Postsocialist disability matrix

Table 1.

State socialist legacyPostsocialist neoliberalizationEconomic redistributionSegregated service provision:
• Sheltered workshops
• Residential institutionsRestructuring and reducing social support:
• Decentralization
• Benefit cuts
• WorkfareCultural recognition• Medical-productivist understanding of disability (codified in disability assessment systems)
• Denial of disability (on the everyday level)• Stigmatization of social assistance and ‘dependency’, accompanied by promotion of self-sufficiency
• ResponsibilizationPolitical representationWeak civil society – suppression of counterpublics and counterdiscoursesDepoliticization through:
• Restriction of civil society to service provision
• Token (quasi-corporatist) participation