Abstract
This paper reports on how the National Employment Office in Sweden creates the disabled person by recruiting them to work-for-the-disabled programs. As a rule, job applicants who are classified as “disabled” do not consider themselves as such, but they are encouraged to become disabled by adopting the organization's norms, rules and routines, which specify what is expected of them as disabled if they are to be assisted to find a job. Disability is, in other words, a learned social role enacted in a particular organizational context. It is argued that the full implications of a radical constructionist approach to the problem of disability have not yet been tapped in the standard sociological conversation on disability. The potential of society to formally enact anyone as disabled, irrespective of his or her medical and biological condition, raises a number of important social and political questions.
Highlights
In recent decades there has gradually developed a formalized global interest in helping the disabled to participate more fully in society
Based on qualitative case study data, this paper reports on how the National Employment Office (NEO) creates the occupationally disabled as a result of its goal to integrate into the labour market people who are assumed to have particular difficulties in finding or keeping a job
As to be able to determine whether job applicants who have difficulties in finding and keeping a job are legally and administratively disabled, it is necessary for these applicants to undergo an organized assessment process
Summary
In recent decades there has gradually developed a formalized global interest in helping the disabled to participate more fully in society. A jobseeker can be occupationally disabled in February but not in June’’ (SOU 1991:67, 67) The fact that it is the possibility of obtaining or retaining a job that defines an occupational disability and not a personal condition in the form of an established medically definable functional disorder has been the focus of several government studies within this sector, e.g. in a study from 1997: ‘‘Many people, even with extensive functional disorders can manage an individual placement on the regular labour market. There are many people who are considered to be occupationally disabled without being impaired in a medical sense, which is the point of departure in two recently completed government studies (SOU 2003:56, SOU 2003:95), e.g. immigrants, certain groups of young people and persons in sparsely-populated areas One of these studies observed that ‘‘persons with an immigrant background Á especially in metropolitan areas Á have been assigned sheltered work at Samhall more as a result of their language difficulties than that they Á in a formal sense Á have an occupational disability’’ (SOU 2003:56, 193)
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