Disability, Dependency and the New Deal for Disabled People

Abstract

The emergence of the ‘New Deal’ and its attendant claim to be part of a new political and social future based on the ‘third way’ seems to offer formerly excluded people new horizons for social inclusion. This paper provides a critical exploration of the likely impact of the ‘New Deal’ for disabled people. The paper contextualises the ‘New Deal’ in the wider ideology and rhetoric of ‘Welfare to Work’. In doing so, it highlights similarities between ‘New Deal’, ‘Welfare to Work’ and the victim blaming ideas which characterised discussions of a growing ‘social underclass' in the 1980s. By looking at the way the disability problem is framed within the ‘New Deal’ and ‘Welfare to Work’, it will be argued that it is unlikely to address the nature of employment barriers, indeed risks seriously misrepresenting the causes of disabled people's economic and social exclusion. In this way, its ideological underpinnings may simply reaffirm disabled people's economic and social dependency.