People with Disabilities in Portugal

No. 65 AUGUST 2016

Disability can be viewed in different ways, each with different emancipation potential for people with disabilities. In Portuguese society, disability has been reduced to bodily incapacity and to a fatalistic narrative of personal tragedy. According to this model of understanding, the restrictions and obstacles experienced by people with disabilities are a direct result of their assumed functional limitations. These concepts have validated the construction of the image of people with disabilities as passive and dependent subjects, the silencing of their voices, and fuelled oppressive and exclusionary social policies for people with disabilities in Portugal. This essay aims to open up reflection on this reality in order to contribute to cultural and sociopolitical questioning of the phenomena of minoritising, oppression, poverty and social exclusion experienced by people with disabilities in Portuguese society and to the construction of new emancipatory paths.