Paper short abstract:

This paper is an ethnographical reflection on the self-motivated and entrepreneurial configurations of usership and autonomy emerging from independent living programmes for people with intellectual disability in Spain.

Paper long abstract:

The Act on Promotion of Personal Autonomy and Care for Dependent People, the entry into force of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the emergence of the independent living paradigm, produced a significant change in how the organizations in the field worked out their support programs in Spain. Within this framework, during the last 10 years this sector lived a split of programs working on the promotion of independent living, mostly linked to live in "the own home", and based on user-centred services.

Drawing on the ethnographic involvement within the Catalan Foundation of Down Syndrome, we will tell the story of the programme "I'm going home", an independent living support service where people with ID choose with whom and where they want to live. Support here is focused on developing the "Plan for Independent Living", previously elaborated by the service professionals together with the users and their relatives. Building from here, the paper examines the discourses, practices and sociomaterial arrangements that enact and sustain an independent life, and examines the configurations of usership and autonomy emerging from the service. In particular, it focuses on the production of a constantly self-motivated and entrepreneurial user. A "quotidian hero", as organisations working in the field usually define them. Someone who is active and open to continuous learning of new skills and abilities. The paper ends with a reflection on the implications of these processes in shaping disabled people's agency, as well as on their individual and collective identity.