Disability, Happiness and the Welfare State Finland and the Nordic Model Interdisciplinary Disability Studies Series

This book looks at disability as an evolving social phenomenon. Disability is created through the interaction between persons with impairments and their environment.

Exploring these experiences of persons with disabilities and discussing universality and particularity in our understanding of assumed development and normalcy, it takes Finland, which has been chosen repeatedly as the happiest country in the world as its case- study. Using disability as a critical lens helps to demystify Finland that has the positive reputation of a Welfare State. By identifying different kinds of discrimination against persons with disabilities as well as successful examples of disability inclusion, it shows that when looking Finland from the perspective of persons with disabilities, inequality and poverty have been collective experiences of too many of them.

It will be of interest to all scholars and students of disability studies, sociology, social policy, social work, political science, health and well-being studies and Nordic studies more broadly.

0.Introduction. 1.The sense of difference: Disability and loneliness as emotional and social isolation. 2.‘Disability is so invisible at the University’––Disability Inclusion/Exclusion Experiences of Students with Disabilities at the University of Helsinki. 3.Being independently dependent– Experiences at the intersection of disability and old age in Finland. 4.One step backward? Exploring the outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic for persons with intellectual disabilities in supported and service housing. 5.The state of inclusion in the state of inclusion? Inclusion as principled practice in Finnish basic education. 6.Media Representations of Disability. 7.Reforming disability services to balance rights and needs. 8.Employment, the Finnish disability pension system, and self-determination of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. 9.The happiness of having a hobby: Inclusion of persons with disabilities in leisure activities. 10.Spiral of progress: Disability activists’ perception of the societal and political position of disabled people in Finland. 11.“Second Class Citizens” – Challenges with Truth and Reconciliation Process of Deaf People and the Sign Language Community in Finland. 12.Examining cooperation-based advocacy between government and disability activists in transnational advocacy networks. x.Concluding Remarks.

Hisayo Katsui is Professor in Disability Studies at the University of Helsinki. She is a permanent expert to the Finnish Advisory Board for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and a board member of the Nordic Network of Disability Research and the Finnish Society for Disability Research. Her research interests are disability rights realisation in practice and participatory research approaches.

Matti T. Laitinen is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki. His research interests lie in disability, inclusive education and the life stories of persons with disabilities. Laitinen identifies as a disabled person and he has been involved in the disability right movement since 1987.