Living with Difference: Perspectives of Rural-Dwelling Young Disabled Adults

Canada has 6.2 million disabled people, 18.4 percent of whom live in rural and remote areas (Randal & Thurston, 2022). Yet there is a lack of lived experience of rural disability research in Canada. Rurality is important because rural social and organizational structures influence notions of identity (Cairns, 2015), belonging (Mirfin, 2017), and equitable access to resources (Reimer, 2005). Therefore, intersectional disability scholarships have recently begun to focus study in this area (Soldatic & Johnson, 2017). In this study, I apply Yuval-Davis’ (2006, 2015) situated intersectional approach. Her approach is not prescriptive regarding which social divisions (i.e., race, class, and gender) to include in intersectional scholarship (Yuval-Davis, 2006, 2015). In this thesis, I center rurality and disability. I explore how intertwined social divisions (e.g., disability) emerge in rural contexts shaping disabled people’s social position(s), their negotiations of rural inequity and developing subjectivities. Fifteen diverse young disabled participants from the Niagara region in Ontario, Canada, shared their stories of growing up rurally with disability. The socio-cultural context is critical to this study. I interviewed six key stakeholders to understand how Niagara's current interconnected social, political, and economic systems shape local social inequity. Additionally, I completed an integrated analysis of key texts, including municipal, regional, and provincial policies and guidelines, to understand the broader political and economic systems shaping local rural inequity. In my analysis, I suggest ideas of disability/difference(s) influence and are influenced by rural social structures (re)producing views of disability and rural inequity. In particular, rural family status—conceived as a complex intermingling of relational, reputational, and economic dimensions—is emergent in rural Niagara. This view of rural family status is critical to understanding the participants’ negotiations of inequity and developing positive views of disability/difference. Because disabled participants are embedded in local power relations, their positionality and negotiations of disability are multiple and fluid across different time points and rural environments in Niagara. This thesis challenges simplistic and static views of disability and rurality. Emphasizing the heterogeneity of rurality and rural disabled people is fundamental in determining how to support diverse disabled people to live and flourish in rural Canada.

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