Intersectionality, childhood disability and rurality: What does rural life mean for disabled children and their families?

Abstract

The specific intention of this paper is to question how rural life may affect everyday issues of concern for disabled children and their families, including access to services, social connectedness and quality of life. A theoretical frame of critical disability studies and intersectionality is taken up for this work. As critical disability studies scholarship forges productive theoretical alliances with other social agendas linked to identity, such as feminism and critical race theory, it is accordingly insistent upon going beyond a siloed fixation on disability. A defining contention is that disability ought not to be the sole focus of theoretical and socio-political agendas that seek to solve the problems that disabled communities face. It is therefore only fitting that any treatment of the convergence of childhood disability and rurality, might draw intersectionality theory into its conceptual remit. As such, this paper presents a reading of disability, intersectionality and rurality through a critical disability studies lens, recognising critical disability studies as a theoretical methodology in line with Schalk (2017). To substantiate the theoretical component of the paper, a scoping review method is employed to source literature through a replicable, transparent approach. The paper encourages better understanding about how rurality may affect the lives of disabled children and their families, whilst recognising that disability is not the only important identity position to consider.