Neoliberalism, disability and employment: the Independent Living Movement (ILM) failure

Abstract

The Independent Living Movement (ILM) pursues, as a political project, the recognition of People with Disabilities (PWD) rights, from a liberal orientation that considers such rights as individual ones. This constitutes a contradiction, between its social basis, defined as an oppressed collective, and its political nature as movement, an individualistic one. Within a Keynesian organization context, this contradiction is not a trouble for the consecution of its objectives, but will be the cause of its failure when the Keynesian context changes into a neoliberal mode of political-economic organization. The evolution of Spanish laws and the employment conditions of PWD since 80’ to the current days is the empirical probe of that failure and its deep cause.