ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests several ways in which the analysis of life-course issues and processes can enhance people understanding of the nature and meaning of disability in contemporary European societies. A life-course perspective has allowed people to identify barriers to and facilitators of Active Citizenship as they evolve over the life course. The time perspective inherent in the life-course method has enabled people to identify specific mechanisms and processes "which can produce durable structures, regular patterns of interaction and developmental tendencies" in the relationship between persons with disabilities and society at large. To increase understanding of how and to what extent the actions taken by persons with disabilities influence the same persons' opportunities for participation and inclusion subsequently, it is important for the data to capture trajectories, transitions and turning points. The chapter identifies several cases of dynamic relationships between structural conditions and the active agency of persons with disabilities and their organisations. The model of agency–structure dynamics reviewed is at a relatively high level of abstraction and generality.
