Det omöjliga hemmet: Om självständighetsdiskursen i politisk problematisering av boende för personer med intellektuell funktionsnedsättning

Sammanfattning: The scale and legal implementation make the Swedish deinstitutionalization process for people with intellectual disability (ID) a particular experience. The aim of this study was therefore to explore this experience by analysing the political problematization/s of institutional residence that were made in connection with the political decision to start the deinstitutionalization process. Utilizing the perspective of Carol Bacchi and a methodological adaptation of her Foucault-inspired analytical tool WPR, I regard problem representations as both contingent and productive in the sense that they are not inevitable but certainly have effects. By exploring how institutional residence was represented as a problem to be handled with by deinstitutionalization; the implied assumptions in this problem representation; and the effects of such a problematization, the theme of ’independence’ unfolded as a momentous discourse in opposition to the problematized ”institutional environment”. The discourse of independence becomes an ableist construction that affects not only residential access for people with ID but also the very conception of what intellectual disability is. Socio-political action concerned primarily with developing independence in people with ID, as a core variable in deciding what good living conditions are, will form policies that people with ID will fail to meet in relation to ableist and capitalist demands.