This paper examines the relations and the tensions between debility and disability in global contexts defined by complex forms of bio-social precarity. My focus is Baan Kamlangchay, in Thailand, a care home providing care for older people with dementia and Alzheimer's disease from the global North. I treat Baan Kamlangchay as one concrete example of emerging circuits of transnational care/reproductive labour in order to investigate the interrelations between disability and wider global bio-political inequalities. Using the concept of ‘biolegitimacy’, I discuss the power dynamics in the relationships between the racialised and gendered care workers in the centre and (white) disabled residents. I argue that debility, understood as the flexible gradation of dis/ability and in/capacity, allows us to better understand these novel forms of embodied precarity and their political implications in global contexts.
AbreschP., 2009. Thailand: Opa lebt im parodies, [Thailand: Grandpa lives in paradise]. DasErste ARD, 25 October [in German].
2.
AhmedS., 2004. Cultural Politics of Emotions.London: Routledge.
3.
AhmedS., 2006. Queer Phenomenology.Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.
4.
Alzheimer's Disease International (ADI), 2012. World Health Organization and Alzheimer's disease international say Dementia must be a global health priority. Press release, 11 April. Available at: http://www.alz.co.uk/media/120411 [last accessed 27 July 2015].
5.
Anonymous, 2007. Wohin mit Voter? Ein Sohn verzweifelt am Pflegesystem, [Where to with the Father? A Son Despairing Over the Care-System].Frankfurt am Main: Fischer [in German].
6.
BerlantL., 2011. Cruel Optimism.Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.
7.
ButlerJ., 2009. Frames of Mar: When is Life Grievable?London: Verso.
8.
CohenE., 2008. Explorations in Thai Tourism: Collected Case Studies.Bingley: Emerald.
9.
El-TayebF., 2011. European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe.Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota.
10.
ErevellesN., 2011. Disability and Difference in Global Contexts: Enabling a Transformative Body Politic.New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
11.
FassinD., 2009. Another politics of life is possible. Theory, Culture, Society, 26(5), pp. 44–60.
12.
FritschK., 2015. Gradations of debility and capacity: biocapitalism and the neoliberalization of disability relations. Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 4(2), pp. 12–48.
HochschildA.R., 2000. Global care chains and emotional surplus value. In HuttonW., and GiddensA., eds. On The Edge: Living with Global Capitalism.London: Jonathan Cape, pp. 130–146.
KolářováK., 2015. Death by choice, life by privilege: bio-political circuits of vitality and debility in the times of empire. In TremainS., ed. Foucault and the Government of Disability, 2nd Edition. Ann Arbor, Ml: University of Michigan Press, pp. 396–424.
LivingstonJ., 2005. Debility and the Moral Imagination in Botswana.Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press.
23.
LivingstonJ., 2006. Insights from an African history of disability. Radical History Review, 2006(94), pp. 111–126.
24.
McClintockA., 1995. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest.New York: Routledge.
25.
McRuerR., 2006. Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability.New York and London: New York University Press.
26.
McRuerR., 2010. Disability nationalism in crip times. Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies, 4(2), pp. 163–178.
27.
PrinceM., and JacksonJ., 2009. World Alzheimer Report 2009: The World Prevalence of Dementia.London: Alzheimer's Disease International.
28.
PuarJ.K., 2012. Coda: the cost of getting better: suicide, sensation, switchpoints. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 18(1), pp. 149–158.
29.
PilarJ.K., 2014. Capacity/debility: from narrative prosthesis to disaster capitalism. Talk presented at Queering Post Political Subjectivities Symposium, 4 May, Linköping University.
30.
PilarJ.K., BerlantL, ButlerJ., CvejicB., LoreyI., and VujanovicA., 2012. Precarity talk. TDR: The Drama Review, 56(4), pp. 163–177.
31.
ShettyP., 2010. Medical tourism booms in India, but at what cost?Lancet, 376(9742), pp. 671–672.
32.
SnyderJ., DharamsiS., and CrooksV.A., 2011. Fly-by medical care: conceptualizing the global and local social responsibilities of medical tourists and physician voluntourists. Globalization and Health, 7(1), pp. 6–20.
33.
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, 2011. Film. Directed by John Madden. USA: Fox Searchlight Pictures.
34.
TongR., 2013. International migrant eldercare workers in Italy, Germany and Sweden: a feminist critique of eldercare policy in the United States. IJFAB: International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, 6(2), pp. 41–59.
35.
VoraK., 2009. Indian transnational surrogacy and the commodification of vital energy. Subjectivity, 28(9), pp. 266–278.
36.
World Health Organization (WHO) and Alzheimer's Disease International (ADI), 2012. Dementia: A Public Health Priority.Geneva: World Health Organization Press.
