Affiliating Participation for Active Citizenship

Abstract

This article relates the participative model to the consecration of a citizen-centred individualism based upon an experiential conception of citizenship. Inspired by theories of recognition, it examines the affiliation effect of the components of social participation. It looks at the identity-based impact of involvement in social processes, of the links created with family and friends. Above and beyond the possibilities of participation, it thus links citizenship with the possibilities of participating on an equal basis, i.e. the possibility of interacting with others as an equal. In this way it offers an identity-based approach to disability which takes into consideration the relationships of inter-dependency that unite disabled persons with able-bodied persons, and relates the understanding of the phenomenon of disability to the forms of invisibilization which erode one's positive relationship with oneself and which distance people from the demands of participation.