Cultural Boundaries and Symbolic Markers of Autism: How Cultural Sociology Enhances Understanding of Ethnic and Racial Inequalities in Autism Prevalence Rates

Ethnic and racial minoritised groups in Global North countries are significantly less likely to be identified and diagnosed as autistic compared to the majority group. To explain these disparities, much of the current research focuses on the so-called “ethnic and racial cultures” of minoritised groups. This approach often results in essentialist views and frames minoritised families in terms of deficit. In this paper presentation, I argue for the urgent need to broaden the concept of culture in autism research and to examine culture as the social construction of frames, cultural repertoires, identities, cultural categorizations, and symbolic boundaries created through processes of meaning-making. Building on such a cultural sociological framework, I critically explore how ethnicity and race become (in)visibilized in the construction and representation of autism, both as a medical category and as an identity. Using qualitative methods and building on the concept of symbolic boundaries, this research sheds light on how autism becomes “ethnicized” or “racialized” through a) autobiographical books, blogs, and vlogs; b) the narratives of diagnosticians; and c) the lived experiences of ethnically and racially minoritised autistic adults. By addressing these issues, this study aims to contribute to broader efforts to rethink both academic and lay understandings of disability and neurodiversity as deeply embedded in socio-culturally situated processes of meaning-making, and to examine how this knowledge is influenced by the rhetorical aspects of disability.