Living, Teaching, and Resisting at the Margins: A Transnational Autoethnography of Disability, Crisis, and Policy Disruption

• In Event: Unforgetting the Past, Disrupting the Present: Border-Crossing Approaches to Inclusive Education Policy, Research, and Practice

Abstract

Objectives
This paper explores how disabled scholars navigate interlocking crises—pandemic dislocation, rising nationalism, and institutional austerity—while straddling two of the world’s largest democracies: India and the United States. Anchored in the symposium Unforgetting the Past, Disrupting the Present: Border-Crossing Approaches to Inclusive Education Policy and Practice, and aligned with AERA’s 2025 theme, the work illuminates the embodied, relational, and often invisible struggles of disabled academics. Its purpose is to surface historically marginalized narratives and contest the technocratic language of inclusion that fails to deliver justice in practice.

Perspective(s) or Theoretical Framework
The study is grounded in critical disability studies, informed by intersectional feminist thought and postcolonial theory, particularly theorizations of ableism, caste, race, and nationalism (Ghai, 2018; Alur, 2016). Disability is not treated as a fixed identity but as a political site shaped by interdependent structures and crises. Through historiography, the genealogy of disability-inclusive policy is examined to reveal how policy advances often co-occur with regressive socio-political shifts (Walton, 2020). Personal narrative, situated within a critical autoethnographic tradition, becomes a form of resistance—challenging what counts as legitimate knowledge and who gets to produce it (Goodley, 2021).

Methods, Techniques, or Modes of Inquiry
This inquiry employs a border-crossing, multimethod approach, integrating: (1) historiographic analysis of policy turning points, such as the U.S. Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and India’s Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act (RPWD) (Ministry of Education, 2004; Government of India, 2016); (2) a literature review spanning both Global North and South contexts, examining inclusion, exclusion, and rollback in educational systems (Loreman, 2017; Walton, 2020); (3) autoethnographic narrative capturing the author’s lived experiences—encounters with institutional ableism, inaccessible bureaucracies, and resilience born of transnational solidarity.

Data Sources
The analysis draws on a range of sources: (a) archival documents, including legislative acts, policy briefs, and governmental reports on education and disability (Government of India, 2016; Ministry of Education, 2004); (b) scholarly literature from disability studies, inclusive education, and critical pedagogy (Ghai, 2018; Goodley, 2021; Loreman, 2017); (c) autoethnographic materials, including teaching reflections, institutional correspondence, field notes, and professional experiences that illustrate the embodied contradictions of “belonging” in the academy.

Results and/or Substantiated Conclusions
The study reveals that formal policy inclusion often masks deep structural inequities. In both India and the U.S., moments of legislative progress—such as the RPWD Act or IDEA—frequently coincide with political movements that cut public spending, shrink accommodations, and intensify surveillance over marginalized bodies (Walton, 2020). The literature confirms that disabled academics are disproportionately burdened by institutional cultures that frame access as an afterthought (Goodley, 2021).

Scientific or Scholarly Significance
This paper contributes to scholarship on inclusive education by reframing the conversation around lived knowledge, positionality, and epistemic justice. It challenges compliance-driven frameworks that dominate policy discussions and instead offers a grounded, reflexive mode of inquiry that connects policy critique with personal resistance.

Author

• Suman Rath, Montclair State University