On the possibility of a disabled life in capitalist ruins: Black workers with sickle cell disorder in England

• Published in: Social science & medicine (1982) Vol. 272; p. 113713
• Main Authors: Dyson, Simon M., Atkin, Karl M., Berghs, Maria J., Greene, Anne-Marie
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01.03.2021; Pergamon Press Inc
• Subjects: Accumulation; Anna Tsing; Black workers; Capitalism; Case studies; Child care; Chronic illness; Common lands; Community work; Disability; Ecology; Employment; Family work relationship; Housework; Human ecology; Hygiene; Profits; Self care; Sickle cell disease; Sickle cell disorders; Social relations; Unpaid; Work; Workers; United Kingdom > UK; England; Chronic illness; Disability; Sickle cell disorders; Black workers; Employment; Anna Tsing; Work
• ISSN: 0277-9536; 1873-5347
• DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2021.113713

The link between workers with sickle cell disorder (SCD) and employment has until now been seen through the lens of the person's disease, not their relationship to work (paid and unpaid). Using SCD as a case study, we foreground relations of employment, setting sickle cell and work into ecological context. In 2018, two focus group discussions and 47 depth-interviews were conducted with black disabled workers living with SCD across England. The relational concepts of Anna Tsing (2015) - salvage accumulation, entanglement and precarity - were used as an analytical framework to assess the reported experiences. To understand the experiences of those with SCD and employment, it is necessary to apprehend the whole ecology of their bonds to their bodies; their social relationships of kin and family; and their wider social relations to communities. Paid employment breaks bonds crucial to those living with SCD. First, employers can only extract sufficient productive value from workers if they disregard the necessary self-care of a precarious body. Secondly, reproducing labour though child-care, housework and care work is a taken-for-granted salvage central to capitalism. Thirdly, voluntary and community work are salvaged for free by employers towards their accumulation of profits. People with SCD find bond-making activities that create the commons life-affirming, thereby reconfiguring our understanding of connections between disability and work. Tsing, AL (2015) The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. The experiences of workers with SCD are reducible neither to symptoms nor treatmentsEmployers disregard the necessary self-care of a precarious body in workers with SCDThe unpaid work of people with SCD reproducing labour remains unacknowledgedVoluntary and community work of people with SCD is salvaged for free by employersPeople with SCD reconfigure understandings of connections between disability and work