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The Cast On-stage and Off: Polio and Beggars on Wheels

  • Diana Szántó
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Abstract

In Chap.  2 we get to know more the veritable heroes of the book: polio-disabled people living in self-managed communities in the city centre and in the vicinity of Freetown. These are very much the same people as passers-by experience as disabled street beggars, although not all the members of the polio-houses beg and not all the beggars live in collective self-sustained communities. Begging evoke desolating images of social disintegration, but the polio-disabled squatters manage to maintain a surprisingly well-organised life behind the façade of their collective shelters. The squats are not only homes for those who live there, they are the sites of intense and diverse economic activities and they also assure some form of social security. In them, people with disability realise a model of inverse integration, assuring housing and livelihood for a large number of abled-bodied Sierra Leoneans.

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© The Author(s) 2020

Authors and Affiliations

  • Diana Szántó
    • 1
  1. 1.BudapestHungary

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