholarship on blindness to consider the discursive and material processes shaping women’s experiences across different socio-cultural contexts. Empirically, the paper draws from in-depth interviews with seven women. The analysis is organized around three themes. The first explores women’s understandings of visual impairment. The second examines the ways in which women’s experiences of visual impairment are shaped by meanings and attitudes that circulate within their cultural communities, and the extent to which immigration might challenge or reinforce these meanings. The third examines the shifting barriers and opportunities women face with respect to social and economic participation. We close by identifying the conceptual implications of our research.

Keywords:

• Visual impairment
• immigration
• women
• intersectionality
• Canada

Acknowledgement

A special thank you to the Canadian National Institute for the Blind for their invaluable help recruiting participants and for their support.

Notes

1. Terminology concerning disability is complex and contested. In this article, we use the language of ‘visual impairment’, recognizing a continuum of embodied experiences that range from unimpaired vision to its complete absence (see Bolt 2005). This allows recognition of the varied embodied experiences of, for example, glaucoma, optical neuritis and hemianopia. At the same time, we recognize the disabling social and economic barriers that confront people with visual impairments. We also recognize that visual impairment (and blindness) are cultural phenomena, and in this sense the ways they are experienced, understood and represented are reflections of the culture in which they are embedded (Kleege 2005; Rodas 2009).