Intersectional-Agency: Choosing Who I Am as a Ticket to Opportunities

The article is based on findings from the qualitative interview study ‘Diverse Disability Identities’, which explored the ways in which people with disabilities utilised their diverse identities beyond that of ‘being disabled’ to advance their rights and ambitions for individual, community and broader social change. Our analysis reveals how people with disabilities identify as belonging to a multiplicity of identities experience and anchor their diverse identities outside of disability as a resource to create opportunities for change. Drawing directly from the in-depth interviews, the paper explores the strategic positioning of their rich non-disabled identities in different settings and contexts to promote and assert their individual desires alongside their broader collective aims and goals for social transformation. As the research participants articulate, actively harnessing their complex category membership is a critical resource to promote social change and mobility in various social, political and cultural spaces, both in their own lives and in the lives of others.