Census, Disability, and the African State

• In Event: Identity Politics: Ethnicity and Beyond

Abstract

What factors shape why and how states choose to define persons with disabilities? Drawing on scholarship from sociology and race and ethnic politics (Loveman 2007; Mora 2014; Nobles 2000), I examine the census as a particular bureaucratic institution used by states to define, create, and recreate social categories like disability. I argue that who states choose to include in the ‘persons with disability’ census category reflects a political calculus. Disability, like other social categories created or reified by the census, is a fluid category that can be broadened or contracted over time to reflect the interests of those in power. In this context, I examine how changes to the disability census category can be driven by the confluence of domestic factors such as civil society lobbying and the aftermath of civil conflict along with international factors like colonial legacy, dependence on foreign aid and the rise of international statutes. To assess how such factors can lead to changes in the definition of the disability census category, I study all the digitally available census records of Sub-Saharan African states to investigate patterns of evolution in the definition of disability. I also examine qualitative data from interviews carried out with government officials in select African countries to delineate the motivations and processes by which disability categories are changed. I find that the census in states with robust civil society lobbying, high reliance on foreign aid, and those that are signatories to human rights statutes are more likely to include a ‘persons with disability category and to have a broader definition of what constitutes a disability. However, in states with a recent experience of civil conflict, the census was more likely to have a category of persons with disabilities when combat injuries were concentrated among the pro-regime militia. Insights from this work can help illuminate the political dynamics by which disability becomes a recognized social category in the Global South.

References:
Loveman, Mara. "The U.S. Census and the Contested Rules of Racial Classification in Early Twentieth Century Puerto Rico". Caribbean Studies 35 [2] (2007): 79-114
Mora, Cristina. "Cross-field Effects and Ethnic Classification: The Institutionalization of Hispanic Panethnicity." American Sociological Review 2014 (April)
Nobles. (2000). Shades of citizenship: race and the census in modern politics / Melissa Nobles. Stanford University Press.

Author

• Jane Mango Angar, University of California, Berkeley