Entramados de interdependencias, cuidados y autonomía en situaciones de diversidad funcional

Understanding society as networks of interdependencies, and personal autonomy as decision and action capacity, is opposed to the sense that some organizations attribute to the categories of autonomy and dependency. In Spain, the production and imposition of administrative labels under the Law of Promotion of Personal Autonomy and Attention to People in Dependency Situation (Law 39, 2006), turns these categories into two poles of a continuum. Faced with this institutional framework, the article analyzes the ways in which women with functional diversity, officially classified as "severe" or "large dependents" and who have the home-care help service, organize their daily lives, their networks of interdependencies and the agency capacity they display, based on the analysis of their life stories. From a care studies perspective, we explore possible lines to (re)signify dependency and autonomy, through the way in which women exercise self-determination, personal affirmation and self-care, and the impacts of these on their subjectivity. We conclude that their determination to exercise self-care is fundamental to the redefinition of their autonomy.