From social gathering to self management: disabled children’s conditions and practices in peer relations

The ambition of this presentation is to contribute with further knowledge to better understand the challenges some children with mobility difficulties and children with intellectual disabilities still have according to social inclusion and participation in peer relations and peer activities in everyday life. This presentation will focus on qualification processes into peer-groups at two levels. At an individual level: access and recognition through common interests, improvisation and secondary adaptation. These social processes are identified at social arenas like nurseries, schools and leisure activities. On the organisational level: the cultural and political reconstruction of the social arenas that school and leisure arrangements create. Their cultural reconstruction seems to become crucial conditions to what extend different children get access to peer relations and activities, and children with impairments seems to become extremely vulnerable in these reconstruction and qualification processes at the age of +/- ten years. The presentation builds on a qualitative, longitudinal observational study of face-to-face-encounters between children with (N=10) and without impairments (N> 60). The data is collected in 1996/97, 2002/03 and 2006/07 in public Norwegian educational institutions and associated arenas. The observations are supplemented by interviews with parents and staff in the educational institutions.