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Summer of 2012:
Paralympic legacy and the welfare benefit scandal

Written by Liz Crow
In Review of Disability Studies, 10:3, 2015

Abstract: Through the summer of 2012, two opposing sets of images dominated the British press. Welfare benefits reform met the Paralympics, the former casting disabled people as scroungers, the latter as superhumans. Seemingly independent yet intertwined, the images have profound consequences for public perception of disability and the lives of disabled people. These are explored through one claimant’s traversal of the benefits system against a heady backdrop of the Games. In exploring the images and their impact, the values that drive them are exposed, holding profound consequences for disabled people’s campaigns and offering hope for an abiding legacy from the summer of 2012.

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Press

  • This is just fantastic. Articulating so beautifully something so very important.

    Michele Taylor
  • Brilliant paper… Rigour + artistic pizzazz

    Disability News Service
  • Put down whatever it is you are reading and read this instead.

    Donna West, author of ‘Signs of Hope: Deafhearing Family Life’

To cite this page: Crow, Liz (2015) Summer of 2012: Paralympic legacy and the welfare benefit scandal, Roaring Girl Productions [online] [Available at: http://www.roaring-girl.com/work/summer-of-2012-paralympics-legacy-and-the-welfare-benefit-scandal/] [Accessed 19/03/2024]