https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1033&context=brown_facpubs

Disabilities through the Capability Approach lens: Implications for public policies

This article explores the importance of and value added by applying the capability approach to strategize, design, monitor or evaluate development initiatives, by operationalizing this agency-oriented (participatory) and opportunity-based perspective and by widening standard methods to deal with new informational spaces In the first part of the paper a dynamic analytical framework on capabilities expansion/reduction processes—which places at the central stage the opportunity gaps between valuable community functionings and individual capability sets—is presented These gaps represent the policy area where tailored and appropriate place-specific and people-centred development initiatives can entail the maximum expansion of real freedoms Then, on the basis of this framework, the paper presents an original participatory methodology—the “O-Gap Analysis”—which can complement standard methods to provide systematized assessments of capabilities within communities to inform policy actions An empirical 

Opportunity Gap Analysis: Procedures and Methods for Applying the Capability Approach in Development Initiatives

Teaching Accessibility and Design-For-All in the Information and Communication Technology Curriculum: Three Case Studies of Universities in the United States, England, and Austria

/pdf/teaching-accessibility-and-design-for-all-in-the-information-4gylorx1ue.pdf

Teaching Accessibility and Design-for-All in the Information and Communication Technology Curriculum: Three Case Studies of Universities in the United States, England, and Austria.

Immigration policy in Canada has recently shifted, reflecting changes in other Western countries. We studied the discursive constructions of forced migrants within Bill C-31 “Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act” and its associated Backgrounder documents published by the Canadian Government. The documents were analysed using an approach to critical discourse analysis adapted from Bacchi's (2009) methodology and informed by a theoretical framework of “othering”. Particular groups of migrants were represented as posing threats to the economy, the integrity of the refugee system, and national security. The documents offered three solutions: the creation of specific categories of migrants, an emphasis upon efficiency of the system, and expanded powers to the government. The problematization of asylum seekers as posing multiple threats to Canadian society obfuscates governmental responsibilities to this population and reflects common strategies of neoliberal governance.

Constructing undesirables: A critical discourse analysis of ‘othering’ within the Protecting Canada's Immigration System Act

Child malnutrition is an important cause of under-5 mortality and morbidity around the globe. Despite the partial success of (inter)national efforts to reduce child mortality, under-5 mortality rates continue to be high. The multidimensional approaches of the Sustainable Development Goals may suggest new directions for rethinking strategies for reducing child mortality and malnutrition. We propose a theoretical framework for developing a "capability" approach to child growth. The current child growth monitoring practices are based on 2 assumptions: (a) that anthropometric and motor development measures are the appropriate indicators; and (b) that child growth can be assessed using a single universal standard that is applicable around the world. These practices may be further advanced by applying a capability approach to child growth, whereby growth is redefined as the achievement of certain capabilities (of society, parents, and children). This framework is similar to the multidimensional approach to societal development presented in the seminal work of Amartya Sen. To identify the dimensions of healthy child growth, we draw upon theories from the social sciences and evolutionary biology. Conceptually, we consider growth as a plural space and propose assessing growth by means of a child growth matrix in which the context is embedded in the assessment. This approach will better address the diversities and the inequalities in child growth. Such a multidimensional measure will have implications for interventions and policy, including prevention and counselling, and could have an impact on child malnutrition and mortality.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/mcn.12534

Towards a capability approach to child growth: A theoretical framework

I have investigated the nature of the transformation triggered by the reform of labour mobility entitled ‘New Rules for Labour Immigration’, introduced in Sweden in 2008, and its impact on migrants’ well-being. By applying the methodology of the ‘What’s the problem represented to be?’ approach (Bacchi 2009), I show that the problem at which the reform was aimed is represented as a shortage of skills and labour. I argue that such a representation and the silences it invokes are underpinned by the paradigms of managed migration and of neoliberalism, thus marking a discontinuity in the political rhetoric of universalism which had been endorsed by Sweden since the beginning of the 1970s. I contend that such a formulation of the problem assumes and entails a conceptualisation of migrants as factors of production. This formulation stands in sharp opposition to the one advanced by the Human Development and Capability Approach to migration (UNDP 2009) which recognises migrants as human beings, endowed with capabilities, aspirations, and agency. Such reification of migrants implies that the reform regulates the stay of immigrants in Sweden with the purpose of maximising their contribution to Swedish economic growth, thus putting them in a vulnerable position which is likely to reduce their capability for work (Bonvin 2009).

‘New Rules for Labour Immigration’: Delving into the 2008 Swedish Reform of Labour Migration and Its Effects on Migrants’ Well-Being

Rethinking policies for persons with disabilities through the capability approach: The case of the Tuscany Region

Sulle politiche per le persone con disabilità : il progetto di vita e la strategia a mosaico

Il percorso riabilitativo delle persone con gravi cerebrolesioni acquisite e dei loro familiari alla luce dell’approccio delle capability di Amartya Sen

Sara Bonfanti

Papers

‘New Rules for Labour Immigration’: Delving into the 2008 Swedish Reform of Labour Migration and Its Effects on Migrants’ Well-Being

Rethinking policies for persons with disabilities through the capability approach: The case of the Tuscany Region

Sulle politiche per le persone con disabilità : il progetto di vita e la strategia a mosaico

Il percorso riabilitativo delle persone con gravi cerebrolesioni acquisite e dei loro familiari alla luce dell’approccio delle capability di Amartya Sen