Sundaymail Editor
Disability Issues
Dr Christine Peta
ZIMBABWE commemorated the International Day for People of African Descent on August 31, aligning with global efforts.
This week, we delve into the complex intersection of race, disability and migration.
As the United Nations affirms, all individuals are born equal in dignity and rights, capable of contributing to societal progress. The notion of racial superiority is harmful, unjust and unacceptable.
Similarly, the belief that individuals of African descent with disabilities are inherently worthless is discriminatory and must be rejected. While disability affects individuals across all racial, ethnic and social groups, those of African descent often face unique challenges.
This is especially true when they migrate to non-African countries, where disability, race and migrant status intersect to exacerbate marginalisation. African migrants who acquire disabilities in their host countries may encounter “invalidation politics”, leading to intra-state conflicts as they navigate exclusionary spaces within nations they once idealised as “flowing with milk and honey”.
In cases where persons of African descent with disabilities enter non-African countries as migrants, they have to negotiate new social, political and economic spaces. They do so in contexts where disability adds a layer of disadvantage to their migrant status and their search for belonging. Disability and race intersect to enlarge the “graph” of marginalisation, as persons of African descent with disabilities are commonly looked down upon, and viewed as “good for nothing” individuals, who are consequently prejudiced and excluded from most facets of life in ways that compromise their livelihoods.
Disability often attracts negativities associated with illness, deformity, mental health and crime.
Like ink that has been spilt all over, so is the portrait of an “otherised” migrant of African descent with disabilities, eyed through the lens of lack of documentation, dependency and shame, while at the same time viewed as an unnecessary vehicle of community destabilisation. As disability and race intersect to frame the marginalisation of migrants of African descent, they are generally and fallaciously regarded as carriers of disease, and “putative criminals” that are nothing more than just a burden to the host country.
A migrant of African descent with disabilities is at risk of being regarded as a “gate-crasher”, who challenges the existential order of a community, and in the absence of a citizen identity, one may be exposed to increased levels of vulnerability. It is, therefore, not surprising that feelings of anger, bitterness and hatred towards migrants of African descent with disabilities may arise to the extent that their livelihoods and wellbeing may be negatively impacted.
Confusion may also abound among persons with disabilities themselves regarding what they are entitled to and what they are not entitled to in the host country, in contexts where laws may cushion the livelihoods of some of them and not others.
Understanding the intersection of race, disability and migration, and its impact on the wellbeing of migrants of African descent with disabilities is, therefore, an important disability rights goal. There is a need for all of us to join hands in undertaking research on this grossly under-researched area (the intersection of migration, disability and race among migrants of African descent with disabilities), thus eliminating the paucity of data that informs policy and practice and disparities in access to service in most sectors.
Dr Christine Peta is a disability, public health, policy, international development and research expert. She is also the national director of disability affairs in Zimbabwe. She can be contacted on: developafrica2020@ gmail.com
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