Disability, hostility and everyday geographies of un/safety
Claire Edwards, Nicola Maxwell
Abstract
This paper connects relational theorising within geographies of disability and geographies of fear of violent crime (FOVC) to explore how disabled people navigate fear and experience of hostility in their everyday lives in Ireland. Drawing on a two year qualitative study with people with a range of impairments, we explore the human and non-human components of assemblages -in particular, encounters with others, assistive supports and 'objects' of disability, and the physical environment -that give rise to diverse affectual and sensory geographies of un/safety. Disabled people have multiple understandings of un/safety that are contingent, embodied and emplaced, and have highly developed spatial strategies which they deploy as they navigate and respond to fears about hostility in different temporal-spatial contexts. We suggest that relational thinking has the potential to unfix binary assumptions about spaces as safe or unsafe, and to challenge dominant constructions of disabled subjectivities as inherently vulnerable. This includes expanding our attention beyond the public sphere as a site where most fear of violent crime is situated and recognising the agentic potential of disabled people as they negotiate and (re)author safety in space.