Disability and Citizenship in Post-Soviet Ukraine: An Anthropological Critique

Abstract

[Excerpt] In this paper I examine Ukraine’s burgeoning disability rights movement through the lens of citizenship to illustrate the complex processes through which certain categories of people (here, persons with disabilities) are transforming themselves—and being transformed— into particular types of citizens in a changing welfare state. I take an institutional and relational approach to understanding “citizenship,” a tack that has recently been suggested by scholars such as Margaret Somers (1994, 1995) and Allison Carey (2003), to suggest approaches to understanding citizen-state relations that shed light on the complex intersections of agency, power, and personhood that post-socialist social justice struggles entail.