Self-advocacy, Rights and Legislation: The Experiences of Self-advocates in Nova Scotia and Ontario
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Through my research I listened to the self-advocacy experiences of people labelled with intellectual disability in Nova Scotia, which maintains segregated residential centres, and Ontario, which had closed all such centres by 2009.I did so in order to answer a key question: is there a difference between self-advocates' views of deinstitutionalization in Nova Scotia and Ontario?Specifically, is there greater anxiety in Nova Scotia given the continued existence of segregated centres in that province?Following Malhotra and Rowe (2014), I inquired into the relationship between law, advocacy, and identity.I conceptualized my findings through cultural disability theory to scrutinize disability and impairment.This is important as the intellectual disability impairment label is a key component of the management and oppression of advocates so labelled (Altermark, 2017).I used a Foucauldian power lens to understand further how selfadvocates are governed, and also how they resist power through their advocacy initiatives.I also used Agamben's (1998) theory of sovereign power to explore the persistence of institutionalization, despite the existence of disability rights legislation.My research revealed, most notably, no significant difference in views on deinstitutionalization between my research participants, who were all members of a selfadvocacy organization, in Nova Scotia and Ontario, despite the presence of a more oppressive disability support system policy in Nova Scotia.This implies that membership in a self-advocacy organization empowers people in such a way that participants in Nova Scotia did not relay any fear of the potential for institutionalization in the future.It seems, significantly, that when participants know that they have rights, iii they feel protected from institutionalization.They also feel empowered to challenge and resist ableist power structures, including states of exception, through self-advocacy.As such, I found a recursive relationship between identity, relational autonomy, resilience, and self-advocacy, once there is a consciousness of rights.The importance of understanding the rights advocacy of self-advocates cannot be understated as it is a key component in the fight to prevent the reversal of de-institutionalization, a reversal that many scholars warn could happen due to entrenched, systemic ableism (Malacrida, 2015).I dedicate this thesis to the memory of my lovely Mum, Heather, whose courageous life was a constant source of inspiration to me.She would have been delighted that I completed a PhD.I also dedicate this thesis to the memory of Dave Kent, President of People First Nova Scotia.He fought tirelessly and publicly for the rights of all people labelled with intellectual disabilities for many years and was very supportive of this project.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.037 | 0.021 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".