Introduction : disability, space, place and policy : new concepts, new ideas, new realities

Geographies of disability and spatial geographies have rightly taken their place in the wider canon of disability research and disability studies. That disablement is a spatial issue seems at one level a truism; however a key driver for this edited collection is the perception that the wider panoply of geographical insights on disability, embodiment and the emplaced body has not been applied that systematically to the forms of policy and legal exclusions experienced by disabled people in contemporary society. Indeed notions of policy and space rarely sit together save for a small number of descriptive readings of building regulations and anti-discrimination legislation and guidance. Policy has not to date been conceptualised as a spatial phenomenon. Policy is often reified as natural and fixed, at least once it is formulated. We argue that policy spaces and their relationship to physical, psycho-social and ontological spaces afforded to disabled people need to be central to our understanding of social space and enabling/disabled society. Social policy both emanates from and continually remakes the spaces or constraints that directly influence disabled people's life opportunities. To reflect such new insights we aim to respond to such an absence of critical attention and to engage more fully notions of disability, policy and space. Both policy and law embody constructions of 'right' bodies and minds and thus frame current and future social possibilities for disabled people. Space, for example, being able to occupy freely certain public, private or even 'taboo' spaces, is heavily inscribed with disablist notions of just what is possible given disabled people's capability, capacity and reason. In the chapters that follow we draw on the commissioned writings of geographers, sociologists, policy and disability studies academics to provide a range of insights into the nature, reproduction and challenge to the spatial and policyinscribed exclusion of disabled people. We take as our cue a number of important preceding works that have been published in what might be framed as disability geographies, and which help set the scene for the work that follows. Such works focus on matters as diverse as physicality and commodification (Gleeson, 1999; Hansen, 2002), disability and spatial justice (Butler and Parr, 1999; Kitchin, 1998), the spatial dynamism and boundaries of disabled bodies (Haraway, 1991), ableism (Imrie, 1996 ; Kumari-Campbell, 2009 ), and the fl uid biographical identity that negotiates, traverses and navigates a range of complex social spaces, places and landscapes (Chouinard et al. , 2010 ; Crooks et al. , 2008 ; Imrie, 2007 ; Maddern and Stewart, 2010 ). The chapters that follow aim to expand the current geographical frame of reference operating within the realm of disability; intersecting three critical, yet often contrasting, ideas, of disability, space and place, and social policy regimes. Through critical conceptual analysis and based on empirical insights, the chapters explore how current policy and legal regimes re/map, re/frame and re/shape divergent spatial relations and realities for disabled people. In this context, the spatial is not confi ned to the material and structural alone. A key feature of a number of chapters that follow are their attempts to disclose the diverse ways disability and spatial relations are constructed symbolically, culturally and materially. Thus, the book challenges readers to consider the 'multifaceted spatial dimension' of social policy for disabled people and the imposition of altering policy regimes that confi ne, override or disguise the spatial dimension of social life for disabled people. For example, changing welfare regimes not only have profound consequences in terms of their fi nancial settlements for disabled people, but represent a profound-reframing of belonging, legitimacy and selfhood.