Exclusionary logics : constructing disability and disadvantaging disabled academics in the neoliberal university

Remnant, Jennifer and Sang, Katherine and Calvard, Thomas and Richards, James and Babajide, Olugbenga (Abraham) (2024) Exclusionary logics : constructing disability and disadvantaging disabled academics in the neoliberal university. Sociology, 58 (1). pp. 23-44. ISSN 0038-0385 (https://doi.org/10.1177/00380385231162570)

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Abstract

Contemporary academia features managerialism and neoliberal thinking, consequent of an increasingly dominant market logic. This paper draws on interviews with disabled academics, line managers, human resources professionals, estates staff, health and safety staff, and trade union representatives, alongside university policy documents, to discuss the impact of this logic on the experiences of disabled academics. Understandings of disability across professional groups were divorced from institutional rhetoric of Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI), aligning more clearly with market logic, manifest in performance management and idealised notions of academic work. Unlike students, disabled academics are required to navigate hostile policies and procedures. Their diagnoses are used in points of dispute relating to performance, or as an obstruction to dismissal tolerated out of legal obligation. This paper illustrates the need for a change in university institutional logics to undo the damaging limitations of following market models of education.

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