Inhabiting uncertainties: reflections on disability and care practices in the fight assisted housing

Abstract

Assisted Living for adults with disabilities is a recent theme in both Brazilian legislation and public debates. Drawing from an ethnographic work with a group of mothers of adults with intellectual and/or psychosocial disability from Porto Alegre, Brazil, who constituted a Movement to demand governmental action regarding assisted living facilities, I propose a reflection on how such plea enables further discussion on the way disability and care are enacted. The claim for different living arrangements for their offspring brings to the fore and is object of constant judgments connected to the experience of disability. I center my analyses on the tensions, controversies and moral accusations that surrender their plea and, through them, draw attention to how their trajectories are inscribed in regimes in which both disability and care work are undervalued. Finally, I argue that discussions on the rights of people with disabilities, autonomy and independence must be accompanied by considerations on the experience of care-takers, especially, the mothers. An experience that enables a better understanding of how cognitive disability is perceived and dealt with in and by our society.