‘Nothing about us without us’: organizing disabled people’s solidarity within and beyond borders in a polarized age

ABSTRACT

This article examines collective action and the alliances between social movement organizations engaged in the work of solidarity with disabled people within and across borders during austerity. Building upon social movement theory, specifically political opportunities and resource mobilisation, we focus our analysis on data from in-depth interviews with thirty-five organizations at the UK and European levels, where we examine both how solidarity is operationalized by such organizations and the everyday cooperation and alliances they build with others in a UK policy context that has been hostile to disabled people and a European context which disabled people’s solidarity organizations have sought to seize as political opportunities. Our study therefore adopts a multi-level approach by analysing the building of alliances between organizations at the local, national and transnational levels and it reveals the impact of the political context and organisational pressures which can diminish resources and generate competition, thus placing strains on solidarity between disabled people.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnationalism
• disabled people
• alliances
• solidarity
• political opportunities
• resource mobilization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. https://www.disability-europe.net/

2. https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId = 88&eventsId = 1264&furtherEvents = yes&langId = en

3. https://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId = 1138&langId = en

Additional information

Funding

The research in this article was supported by funding from the European Commission Horizon 2020 programme as part of the TransSOL project under grant agreement 649435.

Notes on contributors

Tom Montgomery

Tom Montgomery is a Research Fellow in the Yunus Centre for Social Business and Health at Glasgow Caledonian University.

Simone Baglioni

Simone Baglioni is Professor of sociology in the Department of Economics and Management  at the University of Parma.