“Disability is Something You Can be Proud Of”: College Student Activists Claiming Disability Identities and Creating Cross-disability Communities

Abstract:We explored how students engaged in disability leadership and activism changed their understandings of disability and the implications of those changes. Disability has multiple and contested definitions; understanding how students construct disabled identities individually and collectively will help higher education professionals foster disabled students’ development of affirmative, collective, and politicized identities for themselves and for disabled people generally as well as guide disabled students to engage in more effective social change efforts. Significant catalysts of students’ affirmative disability identity development include gaining disability content knowledge, experiencing disability community, rejecting internalized ableism, and experiencing disability through minoritized identities. One notable consequence of this development is these students’ shift from identifying themselves with diagnosis-specific labels to identifying as disabled and recognizing that term as encompassing all forms of disability. Additionally, they were better able to label and address ableism, and they expressed the need to engage in cross-disability collective activism. Implications call for professionals in higher education to provide exposure to multiple models of disability, support the development of disability community, and help disabled students recognize the implications of their intersecting identities.