The welfare state is ideally about guaranteeing citizens welfare and social security. This thesis describes how the embodied experience of austerity politics and reforms of national health insurance in Sweden is lived along the links of what I call “the chain of precarity”. In 2008 the duration of the entitlement to sickness benefit was limited to 2.5 years. The majority of people on sick leave and passing the benefit limit were women. Using qualitative in-depth interviews and drawing on feminist phenomenology, theories of recognition and crip perspectives, the analysis shows that the chain of precarity orients women with long-term illness towards increased vulnerability and risk. This (dis)orientation is the result of a lack of recognition and respect within the fields of social insurance, health care, work life, discourse and politics as well as close relations.

This study sets out to explore the representations of disability in documentary films. Its starting point is that when such representations of disability films are under examination, one needs to take into consideration a level of complexities that come with disability, the construction and functionalities of representations, and more particularly the impact of documentary films on understanding disability. In order to address this issue, I draw upon disability theory and disability aesthetics, crip theory and crip willfulness, as well as practices of good looking, synthesising in this way a theoretical framework that responds to matters of intersectionality and criticality in relation to the analysis of representations of disability. To this end, I employ a mixed method design, which is based on participant observation, the methods of the written festival and a critical disability studies (crip) analysis for examining selected documentary films alongside a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews that were conducted with disabled viewers who attended the Emotion Pictures – Documentary and Disability Film Festival in Athens, Greece. Its findings indicate that representations of documentary films familiarise viewers with disability. This familiarisation and the development of political engagement by depicting crip killjoys are the key elements that create representations of a different context and meaning in comparison to those produced by media and fiction films. My analysis reveals that depictions of crip killjoys who are conscious of their political identity, speak out and take action are depictions that ask for political engagement. As such, they can produce good staring. Visibility and social dialogue are two of the benefits of disability film festivals that are highlighted by disabled viewers.

Being viewed as a sexual being is perhaps not something often considered by most able-bodied people. Yet, lacking that kind of consideration is not a luxury that people with physical impairments naturally get. The purpose of this study is to, by using the perspective of crip theory and the social model, examine how the societal view of physical impairment and sexuality affect people with physical impairments and their ability to express and act on their sexuality. Five interviews were transcribed from two podcasts wherein four interviewees, two cisgendered men and two cisgendered women, talk about their personal experiences with navigating a socially, and sometimes physically, inaccessible sexual marketplace. Results show that all four interviewees agree that a societal view of people with physical impairments as unattractive and asexual has affected their self-esteem and self-image by having internalized the societal ableist attitudes of what it means to have an attractive body and to be an attractive partner. Results also show how the female interviewees have experienced an increased need for affirmations of their physical attractiveness through sexual and romantic relationships and how they believe these needs to be grounded in their internalized ableism.  Furthermore, the results of this study reveal how the male interviewees believe their acts of having bought sexual services from sexual surrogates to be grounded in the sexual exclusion they experience from the sexual market because of their physical impairments.

In this essay, I examine whether the journal Drama Forum constitutes presupposed perceptions of people with intellectual disabilities. The aim is to examine the discourse of intellectual disability in the Swedish drama teacher’s industry magazine DramaForum. The method I use is discourse analysis and the approach is poststructuralist. The results are analyzed on the basis of Crip Theory, and three themes based on stereotypical assumptions. My conclusion is that Drama Forum visualize intellectual disabilities mostly from one of these themes. I analyze the parent discourse relation to underlying discourses and discuss its relationship to the social practice that is its origin. / I denna uppsats undersöker jag om tidskriften DramaForum konstituerar förgivet tagna uppfattningar av personer med intellektuell funktionsnedsättning. Syftet är att granska diskursen kring intellektuell funktionsnedsättning i de svenska dramapedagogernas branschtidskrift DramaForum. Den metod jag använder mig av är diskursanalys och ansatsen är poststrukturalistisk. Resultatet är analyserat med utgångspunkt i Crip Theory, och tre teman som bygger på stereotypa antaganden. Min slutsats är att DramaForum framställer intellektuell funktionsnedsättning till största del utifrån ett av dessa teman. Jag analyserarar den överordnade diskursens förhållande till underliggande diskurser samt diskuterar dess relation till den sociala praktik som är dess ursprung.

This thesis looks at the contemporary superhero comic Hawkeye and its depiction of able-bodiedness and non-able-bodiedness, in general and more specifically the portrayal of deafness that takes place in the last story arc. Issues and depictions of various levels of functionality in comics, as a visual media, and superhero comics in particular, have been and are frequently present. They, however, rely heavily on old stereotypes, both in the visual and the textual elements. The small intersection of disability studies, crip theory and the study of superhero comics have mostly focused on the comics published between 1960 and 1980. The superhero genre is a genre known for idealized depictions of healthy and strong bodies, which is why it is such an interesting and complex theme to analyse. Matt Fraction and  David Aja’s Hawkeye comic utilizes the tools and elements inherent in the comic book style to portray disability and deafness in new enriching ways both in narrative terms and in the reader’s response to the text. Looking at both the visual and textual elements of the comic this thesis finds that the comic medium and the Hawkeye comic in particular manages to depict disability in an engaging and thought provoking way. / Inspirerad av min personliga reaktion av att läsa Matt Fraction och David Ajas superhjälteserie Hawkeye, och speciellt tidningen där protagonisten i serien plötsligt blir döv, har jag undersökt hur serien arbetar med föreställningar och normer om funktionalitet. Tidigare forskning inom just den smala intersektionen av cripteori och/eller handikappforskning samt forskningen av superhjälteserier har främst fokuserat på superhjälteseriernas så kallade Silverålder, vilket är åren mellan 1960 och 1980. Efter en kort introduktion till Hawkeyes fiktionella historia i förlaget Marvels serieuniversum och hanteringen av handikapp i tidigare tecknade serier diskuterar jag i analysen hur tematiken av funktionsduglighet och funktionsnedsatthet porträtteras. Jag undersöker såväl den visuella som den textuella skildringen samt hur denna tematik problematiseras, i själva berättelsen men även för läsaren, i seriens utformning. Jag använder mig av Mitchell och Snyders teorier om narrativa proteser och handikapp-narrativ för att undersöka hur Hawkeye förhåller sig till dessa. I början av Fraction och Ajas berättelse om Clint Barton följer handikapp-tematiken deras teori om narrativa proteser och det nedtystande och/eller ignorerande av handikappet som litterära skildringar av funktionsnedsättningar vanligtvis följer. När dövheten sedan tar plats i berättelsen förändras den attityden och Hawkeye #19 och senare serier bryter starkt mot dessa konventioner. Resultatet av denna analys är att tecknade serier, i egenskap av sin speciella medieform, är synnerhet är väldigt bra lämpad för att skildra alternativ funktionalitet och serieskaparna till Hawkeye använder detta till sin fördel för att avbilda Clints upplevelse av tillfälliga skador och dövhet.

The magical fictional setting of the Harry Potter novels is not one separated from our own. It features the same nations and the same history as the real world. Its society is parallel to ours due to similar traditions and hierarchies, such as heteronormativity, ageism, racism, and fascism. Some of these are clearly problematised in the novels, others are not. While issues of racism and blood status are clearly at the forefront of the story of Harry Potter, there are layers to the conflict which reveal that there is more to the discriminatory dilemma than the issue of blood purity. This essay aims to investigate how teachers can use J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series to lead a discussion about othering and discrimination, focusing on the issue of ableism in particular. The goal when studying processes of othering in Harry Potter is not necessarily for the reader to identify with the protagonists. Instead, textual silences will be interpreted to investigate whether the othering of people like the readers themselves, an othering the reader partakes in when empathising with the protagonists, can be compared to ableism in the real world, and how teachers can use Harry Potter as means to introduce the idea of able-bodiedness as a social construct. By applying crip theory to the text, it can be stated that the division between the protagonist and his non-magical Other is based on ableist ideologies, which result in a positioning of the non-magical as disabled in the magical society. This position is maintained by naturalising the link between impairment and character flaws.

This essay aims to examine how the disabled figure is represented in motion pictures and if these representations differ when the actors are disabled. It aims to shed some light on the social construction of normality and disability. The theoretical framework is that of stigma, social interaction and Crip Theory and the method we use is discourse analysis. The movies in which we examine this are as follow: Hur många lingon finns det i världen?, Hur många kramar finns det i världen?, Café de Flore and Le huitième jour. Our conclusion is that known stereotypes did not occur as much as limited course of action and the tendency to treat the disabled character as a group and not as individuals. Our result also indicates that the story of the disabled figure is not the one that is being told and how their humanity is something that has to be confirmed instead of being self-evident.

Deaf lesbians are a population that is underrepresented in the academic literature. Through the use of narrative inquiry, the researcher conducted in-depth interviews with a woman who self-identified as Deaf and lesbian. She shared her experiences growing up as a woman who is Deaf and later in her life, realized she is lesbian. The researcher juxtaposed her experiences as a hearing, lesbian woman and an ally to the Deaf community to better illuminate the Deaf lesbian experiences. The research delved into how these dual minority identities have affected the Deaf lesbian participant as she makes her way in the world of the dual majority cultures of hearing and heteronormative.

Uppsatsen syfte är att undersöka vilka normer om funktion och funktionsnedsättning som reglerar när, var och hur personer med icke-synliga funktionsnedsättningar upplever att de kan passera som icke-funktionsnedsatta. Författaren analyserar förståelser av passering hos personer med icke-synliga funktionsnedsättningar utifrån en intersektionell förståelse av funktion, kön och genus. Med hjälp av transteoretiska tankar kring passering som praktik finner författaren flera likheter mellan hur tillfällen till passering skapas och förstås hos personer med funktionsnedsättningar och transpersoner både i en social och medicinsk kontext.

This dissertation is a multi-methodological project that examines the experiences of being both LGBTQ+ and disabled from an intersectional perspective through narratives constructed in virtual spaces. In this project, I address the question ‘how do individuals who identify as both disabled/chronically ill and LGBTQ+ negotiate these often contradictory identities?’ I also complexify this intersectional analysis by examining how LGBTQ+/disabled identities are constructed in relation to race, class, and gender. Additionally, by conducting virtual ethnography as the primary method of data collection, I explore questions pertaining to how members of LBGTQ+ and disability online communities engage in virtual identity construction and virtual community building. Through these projects I seek to bring disability and LGBTQ+ identities into the intersectionality literature and discourse that has frequently excluded, and at times even ignored, these positionalities.