Inclusive Marginalisation? A Critical Analysis of the Concept of Disability, Its Framings and Their Implications in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

Abstract

While eschewing an explicit definition, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) understands ‘disability’ primarily as the result of interactions between individually situated impairments and societally created barriers. This article draws on work in interdisciplinary disability studies to argue that the way ‘impairments’ and ‘barriers’ are framed in the Convention raises fundamental questions about (a) the standard of comparison for the Convention’s stated goal of full and equal societal participation for disabled people; and (b) its recommended means of reasonable accommodation. The article further argues (a) that CRPD framings may facilitate practices of inclusion and accommodation at the individual, rather than the structural level; (b) that such practices risk inclusive marginalisation, i.e. partial inclusion without genuine equality of opportunity; and (c) that the normative goals of the CRPD require a more developed account of the structural and systemic causes of disability.