Entrepreneurial becomings - the disruptive power of self-employment for people with learning disabilities

Background

Many people with learning disabilities lead marginalised lives and navigate a world that values people in terms of employment and economic contribution. Although the number of people with learning disabilities in paid work was recently estimated to be just 4.8% (NHS Digital, 2022), some people are using self-employment to create employment opportunities in ways that also demand a reappraisal of this conventional allocation of human value.

Methods

Using the narratives of three entrepreneurs with learning disabilities, this paper builds on Critical Disability Studies’ emerging DisHuman scholarship to ask how enterprise is being used to challenge, subvert, disrupt and extend our understanding of how human becoming happens. It analyses three conceptualisations of entrepreneurship - the conditional, the relational and the DisHuman - to consider the tensions, contradictions and delight inherent in building new understandings of human value.

Findings

The study finds that self-employment presents a conduit through which people with learning disabilities can interact with the wider social, education and welfare systems as they simultaneously reject normative notions of success while inviting new ways to embrace opportunities for inclusion.

Conclusions

We think not of self-employment just as an employment outcome, but as an exciting site of potential through which individuals celebrate interconnection, interdependence and collaboration, unencumbered by normative ideals of perfection, autonomy and contribution (Goodley, 2001).