We are at a time of multiple interconnected and unprecedented crises. Around the world, extreme weather events and resource scarcity are costing lives, creating new impairments and forcing people to migrate to safer areas if possible. It is clear that people living in precarious conditions face increased imminent danger from the climate crisis, but response to future risk is hindered if people are unable to meet immediate needs. In Britain, successive governments frame disabled people and racialised migrant communities as if an economic burden, the cost of which should be reduced by cutting services and support. The result is that people’s lives become reduced to struggles for survival. The disabled people’s movement has argued for decades that it is disabling when people are denied access to the services and support necessary to meet human needs. For people seeking asylum, the conditions that caused people to flee their homes, as well as often hazardous journeys and the restrictions imposed on people in the UK, all compound the disabling impact of the migration process. If we are to address these injustices, it is necessary to understand the interconnections, to explore how insights from one sector could be adapted and applied to another, and to consider alternative ways of organising society.

The interconnections of current injustice

Before considering the relevance of the disabled people’s movement in responding to a disabling situation, it is necessary to consider the nature of current crises in more detail.

The disabling impact of asylum and immigration policy

The UK asylum and immigration system is deliberately designed to restrict access to services and support. The UK prisons watchdog recently described conditions in an immigration detention centre as the worst he had ever seen. Almost half of detainees spoke of suicidal intentions. Meanwhile, Doctors of the World report that over 74% of people experience severe mental distress at Wethersfield, a former military camp now used as an accommodation centre. People seeking asylum often live in a state of fear, not knowing how to meet immediate needs and aware that they could be detained and deported. This inevitably affects mental and physical health. As one person seeking asylum explained: ‘If they are torturing someone, they can’t expect that person to be okay’. Mental distress is so pervasive in the asylum system as to be widely considered to be normal. As another person explained:

[T]his mental you know… it has been brought by the problems … I’m taking medication for mental but … If the things are better, I think all can be well.  

In this context, it is important to acknowledge that highlighting the hostile impact of current policies is futile if that is the purpose. The disabling impact of the immigration and asylum system is not the result of an unpredictable epidemic. It is the result of deliberate government policies, designed to reduce the apparent threat of people seeking sanctuary in the UK. It may be argued that Keir Starmer has a different approach to his predecessors. While previous governments adopted the slogan ‘Stop the Boats’ to promote their policies to prevent people from arriving in the UK, Starmer uses the slogan ‘Smash the Gangs’. He speaks of the need for anti-terrorist policies to prevent ‘people smugglers’ from helping others get to the UK. Such government approaches are reinforced by the mainstream media. If migrants are perceived as a threat, then concern for the needs of people seeking safety becomes replaced by fear and hostility.

Disabled people’s response to the climate crisis

The result of framing migration as a threat is that the prospect of increased numbers of people fleeing climate breakdown reinforces demands for border security, while obscuring the causes of both migration and the ecological crisis. In this context, the disproportionate impact of the climate crisis on people who are already marginalised, including migrants and disabled people, becomes framed as if inevitable and insurmountable. In contrast, the Sensing Climate project, led by Sarah Bell at the University of Exeter, explores the perspectives and insights of disabled people in relation to the climate crisis. As part of this project, artist Andrew Bolton worked with other disabled people to create a mural showing what people would like others to understand about the changes that are needed (see figure 1). The mural shows that the climate crisis cannot be addressed in isolation from military destruction. As one research contributor explained, there appears to be limitless amounts of money for weapons, while we are told that there is not enough money for the services and support needed to create a caring, sustainable society. The scale of the climate emergency cannot be addressed by individual carbon reduction without addressing the human and ecological destruction caused by military action.

Figure 1: Sensing Climate mural by disabled people in Bristol, led by Andrew Bolton. Image by Mark Simmons.

Alongside the weapons in the mural, figures from the game of Monopoly rush with their money bags towards a rocket. Disabled people contributing to the mural spoke of how the superrich may plan to avoid the worst effects of climate catastrophe by escaping to a different planet. A wheelchair user and a blind man are trying, but not managing, to keep up with the rushing capitalist Monopoly figures. In any case, the rocket is inaccessible, with steps leading up to the door.

Figure 2: Detail of the Climate Sensing mural. Image by Mark Simmons.

The key message is not only that capitalism, with its never-ending search for profit, is a key cause of the climate crisis but also that if people are valued according to their economic productivity many disabled people will inevitably be disadvantaged. In this context, some disabled people may try to be included and to keep up with the mainstream agenda but for many that is not possible. More specifically, the climate crisis cannot be addressed by including disabled people on the path to catastrophe.

Alternative ways of responding to injustice

In hegemonic discourse, struggles of marginalised people against oppression have become widely distorted into calls for inclusion. Yet, as US disability activist Mia Mingus explained:

I am done with disability simply being “included”... We don’t simply want to join the ranks of the privileged, we want to challenge and dismantle those ranks.

This is not to suggest that inclusion is never a useful goal, but it is always necessary to question in which agenda inclusion is sought and for what purpose. To return to the issue of immigration policy, at present, some detention or accommodation sites are inaccessible to disabled people. The detrimental impact of housing people on the ‘Bibby Stockholm’ barge has been widely acknowledged. Like many detention centres, the barge is clearly inaccessible to some disabled people. This highlights an essential point: improving the access and inclusion of disabled people in these centres would not build greater justice.

Inclusion in a destructive or oppressive system is no solution to injustice. Inclusion in the existing agenda is, however, not the only option. As disability activist and author Ellen Clifford argues:

We must raise awareness that an alternative is possible – one with different forms of human relationships, personal development, and interdependency that we cannot even imagine from the constraints of our current position.

At the start of the Sensing Climate project, a wheelchair user explained that there are many paths that lead from A to B but asked: what if we want to go somewhere else?

If we want to go somewhere else, we need new paths. The mural therefore shows an alternative path. Below the scenes of desolation, disabled people and allies are portrayed helping each other onto a new path going in the opposite direction from the capitalist Monopoly figures. On the left there are images of flourishing trees, green meadows and a beautiful blue pool of water. The interconnected roots of a tree spell the word ‘care’. We cannot create a world of care for each other and planet by continuing the destructive race to the rocket.

In the context of such acute interconnected struggles, the level of change that is needed may appear impossible. New approaches are clearly needed.

Insights from the disabled people’s movement

Bringing together the insights, achievements and struggles of the disabled people’s movement with wider struggles for justice may help build transformative ways of organising society. In hostile and inaccessible societies, many disabled people have no choice but to develop alternative ways of living. The disabled people’s movement may therefore have particularly important insights for building justice for all. This is not to suggest that there is something glorious about the pain and struggles faced by many disabled people. Yet when asked what is learned from being disabled, people contributing to the Sensing Climate research spoke of:

• empathy,

• care,

• solidarity,

• the need for rest,

• alternative ways of surviving,

• organising to address everyone’s needs.

These lessons are all highly relevant to building climate justice. However, if disabled people are struggling to meet immediate needs, then the prospect of climatic catastrophe is irrelevant to surviving today. John Pring exposes how hundreds of disabled people have died after having support removed by the Department for Work and Pensions. Rather than pledging to change this, Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer, has spoken of her aim to reduce spending on services and support for disabled people in order to boost spending on wider public services. This explicit blaming of disabled people, like the blaming of migrants, encourages fascist scapegoating of people who are already struggling.

Perhaps the key demand of the disabled people’s movement is: ‘Nothing about us without us’. If, as has been argued, the experience of marginalisation brings pertinent insights, then this is particularly important.  As disabled sociologist Michael Oliver explained, non-disabled people almost invariably ‘get it wrong’. Nonetheless, Mikaela Loach argues that recognising the expertise gained through lived experience of injustice, should not involve adding to people’s burden by insisting that marginalised people take leading responsibility for building justice. Instead, increasing solidarity could be a means to reduce immediate struggles while also providing the means to share and develop new approaches.

On a practical level, when working well, organisations of disabled people routinely pay attention to addressing access barriers. These approaches ensure that attention is paid to the perspectives of people who are ignored by wider society. Similarly, in migrant justice work, it is routine to seek to address the barriers caused by immigration restrictions. Bringing together movements for migration, disability and climate justice could increase awareness of the practices of each sector.

In addition to practical methods, the conceptual insights of the disabled people’s movement provide relevant perspectives to wider struggles. The social model of disability was developed in the UK in the 1970s and 1980s to focus on the socially constructed causes of the disadvantages faced by disabled people. The original social model has been widely coopted and reduced to simply focus on the access barriers preventing inclusion in business as usual. But the original social model called for systemic change and was anti-capitalist. Whether or not they are also disabled, many people fleeing their homes are also disadvantaged by a system that values people according to economic contribution. The need for systemic change is essential to disability justice and to migrant justice. The climate crisis simply makes this need existential for all humanity.

Conclusion

The urgency of learning from each other cannot be exaggerated. The multiple crises we face today are interconnected. If we are to maximise our capacity for future survival as a species, we also need to address immediate injustice. The scale of change that is needed may appear too ambitious; however, as Clifford writes: ‘We have no choice. The stakes have become too high.’ Together we can and must create a different world based on justice, caring for each other and for the planet.