Cultural aspects of vocational rehabilitation processes

Abstract

How do cultural factors intervene in vocational rehabilitation? In the European context, the importance of migrational transitions and the questions of integration and participation of the immigrants in the host societies turns the question towards various areas of health care and social assistance. It is from this migratorial point of view that we shall treat the notion of the cultural dimension within the vocational rehabilitation of immigrants. Nowadays, the socio-professional context presents new stakes and new tensions in job management, within the work teams, in the communication and the quality of that communication. Faced with the methods of exclusion, the professionals of social and medical assistance are facing a situation that is more and more difficult [1]. The difficulty is often due to a growing diversity and greater geographical distances from the original regions and from values and customs from those of today’s world. This vision often rests on the intercultural realities drawn from the melting pot of common sense, on the basis of a position without self criticism permitting ready made judgements. It also rests on an ethnocentricity which feeds the distinction and differentiation processes of the different social groups, through depreciation or rather through contempt of other cultures as opposed to one’s own [2]. Other than the fact that the term is used to apply to some imaginary and naive categories for which the reality cannot be proven, this position is nevertheless dangerous when it is the fruit of scientific constructions of which the social and cultural phenomena are the privileged objects. Our theoretical position comes from a way of thinking which is in opposition to these categories based on a substantialist vision of culture. On the contrary, we will be looking at their significances and their values in terms of dynamics, change and reconstructions [3].