Invisible and In-between: Institutional Ethnographies of Disability Beyond Administrative Categories

Disability policies, welfare systems and support services are commonly organized around distinct categories of disability. However, many disabled people live at the intersections of multiple impairments, experience invisible disabilities, or do not fit neatly into institutional classifications. These individuals often encounter fragmented support systems, contradictory eligibility criteria and forms of administrative invisibility.

Drawing on Institutional Ethnography, this panel examines how ruling relations, texts, professional practices and policy frameworks shape the everyday experiences of people whose disabilities remain partially unseen, misunderstood or positioned between established categories. Particular attention will be paid to individuals with deafblindness, multiple sensory impairments, psychosocial disabilities, neurodivergence and chronic health conditions that challenge conventional disability classifications.

The panel welcomes contributions exploring how institutional processes produce visibility and invisibility; how individuals navigate competing systems of assessment and support; how disability categories are negotiated, resisted or redefined; and how local experiences are coordinated through translocal relations embedded in policies, legislation and professional discourses.

We invite empirical, theoretical and methodological papers employing Institutional Ethnography, Disability Studies and related critical approaches. Comparative and international perspectives are especially encouraged.