Macho, mobile and resilient? How workers with impairments are doubly disabled in project-based film and television work

Inequalities in the creative industries are known to be persistent and systemic. The model of production in UK film and television (UKF&TV) is argued to exclude on the basis of gender, race and class. This article considers a social category that has been overlooked in these debates: disability. It argues that workers with impairments are ‘doubly disabled’ – in both the labour markets and labour processes of UKF&TV. It concludes that disability cannot simply be incorporated in an additive way in order to understand the exclusion of these workers, but that they face qualitatively different sources of disadvantage compared with other minorities in UKF&TV workplaces. This has negative implications for workers with impairments in other labour markets, as project and network-based freelance work, a contributor to disadvantage, is seen as both increasingly normative and paradigmatic.