NEGOTIATING IDENTITIES, NEGOTIATING ENVIRONMENTS - AN INTERPRETATION OF THE EXPERIENCES OF STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES

This paper explores the experiences of nine students with disabilities pursuing degrees at a large Canadian university. An ethnographic appr oach was followed using face-to-face, unstructured interviews and a fo cus 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 nego tiatory processes are necessarily interconnected and inherently contra dictory.