Disability and the Persistence of Poverty: Reconstructing Disability Allowances

Focusing on the construction and negation of disability allowances, this Article identifies and traces the roots of a fundamental tension that underlies disability politics with regard to disability allowances: are cash benefits an archaic and outdated form of assistance to disabled people, or are they still a relevant mode of response to their systematic marginalization and exclusion? Based on a field study of the Israeli disability community, the Article shows that while disability rights advocates tend to reject disability allowances as fundamentally wrong and to support the transformation of society\u27s social structures, welfare activists tend to view disability allowances as a response to a pressing necessity, an expression of social responsibility, and a means to provide economic security for disabled people. The Article employs a disability legal studies framework to analyze the study\u27s findings, attending primarily to questions of power and difference, and offering a framework that considers both perspectives as two authentic voices that express genuine concerns. At the same time, the analysis maintains that both approaches lack a more complex understanding of the relationships between disability and poverty, within which the meanings of disability allowances are negotiated. It concludes with a call to re-conceptualize disability allowance, as a form of compensation that redresses disabled peopleindividually and collectivelyfor society\u27s past and present continuing practices of exclusion and discrimination. The struggles of disabled people over rights and allowances become a fascinating site from which to draw the critical lessons that disability activism has to offer to social theory

Disability and the Persistence of Poverty: Reconstructing Disability Allowances

Focusing on the construction and negation of disability allowances, this Article identifies and traces the roots of a fundamental tension that underlies disability politics with regard to disability allowances: are cash benefits an archaic and outdated form of assistance to disabled people, or are they still a relevant mode of response to their systematic marginalization and exclusion? Based on a field study of the Israeli disability community, the Article shows that while disability rights advocates tend to reject disability allowances as fundamentally wrong and to support the transformation of society\u27s social structures, welfare activists tend to view disability allowances as a response to a pressing necessity, an expression of social responsibility, and a means to provide economic security for disabled people. The Article employs a disability legal studies framework to analyze the study\u27s findings, attending primarily to questions of power and difference, and offering a framework that considers both perspectives as two authentic voices that express genuine concerns. At the same time, the analysis maintains that both approaches lack a more complex understanding of the relationships between disability and poverty, within which the meanings of disability allowances are negotiated. It concludes with a call to re-conceptualize disability allowance, as a form of compensation that redresses disabled peopleindividually and collectivelyfor society\u27s past and present continuing practices of exclusion and discrimination. The struggles of disabled people over rights and allowances become a fascinating site from which to draw the critical lessons that disability activism has to offer to social theory

'Tell My Sister to Come and Get Me Out of Here': A Reading of Ableism and Orientalism in Israel's Immigration Policy (The First Decade)

In this article, I suggest a new reading of Israeli immigration policy as it existed during its first decade, by highlighting the fundamental role that disability played in its formation. Despite the popular image of Israel as a state of refuge for all Jews, its history reveals that immigration of Jews to Israel was regulated through screening policies and rules. Economic and practical considerations were mixed with ideological biases in favor of productive immigrants that fit the goals of Zionism, and against the sick, the old, and the disabled who were assumed to be inherently unproductive and dependent. Disability was not only a reason to exclude some groups from the Zionist project, but also a justification for screening others — a metaphor through which other social groups were rendered useless and inferior. In Israel, it was used to restrict Mizrahi immigrants who arrived from Arab and Muslim countries, in particular, immigrants from Morocco. Through the case of Israeli immigration policy, the article highlights a hidden part of Israel's history and also explores the ways in which social groups are demeaned and ostracized through images of disability, and how these images have operated as badges of inferiority