DISABILITY IN BRAZILIAN CENSUSES THROUGH THE LENS OF INFORMATIONAL JUSTICE

Abstract

Demographic censuses determine which social groups become visible to the State, so that deciding what to investigate is a choice shaped by values, disputes, and power relations. This paper analyzes the trajectory of the investigation of persons with disabilities, including Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), in Brazilian demographic censuses, from 1872 to 2022, in light of the recognition dimension of informational justice, which concerns the fair representation of people and communities in the contents of information systems. The research is qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive, carried out through bibliographic and documentary research; the corpus comprises the disability-related questions of the thirteen census operations conducted in the period, accessed through the original census publications, the specialized literature, and the relevant legislation. The results show a non-linear trajectory: the topic was present from the first census onward, with a progressive reduction of categories; it disappeared completely between 1950 and 1980; it returned in 1991, by legal mandate, under a medical approach; it shifted to a functioning-based model from 2000 onward; and, in 2022, the questionnaire was downsized and ASD was investigated for the first time, as determined by law and accommodated in a separate question, outside the disability block. The paper concludes that including, excluding, and reformulating census questions constitute acts of informational (in)justice of recognition: statistical visibility operates as a precondition for a group to become a subject of public policies, and the form of representation matters as much as its existence.