A master thesis from Aalborg University
Institutionalisation of Citizen Involvement in the Local Disability Councils
Term
4. term
Education
Publication year
2021
Submitted on
2021-06-03
Pages
118 pages
Abstract
The purpose of this Master thesis has been to analyse how citizens with disabilities are represented and involved in matters of accessibility through the local disability councils. In the local disability councils, citizens with disabilities have been appointed to represent the interest and experiences of others living with a disability on issues regarding local disability policies in collaboration with municipal representatives. The focus is on how the disability representatives represent a variety of different disabilities as well as how this representation has an impact in the decision-making processes of the municipality. By applying qualitative methods like participatory observations and interviews we have conducted a total of four observations and 16 interviews in total. We have applied the organisational criteria of openness, intensity and quality for classifying dialogic procedures described by Callon et al. in their concept of hybrid forums, to analyse the possibilities and constraints of the collaboration in the local disability councils. We found that the controversy of the roles of the local disability councils is yet to be identified and are negotiated as they consider themselves to be both a municipal advisory council and a user-council. With outset in the framework of Callon et al. we found that by reconfiguring the local disability councils as a user-council there is potential to reintroduce research in the wild into the council, which have not been present due to the institutionalization of the local disability councils.
Documents
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