Teetering On The Edge Of Surplus: Neurodivergent Work, Social Reproduction, And Bodyminds In The Ontario Labour Market

Abstract

Disabled workers have received scarce attention from labour geography, revealing a productivist tendency within the field. In this study, I employ neurodiversity as a position of epistemic authority. Using twenty- two semi-structured interviews, I explore how neurodivergent workers navigate a neoliberal labour market characterized by polarization, precarity, and emotional labour. While many neurodivergent adults are pushed into the classic lumpenproletarian, my study reveals that a segment become the ‘liminal lumpenproletariat,’ workers who consciously occupy positions of persistent precarity to agentively manage their disability. I argue that these workers act at multiple geographic scales to manage their neurodivergence with high temporal, financial, social, and mental costs. My conclusions draw from Cripistemological co-creation to imagine alternative neurodivergent visions of work. Altogether, this thesis asserts that the costs of managing disablement under capitalism offer novel insights into labour geography scholarship, (dis)abling its current narrative of precarious work.