Disability and dirty workers: stories of physical,social and moral taint

Returning to classics on dirty work and stigma, I offer another perspective on the difficulties that disabled people experience in employment. I claim that disabled workers with multiple sclerosis (MS) feel like ‘dirty workers’ not because of the work that they do, but because of their MS. Secondary analysis of phenomenological interview data revealed workers with MS feeling physical, social and moral taints normally associated with being a ‘dirty worker’ – but because of their MS-related impairments and disabilities. Two respondent stories are shared to illustrate this association.     

Gender Stereotypes and the Reshaping of Stigma in Rehabilitative Eldercare

Rehabilitation policies are becoming increasingly popular in eldercare as a means to ensure dignity and reduce costs. This paper examines the implications of rehabilitation within Danish homecare work, a type of work that is often stigmatized due to its associations with low‐status ‘dirty’ body work in old people's homes. The paper combines two research traditions: studies of dirty work and studies of body work. It draws on observations and focus groups in Denmark to explore how the introduction of rehabilitation changes the work of care workers, and how such changes are associated with a potential reshaping of stigma. In contrast to previous research, this paper shows that although rehabilitation was partly introduced to reduce stigma of this type of work, the practice of rehabilitation paradoxically reinforces the stigma that it attempts to manage. Thus, the analysis helps to improve our understanding of the ambiguous and varying ways rehabilitative eldercare reshapes and reinforces stigma and gender stereotypes among women who do ‘dirty’ body work.     

Women's Work,Dirty Work: The Gynaecology Nurse as ‘Other’

This article seeks to explore the world of the gynaecology nurse. This world defines the gendered experience of nursing; that is, women in a women's job carrying out ‘women's work’. It is also a world that receives scant public recognition due to its association with the private domain of women's reproductive health. Many issues dealt with on a daily basis by gynaecology nurses are socially ‘difficult’: cancer, infertility, miscarriage and foetal abnormalities; or socially ‘distasteful’: termination of pregnancy, urinary incontinence, menstruation and sexually transmitted disease. The ‘tainted’ nature of gynaecology nursing gives it the social distinction of ‘dirty work’ but does not deter the gynaecology nurse from declaring her work as ‘special’, requiring distinctive knowledge and skills. Qualitative data collected from a group of gynaecology nurses in a North West National Health Service hospital displays how they actively celebrate their status as women carrying out ‘dirty work’. Through the use of ceremonial work that continually re‐affirms their ‘womanly’ qualities the gynaecology nurses establish themselves as ‘different’, as ‘special’, as the ‘other’.     

‘It’s like having another job’: the invisible work of self-managing attendant services

Abstract

This reflexive ethnographic study examines the work disabled people do to ‘self-manage’ attendant services. The data reveal diverse facets of work reported by ‘self-managers’, their support networks and program administrators. The analysis found that self-managers’ work is often represented as ‘something other than work’, if and when it is represented at all. In this paper, disability studies and feminist perspectives on work inform a discussion of factors that may be seen to render self-managers’ work ‘invisible’, and implications of self-managed models that require contributions of invisible work.     

Named social workers – better social work for learning disabled people?

In 2016, the Department of Health in England announced that it would pilot the role of Named Social Worker. We chose to be part of the pilot because we regularly witness too many people’s lives being defined by restrictions imposed by professionals. Erroneous associations between the concepts of risk and danger have become the norm in how learning disabled people’s decision-making is perceived and managed. However, we believe social workers educated in the social model of disability and grounded more generally in disability studies offer an alternative perspective. The pilot is an opportunity to test our hypothesis that social work practice rooted in social model thinking can successfully challenge oppressive practice and disabling barriers, thus providing the opportunity for social workers to genuinely be ‘servants not masters’ in the lives of disabled people.     

‘A frog in a well’: the exclusion of disabled people from work in Cambodia

Based on ethnographic research conducted in north‐west Cambodia in 2000–2001, this paper examines why disabled people experience systematic marginalisation in the labour market. Although there are no official data on the relationship between disability and employment status in Cambodia, this research suggests that disabled people are more likely than their able‐bodied counterparts to be unemployed, in low status occupations, earn less or be out of the labour market altogether. Consequently, disabled people are more likely to live in poverty, experience social isolation and poor mental health. I argue that disabled people’s social status effectively shapes their work patterns through (mis)conceptions that associate ‘disability’ with ‘inability’ to work and to be employable. This paper illustrates how geographical processes fix disabled people in their socio‐spatial place, which together with ideological and structural inequalities distinguish and entrench their poverty from that of other social groups.     

‘Resistance: Which Way the Future?’ A dual-screen installation related to the theme of disability and eugenics

This paper reports the part findings of an evaluation of a dual-screen installation entitled ‘Resistance: Which Way the Future?’ by the writer and director Liz Crow. Central to the installation is the experience of disabled people during the Holocaust period, the values underpinning this neglected period of history and how this relates to understanding the experiences of disabled people today. Simultaneously, this paper raises issue with a previous comment which suggested that disabled people and eugenics are a form of ‘emotive rhetoric’. On the contrary, this paper asserts that the link between eugenics and disability cannot be overstated, and is a significant moment in history where the lived experiences of disabled people – people described as having ‘learning difficulties’, surviving artefacts, and recorded testimonies – have still yet to be explored.     

Expectations and realisations: the employment story of a young man with cerebral palsy

Britain has laws and a range of policies which promote the employment of disabled people. The lack of progress to get disabled people into paid work has resulted in huge dissatisfaction for some. Evidence of disability and employment problems is often expressed as hard data, but what of the personal experiences of trying to find employment? This article is based on interviews with ‘Nick’, a young man with cerebral palsy who wanted to recount his preparation for work, including work experience, through school, the Connexions service and the local Employment Office. He explained how he felt his voluntary work and work experiences were not fully planned and ultimately unsatisfactory. Nick found paid employment, but soon discovered that there were too many problems for him to continue. He reflected on his experiences, including his own initial confidence, his despair at the ending of his paid employment and the realities of what employment means for him.     

Do self‐assessment and self‐directed support undermine traditional social work with disabled people?

In recent years, self‐assessment and self‐directed support have become mainstream options within disability services. The Disabled People’s Movement has advocated the need for such change for a long time but this has been persistently resisted by many social workers. In this article, it will be argued that both self‐assessment and self‐directed support undermine traditional social work and that social workers need to begin to work alongside disabled people, rather than ‘for’ disabled people, in order to achieve substantial system change.     

‘Stuck In The Middle With You’: Towards Enabling Social Work with Disabled People

This article explores progress to date in embedding enabling social work understandings and practices with disabled people by reviewing the UK social work curriculum. Based on these observations and the ideas from UK disability studies, it will offer possible solutions or at least better pathways to enabling practice with disabled people. As Meekosha has pointed out in a global context, to date social work has been experienced as an ambivalent practice [Meekosha, H. & Dowse, L. (2007) ‘Integrating critical disability studies into social work education and practice: an Australian perspective’, Practice, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 59–72], often both enabling and disabling; an intervention that can both lock and unlock resources, and challenge and reaffirm traditional notions of the ‘disability problem’ [Finkelstein, V. (1993) ‘Disability: A Social Challenge or an Administrative Responsibility?’, in Disabiling Barriers ‐ Enabling Environments, eds J. Swain, V. Finkelstein, S. French and M. Oliver, Sage Publications in association with the Open University, London]. Social work also has the potential to both challenge, but also be an (inadvertent) apologist for contemporary social support and welfare systems. Indeed it is clear that social work as a profession and social care as a policy area have been the poor relations of healthcare and health professions [King's Fund (2011) Social Care Funding and the NHS: An Impending Crisis?, King's Fund, London]. Viewed anthropologically, social work remains a largely non-disabled workforce ‘ministering’ to disabled clients (BCODP, 1997). This might reinforce the perception of ‘us and them’ in some social work encounters. As Paul Longmore questioned, can we begin to go ‘beyond affliction’ (2003) in our work with disabled people? Can social work help support the collective struggles of disabled people or is their role inevitably to reinforce that of individual(ised) clients?

The development of the personalisation agenda and self-directed support is clearly welcome in this context [DoH (2006) Our Health, Our Care, Our Say: A New Direction for Community Services, Department of Health, London; DoH (2007) Independence, Choice and Risk: A Guide to Best Practice in Supported Decision-Making, Department of Health, London; DoH (2009) Personalisation of Social Care Services, Department of Health, London]. Such developments reflect the changing service user–professional relationship. The temptation to see these developments as the icing on the social support cake needs, however, to be resisted. Arguably, with the increased rationing of social support, the continued role of social workers in assessment and monitoring of support could be seen to require a yet more reflexive and enabling professional education and training in an age of austerity, one where previously supported disabled people are being told that their needs can no longer be met.     

Orientating disability studies to disablist austerity: applying Fraser’s insights

Many disabled people in Britain have experienced profound challenges brought about by a government policy programme characterised by ‘austerity’. Drawing on the work of Fraser and Polanyi, this article explores new ways in which disability studies can become theoretically orientated to the task of explaining and challenging what has become an issue of overbearing importance for many disabled people. It is argued that Fraser’s notion of bivalency encapsulates the combination of cultural and economic challenges which characterise ‘disablist austerity’. Fraser’s development of Polanyi’s work is used to argue that disability studies should be orientated to large-scale economic challenges as well as cultural and discursive concerns that are more often the object of study in the field.     

Social and family responsibility or self-interest?

Mothers’ increasing labour market participation is posed as a key aspect of a growing trend towards individualization — both for ill and for good. In ‘for ill’ versions, mothers’ employment is regarded as undermining commitment to family relationships and leading to a loss of community. In ‘for good’ versions, family and community relationships become contingent upon values of equality and respect. ‘Preference theory’ modifies the individualization thesis, with a posited distinction between mothers in full-time employment with ‘work-centred’ identities and those with part-time work who want ‘adaptive’ or ‘home-centred’ identities. This paper examines such issues, drawing on qualitative case study research on mothers employed full and part time in a hospital and an accountancy firm in the UK. It considers how the variable work ethos of organizations, and the ways mothers engage with these, can interact with their engagement in family and community relationships. In particular, it suggests that employment can be as much about social obligation in a local community, and commitment and obligations to family, as about individualized self-provision and options.     

Masculinity and Class in the Context of Dirty Work

Through an ethnographic study of ‘dirty work’ (refuse collection and street cleaning), this article explores how masculinity and class intersect — how, in a mutually constitutive sense, they produce attitudes and practices, strengths and vulnerabilities, which are shaped by shifting relations of privilege and power. We find resistance to class subordination through adherence to traditional forms of masculinity and through esteem‐enhancing social comparison (e.g., with women; with migrant workers). Men also mobilized powerful nostalgic themes around the loss of traditional jobs as well as trade union power. We argue that displays of masculine resilience in the face of devaluation are less indicative of a culture of masculine dominance but more an expression of vulnerability and social dislocation, serving both as a source of resistance whilst simultaneously reinforcing anchors of social disadvantage that characterize forms of dirty work. We suggest that combining social comparison with intersectionality can potentially highlight how categories of difference are strategically deployed in response to varied and unequally valued social positionalities.     

Saying the ‘F word … in the nicest possible way’: augmentative communication and discourses of disability

This paper examines a case study of a severely physically disabled man, Ralph, in terms of his interaction with his carers. He communicates using various systems of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC, such as symbol boards and high-tech devices), the vocabulary for which has mostly been selected for him by others. The starting point of the paper is the assumption that disabled people have traditionally held a disempowered position in society (relative to non-disabled people), and the question asked is to what extent is Ralph further disempowered by the limited vocabulary available to him in his AAC systems, and in the way others interact with him. The paper draws on the work of Bourdieu, according to whom ‘Language is not only an instrument of communication or even of knowledge, but also an instrument of power’ (1977, 648). I consider the tensions between the drive towards the empowerment of disabled individuals, as exemplified by the provision of AAC, and opposition to allowing access to certain types of vocabulary (especially expletives such as ‘the F word’), unless it is expressed in ‘the nicest possible way’.     

Crip theory and the disabled identity: why disability politics needs impairment

This article highlights the importance of recognizing both the ontology of impairment as it relates to the creation of the disabled identity as well as why articulations of the disabled identity being ‘crip’ obfuscate potential politics. Examining how the disabled identity has been cast as a coherent social and political category, rather than the messy and complicated identity it truly is, I argue the adoption of a post-structuralist orientation by activists and advocates is bad for disability politics. Providing two examples, the first focusing on a publicized rape case of a person with an intellectual disability and the second on the importance of disability rights claims based on visibility of impairment, I show how articulations like those made in crip theory can have serious, negative implications for the lived experience of people with disabilities. I conclude with a call for disability studies scholars to engage disability politics in their work.     

Sociological social work: a cartoon

I trace an account of social work—and sociology—that I believe holds a promise for re-forming the relationship between the two. I develop the argument in two ways. First, taking 1920s Chicago as a case study, I will attempt ‘a history of the present’ to suggest how the relationship between sociology and social work came to be as it is. I will suggest that the practice of some (both familiar and forgotten) people in 1920s and 1930s sociology and social work is best explained as a form of ‘sociological social work’. Second, after tracking this genealogy, I suggest an agenda for sociological social work that consists of straining to enact certain kinds of inter-disciplinary relationships, developing methodological social work practice, hearing occasional sociological frontier conversations and shared theorising. I illustrate how these arguments challenge both sociology and social work and both theory and practice.     

But it’s not all about the sex: mothering,normalisation and young learning disabled people

This paper is about mothering, young learning disabled people, their sexualised and relationship lives and normalisation – not through the lens of the disabled person, but via a mothers perspective and theoretical discussion. As a mother who has a learning disabled daughter, a feminist and an academic my own mothering experience, my Ph.D. research and social theory are woven throughout this paper with the intention of opening up debate about sex, intimacy and normalisation, and how these impact upon young learning disabled people. I suggest that the relationship between sex, reproduction, intimacy and intellectual impairment and a project to decipher what it means to be human in all its dirty glory are also part of the discourse that needs to be discussed experientially and theoretically. So much so that the messy world within which we all live can be variously and differently constructed.     

Wounded/monstrous/abject: a critique of the disabled body in the sociological imaginary

Contemporary sociology has made sense of bodily difference by mobilising a number of tropes. ‘Wounded’ (or vulnerable), ‘monstrous’ and ‘abject’ stand out by virtue of their ubiquity though they do not exhaust the repertoire. These categories highlight the conceptual tensions between the sociology of the body and Disability Studies. In this paper, I will examine the value of these tropes to Disability Studies and suggest that while they can help to clarify the processes that bring about the misrecognition of disabled people, understanding the nature and scope of the lives of disabled people in modernity requires a more embodied language rather than one that has been generated from a sociological imaginary that is strongly influenced by a non‐disabled subject position in which repulsion for the other – which one must become – is never fully resolved. Disability has had little impact on sociological theories of the body and when sociology ventures into disability it has tended to conflate it with an ontology of human frailty or gloss it with tropes that may be instructive about the generic or gendered modernist structure of exclusion but it tells us little about the specific forms of invalidation experienced by disabled people.     

Going beyond vocational rehabilitation as a training of skills: return-to-work as an identity issue

In western welfare states, labour participation is increasingly considered a vital aspect of taking part in society. Vocational rehabilitation programmes are intended to support people in the process of returning to work. These programmes pay much attention to the skills that clients need to develop in order to return to work. We argue, however, that vocational rehabilitation is more than the acquirement of skills, and that further attention should be paid to clients’ ‘identity work’ processes. Based on 45 life-stories, we present an analysis of the identity work expressed by people with a work disability in the Netherlands. We describe ‘separative’, ‘integrative’, and ‘pending’ processes of identity work. The presented typology can help vocational rehabilitation professionals become more sensitive to clients’ processes, and supports more inclusive vocational rehabilitation.     

Social policy and transitions to training and work for disabled young people in the United Kingdom: neo-liberalism for better and for worse?

Although New Labour distanced itself from the neo-liberal ‘underclass’ discourses of its predecessors, its approach to disabled young people maintained key aspects of neo-liberalism, particularly an emphasis on individuals’ human capital, aspirations and self-investments as causes of and solutions to disabled young people’s unemployment. This is also apparent in early Coalition government statements. Since the 1990s, policies have focused on providing individually-tailored advice, developing individuals’ skills, and motivating appropriate self-investment. We examine recent evidence that highlights a number of problems with this focus. Notably, it entails a simplistic and individualised notion of ‘barriers’ to employment that cannot account for the complex impacts of disablement and inequality; moves towards open-market models of training and work support create perverse incentives that divert support away from those most in need; employment success is dependent on unpredictable local opportunity structures; and the focus on paid employment undermines other social contributions made by disabled young people.