1THE SAME RESPONSIBILITIES- BUT NOT THE SAME RIGHTS Citizenship as perceived and defined by disabled people; A Comparative study

The concept of citizenship was created in Greece about 600 BC, and has for most of the time been treated as a philosophical concept, or as a concept of political science. In spite of the fact that sociologists have taken an interest in the concept in the second half of the 20th century there is hardly any empirical research to substantiate how the common man perceives and defines the concept. Disabled people to a great extent perceive themselves as belonging to a forgotten sector of society in that they experience administrative barriers, shortcomings in the way individuals and institutions behave towards them, institutional discrimination, being socially dead, etc. The aim of this study has been to explore how citizenship is perceived and defined by disabled people in Great Britain and Sweden, focussing on the perception of rights and obligations, and how these rights and obligations have been made available to them by society. The study was carried out as a qualitative study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with disabled people defined as activists in a disability context (in Great Britain 19 informants, in Sweden 21 informants). The study was carried out in cooperation with the Wigforss Institute, Halmstad University, Sweden, and th