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Custodial Citizenship in the Omnibus Autism Proceeding
Author(s) -
Underman Kelly,
Sweet Paige L.,
Decoteau Claire Laurier
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
sociological forum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.937
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1573-7861
pISSN - 0884-8971
DOI - 10.1111/socf.12348
Subject(s) - citizenship , harm , autism , compensation (psychology) , state (computer science) , law , psychology , order (exchange) , political science , sociology , criminology , psychiatry , social psychology , business , computer science , finance , algorithm , politics
In contemporary processes of citizenship, parents and other caregivers often must make claims to the state on behalf of children with disabilities. In this article, we draw from data on the Omnibus Autism Proceedings ( OAP ), which were a series of hearings in 2007 and 2008 in which parents of children with autism attempted to receive compensation from a federal program for vaccine injury. During these hearings, parents and their attorneys obfuscated the children's subjectivity and instead showcased the children's physical suffering in order to claim that their children had suffered a legitimate injury from vaccines that warranted compensation. We develop the concept of custodial citizenship to account for the process by which a legible rights‐bearing subject appropriates the bodily suffering of the injured party in order to gain citizenship rights on behalf of that individual. In doing so, we trace the slippages of harm that occur in the lived experience of disability among family members and caregivers, in contrast to the individualizing rights‐granting framework of the court system.