Social Integrative Enterprises and the Construction of an Impaired Lumpenproletariat – a Swedish Case Study

Abstract

This paper accounts for a study of the joint ambitions of the Swedish Public employment office and social enterprises to integrate jobseekers with impairments in the labor market. The number of jobseekers with impairments has increased in western labor markets. The Swedish labor market is a particular case in point. Why? I use critical disability studies in combination with Marxist studies on immaterial labor to develop the following answer: An increasing number of jobseekers are diagnosed as impaired, not because their bodily constitution makes them unfit to handle manual labor, but because their socio-cultural characteristics make them unfit to handle immaterial forms of labor. Furthermore, I show how the diagnosis of these jobseekers as impaired does not lead to that they are also considered disabled. On the contrary, they are considered to have a particular, bio-medically defined fit and ability when it comes to handling simple, manual and low paid forms of work. Hereby, I argue that they are made up as a bio-medically defined “lumpenproletariat”.