A citizenship perspective for dementia is increasingly gaining ground, recognising people with dementia as active agents within the boundaries of their condition and with a vulnerability to marginalisation. The time has come for dementia research to learn from critical perspectives and analytical tools within the disability movement(s) to investigate the relationship between the boundaries of the condition and the process of marginalisation. This chapter tentatively outlines how the concept of neurodiversity and (selectively) the neurodiversity paradigm can contribute to critical dementia studies, discussing both possibilities and pitfalls. Neurodiversity refers to perceived variations in cognitive, affectual and sensory functioning differing from the majority. A neurodiversity paradigm challenges norms around such functioning and points to how they alienate and marginalise minorities that diverge from them, subjecting them to so-called cognitive othering. Pitfalls discussed include relativising increasingly disruptive difficulties among people with dementia and undermining the struggle in some groups for acceptance of neurodiversity as a natural variation in no need of any cure. Delving into the nuances of self-advocacy within the group of people with dementia and other neuro-minorities respectively, as well as differences in how the conditions manifest, this chapter points to how the pitfalls might be navigated in order to avoid inviting harmful inferences and comparisons. An explorative stance is stipulated, allowing for norm-critical exploration of a wide and heterogenous spectrum of varieties in neuro-functioning, equating health with well-being rather than with what is statistically normal. This opens up to alternative ways of imagining the world, alternative relations and public spaces, and alternative knowledge production. Drawing on personal experiences of being a neurodivergent researcher, the chapter elucidates the benefits of approaching dementia without a neurotypical gaze. Finally, it discusses the potentials of opening to forms of sociality and communication that would not be centred around neurotypical norms.

We will present voice as an analytical framework to enhance the problematization and investigation of citizenship for people living with dementia. We will also discuss the strengths and the potential of using such a framework when doing research on citizenship in general, and more specifically, for people living with dementia. The analytical framework that we will propose focuses on the multiple accounts of voice in use. Thus, the framework does not only embrace the issue of "whose voices?", but also the various ways voice has been conceptualised, framed and understood in different theoretical and empirical contexts as well as how these together in different ways have the potential to shed light on the possibility for people with dementia to remain participative actors in their neighbourhood, in society and furthermore, to have the opportunity to claim full citizenship.

This collection of interdisciplinary essays by international researchers tries to see beyond the loss in dementia, exploring it as transformation and change of personhood and identity that typically is embedded in social life. The chapters identify three important themes: persons and personhood, identity and agency, and the social and the communal.

The present article focuses on feedback in storytelling involving people with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), and how feedback is related to the ways participants establish a common ground (Clark 1996) in interaction. The establishment of common ground is important in all kinds of interaction and becomes an especially intricate process if participants have AD, since the achievement of common ground requires the ability to draw from knowledge and experiences relating to past as well as present events; an ability that is often hampered by the disease. Analyses show that other aspects than the actual content of the conversation are important for the participants – for instance being together, supporting the positive identities both presented in the story and embodied in the socially rewarding activity that they manage to engage in, implying that the participants create and sustain a common ground not so much about the story-layer as of the storytelling activity.

This study explores on a micro-level the activity of a self-help group for persons with dementia in Swedish municipal care, based on audio-recordings from 18 months' ethnographic fieldwork. The study focuses on the discursive construction of a shared meaning perspective and its inherent possibilities for liberation. Applying a citizenship perspective, the study approaches people with dementia as vulnerable to marginalization while at the same time capable of agency within the boundaries of their condition. The findings paint a complex picture involving opportunities and limitations of experiential knowledge, issues of double stigmatization, and constructs of being interrelated with other people and with the surrounding society. In the center is the overarching struggle of retaining citizenship in the face of the evolving disease.

Disorientation as experienced by persons with progressive dementia diseases involves both existential and social dimensions. Based on video observations from a small residential care unit and exploring social interaction on a micro-level, this case study focuses on how a woman with vascular dementia actively tries to make sense of an everyday lunch situation. The analysis addresses strategies used by her to contextualize where she has ended up, and also how the meaning of the place is altered in communication. Findings point to social interaction between residents as an important resource to help maintain continuity with previous social life. However, there also seems to be an impending need for caregivers to help residents patch up their broken life-stories to render everyday situations comprehensible and the setting socially meaningful. Helping them find a way of placing themselves within it — also affording a positive self-identity and continuity with previous life history — is a major challenge in daily care.