ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides an opportunity to link the early experiences of living rurally and the experiences of people with disabilities and to reflect and think about what it might have meant for people with disabilities to live rurally and what it might mean now and in the future. It also provides a nuanced account of disability identity formations across the life course, including key transition points that create, enable or coerce processes of mobility between the rural and the urban. The book presents an insight into the effects of the UK government's austerity package on the lives of people with disabilities in rural England. It examines the changing relationships of care within small rural communities and their implications for a sense of belonging in the community for people defined as having a mental illness.
