Practices of belonging: claiming elderly care through deaf citizenship

Abstract

This article explores relationships between deafness and citizenship claims, with a focus on deaf elderly and care. We concentrate on a care home for deaf elderly in the heart of the Netherlands, De Gelderhorst, as a site of deaf citizenship. Yet the claims to citizenship made through De Gelderhorst are far from singular. Rather, the center balances citizenship claims to the state as well as to the particular community that it constitutes. In this article, we explore the relationship between these multiple forms of citizenship that variably contradict and sustain one another. These multiple forms of citizenship, despite their contradictions, co-create a right to claim care and inclusion based on deafness. But which deafness? We explore how different deaf subjectivities by individuals and institutions alike are enacted. It is this multiplicity that allows for the claims to belonging, resources, or care that are embedded in deaf citizenship.