A Well-Ordered Charity. The Rhetoric of Accessibility in Disability Policies as an Instrument of the Social Status Quo

The article focuses on the new “symbolic order” the French law of 11 February 2005 (for equal rights and opportunities, participation and citizenship of people with disabilities) and the public debates that surround it contribute to constitute, as well as on its concrete consequences in terms of social organization. The challenge is to show that, contrary to a conventional reading that makes this law a tipping point towards a new model of disability, in which accessibility and “living together” would have become the watchwords, the symbolic order that was imposed in the 2000s is in fact an instrument for maintaining the status quo and preserving public order.