Competing Commitments: Self-sufficiency and Mutual Obligation among Disabled Communities in Western Uganda

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In 1995, Uganda adopted a new Constitution mandating disabled representatives in parliament and local councils, to be elected by registered disabled people in each community. Consequently, Uganda has an unusually institutionalised 'disability rights movement,' with over 45,000 disabled councillors and, theoretically, Disabled People's Organisations (DPOs) in every village. Despite widespread praise for the unique system, evaluations have found limited practical benefits, which were concentrated among highly educated disabled men living in urban areas with minor impairments (i.e., disabled people who were already better off). Existing accounts of the Ugandan disability movement focus mostly on governmental structures. However, in the decades since the system began, DPOs have proliferated outside the government system as well, spurred by opportunities to apply for grants and loans targeted at disabled people's small businesses. Much of ordinary members' engagement with disability infrastructure is through these, less formal, organisations, about which there is little research available.For my PhD, I produced an ethnographic study of DWG, a disabled women's organisation based in a Ugandan market. In my thesis, I investigated the social and economic strategies that emerge among non-elite disabled people in this context. I explored the differences in aspirations and activities between members and non-members of DPOs, and among people living with different impairments. My findings demonstrate that the female non-elite members of DWG derived substantial benefits from the organisation. However, I also confirm earlier reports about exclusion, adding detail about the mechanisms that make it difficult for some disabled people to engage with disability institutions. I show how NGO and government focus on providing loans and grants for disabled people's small businesses excluded people living with mental distress or learning difficulties, as well as deaf people who had inadequate communication support. I also describe how DWG filled some of these gaps through providing mutual support between disabled people living together as a community. This support was crucial to sustaining members' businesses, but was ignored by funders.As an ESRC postdoctoral fellow, I will share my findings through academic publications, policy-focused reports, and workshops with stakeholders, which will circulate information about the unintended exclusionary consequences of existing programmes and the lesser-known activities of disabled communities like DWG. The workshops will enable reflection on the problems and discussion of policy changes to address them.I will also develop a new research project, building on an underdeveloped insight from my PhD fieldwork. Through carrying out interviews with a number of women who had been disabled in a major accident in 2015 while working for a large company near my fieldsite, I discovered that those disabled in industrial accidents did not generally join DPOs. Instead, they attempted to gain redress through labour rights frameworks, even though these were complicated by the company's outsourcing policy, which was used to avoid legal responsibility for compensation.Disability theorists Puar and Meekosha argue the 'social model' of disability (predominant in Uganda's disability institutions) excludes people who are 'made disabled' by industrial and colonial practices. It therefore seems likely that there are connections between how disability is conceptualised in my fieldsite and industrial accident survivors' choice to look to unions instead of DPOs. During the ESRC fellowship, I will carry out a scoping study to investigate the feasibility of fieldwork following the women disabled in the 2015 accident. This will inform my production of a new research proposal, looking at the interaction between concepts of disability and the labour rights movement.