7: Labour in the Lives of Disabled Young People

The focus of this chapter is labour in the lives of young people living with life limiting and life-threatening impairment (LL/LTIs). We chose the word ‘labour’ carefully. Too often, the word ‘work’ is associated with traditional forms of paid labour rather than with the complex forms of labour that take place in our homes and in our relationships with other people. The experiences of young people living with LL/LTIs, as we see below, illuminate the inadequacy of narrow and normative understandings of ‘work’ and reveal instead the multiplicity and complexities of labour, including emotional labour, in its many forms in a variety of places, spaces and times.