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Looking under the veil: Challenges faced by people with disabilities in cross-border entrepreneurship

MATSAURE, Keresencia
CHINDIMBA, Agness
ZIMANO, Felistas R
RUFFIN, Fayth
September 2020

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Background: Cross-border entrepreneurship is one source of livelihood that is transforming people’s lives, especially those with limited resources and educational qualifications and those in need of supplementary earnings to complement meagre formal earnings. However, despite strides made to make this avenue worthwhile, this Zimbabwean study shows that hidden hindrances still persist from procedural and structural barriers from road entry point management systems. To people with disabilities (PWDs), the impact of these hidden barriers is severe to the extent of obstructing their optimum progression into cross-border entrepreneurship.

 

Objectives: This article sought to interrogate some veiled challenges in border management systems affecting PWDs’ quest to venture into cross-border entrepreneurship. This angle has, to this end, been timidly addressed as most organisations and legislation have concentrated on making things work for the majority of the populace.

 

Method: Qualitative phenomenological method in which researchers’ lived experiences, review of literature, ideas and opinions is complemented by secondary survey data from a road entry point management system study in the Zimbabwean setting.

 

Results: Cross-border entrepreneurship has potential to transform people’s lives: 1) road and border management systems’ procedural and structural complications present hidden challenges impeding PWDs’ entry and optimum participation in cross border entrepreneurship, 2) people with disabilities are not automatically dependents; in fact, most have dependents looking up to the, 30 social construction of disability persists and must be curbed and 4) there is a need to institute a ‘stakeholders triad approach’.

 

Conclusion: The existing road entry points’ management systems are not informed by considerations from PWDs, hence the existence of hidden challenges. Cross-border entrepreneurship can open significant livelihood avenues to PWDs. A stakeholders ‘triad-approach’, proposed herein, can solve some of the policy discrepancies as it recommends utilising inputs from PWDs, research and policy-makers.

 

African Journal of Disability, Vol 9, 2020 

What is good personal assistance made of? Results of a European survey

MLADENOV, Teodor
2019

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This article presents the results of a survey on personal assistance (PA) for disabled people, conducted among PA users and members of the independent living movement in Europe. The survey was developed and implemented in the spirit of emancipatory disability research, and was informed by the social model of disability and the independent living philosophy. Participants were asked to assess a series of characteristics of PA in terms of their impact on users’ choice and control. Their responses help identify which characteristics of PA are considered to be enablers of choice and control, which characteristics are perceived as barriers and which characteristics elicit disagreement or lack of consensus among PA users and members of the independent living movement in Europe. Plans for using the results of the survey to develop a tool for evaluating PA schemes are also discussed.

Young people with intellectual disability—The role of self-advocacy in a transformed Swedish welfare system

TIDEMAN, Magnus
SVENSSON, Ove
2015

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A growing number of young people in Sweden with intellectual disability have organized themselves during the last 15 years in self-advocacy groups for socializing, empowerment, and expressing opposition to the norms and attitudes in a society that labels them as disabled. At the same time, the Swedish welfare system has transformed dramatically with processes of far-reaching individualization, closure of the major institutions, decentralization of responsibility from the state to local governments, and an emerging welfare market where service users are turned into customers. The aim of this article is to analyse and discuss the significance of self-advocacy in the new welfare context. Data were collected over a period of more than 10 years using repeated interviews with members of two self-advocacy groups and participation observations. Findings suggest that participation in self-advocacy groups opens up members for increasing health and well-being through new roles and identities, and it strengthens their control over everyday life. Support is still needed, however, but in new ways; otherwise, the restrictions of the institutions will simply be reconstructed in the new welfare system.

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