Negotiating Identities, Negotiating Environments: An interpretation of the experiences of students with disabilities

Abstract This paper explores the experiences of nine students with disabilities pursuing degrees at a large Canadian university. An ethnographic approach was followed using face-to-face, unstructured interviews and a focus group to generate data. The analysis focuses on how these students negotiate disabled and non-disabled identities while negotiating the physical environment of the university campus. I argue that these negotiatory processes are necessarily interconnected and inherently contradictory.