The words ‘colonised’ and ‘colonising’ have recently been adopted in global North fields such as disability studies, highlighting notions of colonised bodies by colonising practices, with the implication that some or other ‘decolonisation’ is required. But these words remain little more than abstract and dehistoricised metaphors in these Eurocentric academic projects. This paper critically maps out some arguments as to why the colonial encounter is not simply a metaphor and cannot be bypassed in any global disability analysis. The paper argues how this historical event transcends the discursive, a violent materiality framing disability as a historical narrative and human condition, while (re)positioning disability as a useful optic through which to examine the dynamics of imperialism. The colonial provides the landscape for understanding contemporary Southern spaces within which disability is constructed and lived – neocolonised spaces hosting what I call neocolonised bodies. The paper concludes that decolonisation, just like colonialism, is not a metaphor. Instead, it is a continuous violent and political process owned by the global South but open to collaboration, drawing on forms of resistance that have long colonial lineages.

The World Health Organisation estimates that around 600 million people or 10% of the world's population is disabled, with more than 80% concentrated in the global South. In spite of this, majority world disability remains stranded on the peripheries of development policy, research and programmes, and virtually excluded from the Western‐centric disability studies. Notwithstanding this disengagement, the views and tenets of the Western disability studies are exported to the majority world backed by a discourse of inferences, generalisations and myths. Critical issues related to society, politics, economics, cultures and the histories of the contexts in which Western concepts and theories are deployed, and the implications for disabled people remain confined to epistemological silence. Communities in the majority world are often bypassed or repositioned to accommodate the neoliberal development project, the history and practices of which remain largely unquestioned. This paper seeks to elucidate and engage with some of these complex issues surrounding disability, development and community in the majority world; critique development, its historical foundations and implications for disabled people; and challenge the exportation of epistemologies and strategies from North to South in an effort to push for a grounded and global disability studies.

Beyond rough estimates, little is known about disability in the majority world and complexities related to context and poverty are too often unacknowledged in the quest to simplify, generalise and export disability discourse, models and strategies. Disability remains peripheral to the larger development agenda and the disability studies debate maintains an almost exclusive focus on western settings, loaded with associated historical, social and cultural assumptions. In the light of this, this paper seeks to elucidate and engage with complex issues surrounding the disability and majority world debate, critique and challenge the exportation of western focused disability models and discourse and engage with possible avenues for bridging the gap between disability and development.

(2015). Disability and colonialism: (dis)encounters and anxious intersectionalities. Social Identities: Vol. 21, Disability and Colonialism: (Dis)encounters and Anxious Intersectionalities, pp. 1-5.

In this paper we aim to explore the realm of impairment in terms of its politicization under transnational claims for justice. The realm of disability rights and justice has been a central theme in disability analytical inquiry and by disability movement actors engaged in struggles of disability affirmative politics. Within this frame, there has been an increasing amount of disability scholarship and activism at the transnational sphere. In fact, since the ratification of the UNCRPD (2006) greater transnational alliances have become a central feature to advancing disability affirmative claims for rights and justice. While welcomed, we argue that within the transnational realm, the focus on disability alone critically marginalizes those groups engaging in repertories of action within the logos of impairment as transnational claims for disability justice tend to naturalise impairment and negate the production of impairment under global structural processes of violence. To address this issue, we suggest that the growing scholarship on transnational theorizing and activism within disability needs to respond to these claims for justice and rights. To conclude we argue that transnational theorizing and praxis is in fact, a double move – an affirmative politics of disability rights and justice and a transformative politics of impairment. Keywords: impairment, justice, rights, disability politics, majority world, justice, North–South power relations, Southern epistemologies