Imagine that you have no choice about where you live because there’s so little accessible housing; that you’re not able to get out and about in your community because the environment that’s been planned and designed by society excludes you; and that your out-of-placeness is reinforced by the absence of connecting footpaths and inaccessible public transport, services and shops. This is the lived reality of many people with impairments and chronic illness.
“Just to walk her,” as one mother said of her disabled daughter during my research in Australia,” it doesn’t even have to be to the shops; there is nowhere from here to push her with footpaths just to get her out and about - you know what I mean - it’s just the principle of just being able to go for a walk.”
I’m using the language of ‘disabled people’ here in line with a social model of disability which recognises that people with impairments are disabled by society through the effects of ableist attitudes and systems rather than the functioning of people’s minds, bodies and senses. We experience injustices in our housing, offices, streets, towns, cities and borders. But being denied the right to be in these everyday spaces is not just a social injustice, it’s also a spatial injustice that seeks to undermine our personhood and quality of life.
