Queer lives - Chronic futures. Negotiating neoliberalism, solidarities and futures among queer people with chronic illness in the context of Sweden

Abstract

The purpose of the thesis is to investigate how queer people with chronic illness negotiate and respond to systems of ableism, neoliberalism and heteronormativity in the context of Sweden. The research material consists of nine qualitative interviews with queer people with chronic illnesses. The material is analyzed through frameworks of biopolitics, precarity, crip theory, queer and crip temporalities and solidarities. The analysis highlights a strong awareness of normativity among trans and queer people with chronic illness. This is analyzed as a queer gaze on normativity that helps negotiate the pressures of ableism. The thesis also employs a methodology of dreams, where attending to queer-crip futurities is analyzed both as a critique of the present and a vision of a different society. Furthermore, participants negotiate solidarity practices that emerge from the double precarity of heteronormativity and austerity. The study also identifies ambiguities and limits to these responses. This concerns embodied experiences to living with chronic illness. It is argued that inadequate welfare support plays a significant role in this regard. As such, the thesis addresses how embodied experiences of chronic illness are contingent upon a climate of austerity.