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Disability and the Quest for Flexibility

This chapter analyzes the quest for flexibility among personal support recipients, considering their experiences of impairment and aging and how these bodily realities clash with the value that North American culture places on independence and youth. Recipients sought flexibility in the labor market, which was a continuum ranging from hiring and firing power to a degree of say on who came into one's home to provide intimate support. Recipients also sought flexibility at the intimate level along two dimensions. The first was their ability to use their own knowledge to direct how their bodies were handled and their homes managed. The second dimension was their ability to influence and change which service tasks were provided, when, and where. This deep understanding of recipients' quest for flexibility, together with the account of workers' long-standing pursuit of security in the previous chapter, begins to reveal tensions between the two groups. Recipients' desire for flexibility in service tasks can be in tension with workers' efforts to gain security by defining the parameters of their job. At the labor market level, recipient flexibility to choose the worker can be in tension with worker's employment and income security.