Friend or Foe: Understanding the institution of friendship as a context for the abuse of autistic adults

Katy has built on the proposal by outlining her intention to, in collaboration with MENCAP Cymru, explore the everyday experiences and practices of people with learning disabilities (and their parents/carers where appropriate), and how they reflect upon the structural barriers that they encounter in their everyday lives. Katy intends to carry out a qualitative study using ethnographic fieldwork (e.g. observations of peer-support communities), a survey, and interviews with people with learning disabilities and parents/carers. Informed by recent literature in disability studies (e.g. Goodley, Runswick-Cole) and scholars advocating for studying a political economy of stigma (e.g. Tyler, Scambler), Katy will capture how such individuals navigate 'individual' and 'structural' stigma to consider how exploitation, control, and exclusion are exercised via cultural distinctions of value and worth. Moreover, Katy will consider how people with learning disabilities and their allies 'resist' stigma and how matters of 'inclusion' are understood and mobilised by them.