Sheltered and Supported Employment in the 1990s: the experiences of disabled workers in the UK

Sheltered and supported employment are important areas of social policy provision for disabled people in the UK, but they have received little attention in the sociological literature on disability. This omission is addressed by developing a framework for understanding the state's employment policy for disabled people. It is argued that recent changes in sheltered and supported employment provision must be understood in the context of broader labour market restructuring. This argument is illustrated by an exploratory survey of workers in both programmes. The findings suggest that sheltered and supported employment tend to prioritise the needs of employers over those of disabled workers. In concluding, it is argued that an adequate approach to the employment needs of disabled people needs to go beyond micro-policy debates on the relative merits of existing employment programmes and, instead, engage at a broader level of societal change.     

A Critical Evaluation of the Contradictions for Disabled Workers Arising from the Emergence of the Flexible Labour Market in Britain

In Britain, as in all industrialised countries 'paid work' or employment is central to the economy of the state. This perspective raises important implications for theories of disability and work, and for further research in this area. This paper attempts to provide a critical evaluation of the contradictions arising from the flexible labour market for disabled workers and how the concept of the Disabled State has been eroded along with notions of disabled people as the 'deserving poor'. Policies now demonstrate a commitment to a labour market free from restrictive practices and regulation. It appears that new technologies and specific personal communication skills, initiative, flexibility and adaptability will play an increasing part in new labour working trends. In short, theories of disability and work must change focus from 'production' to 'process'.     

Vocational rehabilitation of disabled people in Germany: a systems-theoretical perspective

Avoiding inequality of opportunities based on individual characteristics such as sex, race or disability is of central concern for social policy. One of the most important aspects of social inclusion is integration into working life. In Germany, a comprehensive system of vocational rehabilitation has been developed aiming to integrate disabled people into the labour market. This paper contributes to a better understanding of exclusion and inclusion mechanisms related to employment participation of disabled people through the application of concepts from systems theory. We identify the societal part systems influencing these mechanisms and structure them using a multi-level approach.     

Focusing on Disability and Access in the Built Environment

This paper provides a documentation and discussion of the diverse experiences that different disabled people have with regards to access in the built environment. It begins by outlining the various ways in which disabled people's access needs and requirements are articulated in public policies and practices towards the development and regulation of the built environment. As the material indicates, disabled people's needs are poorly articulated and/or represented in the design and development of the built environment while the regulatory controls which oversee disabled people's access are weak. In the second part of the paper, disabled people's values, attitudes and practices towards access in the built environment are discussed by referring to the findings of focus group research. The material shows that many disabled people feel estranged and oppressed by facets of the built environment and generally feel powerless to do anything about it. We conclude by suggesting a number of ways of interconnecting the design and implementation of public policy towards the built environment with the daily lived experiences of disabled people.     

From Welfare to Work? Social Policy for Disabled People of Working Age in the United Kingdom in the 1990s

Disabled people of working age have been at the heart of recent welfare restructuring in the United Kingdom, but this has received little attention from mainstream social policy analysis. Both Conservative and Labour governments have introduced measures to promote labour force participation among disabled people, whilst discouraging dependence on welfare benefits. Whilst this new approach has been justified in terms of reducing poverty, its underlying imperatives are essentially inegalitarian. The welfare reform process has been driven by a number of official concerns including a perception of unsustainable fiscal pressures and a belief that perverse incentives in the social security benefit system have undermined economic efficiency. Moreover, it has been legitimated by an ideology of citizenship, which has shifted the moral responsibility for needs satisfaction away from the state to the individual. The paper concludes by identifying a better approach to welfare reform for disabled people of working age.     

Sustainable lifestyles for all? Disability equality,sustainability and the limitations of current UK policy

In recent years, various environmental threats have been highlighted in relation to disability. Growing knowledge of the effects of climate change and particular impacts on disabled people have been highlighted by a number of authors, including a recent critique of disabled people’s ‘vulnerability’ with respect to environmental hazard. This article focuses on the issue of citizen involvement with climate change mitigation – and more broadly individual and household-level efforts to reduce our impact on the environment. These more mundane aspects of climate change mitigation, for example through transitions to more sustainable lifestyles, also have significant implications for disabled people. The article argues that disability equality is a key component of sustainability. Limitations are demonstrated in policy designed to address these issues using the example of current UK policy, and it is suggested that policy approaches to sustainability should also be a concern of disability studies.     

Migrants' regular army of labour: gender dimensions of the impact of the global economic crisis on migrant labor in Western Europe

The purpose of this article is to remedy the lack of explanatory endeavours concerning the positive performance of female migrant workers during the recent economic crisis in Western Europe. This phenomenon both interrogates the established association between economic downturns and their negative impact on migrant labour in low‐skilled jobs and enriches the theory of the reserve army of labour, which has been applied to understanding the fragile status of migrant workers in Western economies. Secondary analysis of Labor Force Survey (LFS) and OECD data concerning the impact of the crisis on migrant labour shows that women employed in the care‐domestic sector have been affected significantly less than men employed in manufacture and constructions. To explain this evidence, the article proposes a theoretical framework that draws on key concepts and debates in different strands of sociology: the increasing demand for paid care‐domestic work due to the ageing population and the growth of native‐born women's rates of activity; the commodification of care and the state management of migration; the affectivity and spatial fixity of care‐domestic labour. All these factors contribute to configure female migrant labour, mostly employed in the reproductive sector, as a ‘regular’ rather than a reserve army of labour.     

‘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.     

Difficulties in Shifting from Individualistic to Socio-political Policy Regarding Disability in Canada

An individualistic conception of disability has been replaced by a socio-political definition. The socio-political model implies that disability stems from the failure of the social environment to adjust to the needs of people with disabilities rather than from the inability of disabled individuals to adapt to societal demands. This paper will examine the extent to which Canadian policies have changed to embrace this new definition. There has been some progress in policies related to shelter, transportation and recreation. However, policies related to income and employment are still individualistic in nature because policy change in these areas requires a major shift in governmental approach to unemployment and fundamental reform of the Social Assistance system. In a period of high unemployment, people with disabilities are viewed as surplus labour, and the Canadian government has found that high unemployment is politically tolerable. Obstacles to an increase in income support include a strong work ethic, the philosophy that social assistance benefits should be less than could be earned in the work-force, and the private insurance and litigation industries which benefit from the current income system. Other barriers to change are the lack of power of disabled groups and the dominance of professionals.     

Moving the Boundaries of Feminist Social Work Education with Disabled People in the Neoliberal Era

Until recently social work education in Australia has either marginalised or neglected disability by omission. Given the increasing number of disabled people in the community, the teaching of social work within a disability studies emancipatory paradigm as an essential part of the curriculum is long overdue. As many social work educators have suggested, we are at a critical moment in Australia, where the policy environment in which social work is embedded has largely been reframed in line with neoliberal trends. For disabled people, this has meant an ongoing state campaign to diminish disability entitlements, from decreasing disability social security regimes through to the rationalisation of adult disability support and care schemes. Social workers are negotiating the competing demands of these policy constraints alongside the needs of the disabled people they work with. New moral dilemmas have emerged where they are actively faced with the question of ‘who to serve?’.     

The Dearing Report and Students with Disabilities and Learning Difficulties

The movement to promote improved levels of participation from groups under-represented in higher education which occurred between 1980 and 1990 neglected disabled people. The position has been addressed by the national higher education funding councils since 1992 and progress has been made. Therefore, it was surprising to find that, whilst certain social groups were highlighted, nothing was said about disabled people in the terms of reference of Sir Ron Dearing's National Committee of Inquiry. This paper describes attempts made to inform and influence the Committee. Next, it considers the Report itself. First, the recommendations for future policy which are directed specifically towards disabled people are discussed; secondly, the potential implications for disabled people of the general recommendations are explored; and thirdly, the supplementary report on students with disabilities is reviewed. The conclusion provides a brief overview of developments since the Report's publication.     

Precarious lives and resistant possibilities: the labour of people with learning disabilities in times of austerity

This paper draws on feminist and queer philosophers? discussions of precarity and employment, too often absent from disability studies, to explore the working lives of people with learning disabilities in England in a time of austerity. Recent policy shifts from welfare to work welcome more disabled people into the job market. The reality is that disabled people remain under-represented in labour statistics and are conspicuously absent in cultures of work. We live in neoliberal-able times where we all find ourselves precarious. But, people with learning disabilities experience high levels of uncertainty in every aspect of their lives, including work, relationships and community living. Our research reveals an important analytical finding: that when people with learning disabilities are supported in imaginative and novel ways they are able to work effectively and cohesively participate in their local communities (even in a time of cuts to welfare). We conclude by acknowledging that we are witnessing a global politics of precarity and austerity. Our urgent task is to redress the unequal spread of precaritization across our society that risks leaving people with learning disabilities experiencing disproportionately perilous lives. One of our key recommendations is that it makes no economic sense (never mind moral sense) to pull funding from organisations that support people with intellectual disabilities to work.     

The myth of transition: contractualizing disability in the sheltered workshop

This paper investigates notions of transition and independence, as well as the current circumstances that detain countless disabled people in employment endeavors that not only pay meager wages but also cement a lifelong servitude to the workshop. Sheltered workshops exist on the basis and replication of a structure that incarcerates disabled people within vocational-like settings. This paper begins a discussion of the social contract that occurs between the disabled person in the workshop. The workshop is no longer a place of societal liberation that affords the individual the opportunity to learn vocational skills, but rather it has become an institution that creates its own army of workers that will forever be subjected to a life in the workshop because of their disability status.     

'It Won't Change the World But it Turned my Life Around': participants' views on the Personal Advisor Scheme in the New Deal for Disabled People

This article is a response to the largely negative commentary on the New Deal for Disabled People, in this journal and other leading social policy journals. It draws on a recent qualitative study of disabled people who have re-entered the labour force with the assistance of the Personal Advisor Scheme. Whilst it is acknowledged that the New Deal has its limitations and shortcomings, it is argued that the positive aspects of the scheme deserve to be highlighted. Also, it is suggested that the importance of enabling individuals who have experienced the scheme to voice their opinions and perceptions cannot be understated. By listening to the views and attitudes of those who have first hand experience of the scheme, policies and practices can be developed and redefined in ways, which incorporate the needs and views of the users.     

Arbeitslos oder erwerbsunfähig?

An international comparison of unemployment rates suggests a poor performance of the German labour market. Based on comparative analyses for Germany, the Netherlands, France, Denmark, the UK and the United States the paper tries to show that a more sophisticated picture can be drawn by taking additional forms of non-employment (e.g. disability, retirement or out of labour force) into account. For this purpose data from the “European Social Survey” (ESS) and the survey “Citizenship, Involvement and Democracy” collected in 2004 and 2005 is analysed. While “unemployment” plays a dominant role in Germany, people with comparable demographic characteristics and similar health status are increasingly classified as “permanently disabled” in the other countries. The results stress that an international comparison of labour market performance and especially a comparison of the effectiveness of labour market and social policy reforms should not only rely on employment and unemployment rates. Taking alternative forms of non-employment into account can increase our knowledge and understanding of functional differences of labour markets in Europe and the United States.     

Disability in Uzbekistan: when will the social model of disability arrive?

The topic of this article is the analysis of statistical data of the disability situation in Uzbekistan. The number of new registered people has been decreasing since 2000. On one hand the Government accepts various state programmes on population health care improving and the integration of disabled people into the society. On the other hand, authorities begin restrictive policy concerning disabled people. In the conditions of low living standards state pension has a vital importance for disabled people. Therefore, a number of those who can have it are falling.     

Disability and Dependency: origins and futures of 'special needs' housing for disabled people

In this paper we analyse the provision of housing for disabled people in both its historical and ideological contexts. While the recent extension of part M of the Building Regulations to dwellings by the government represents a significant advance towards the inclusion of disabled people, we argue that the shift in funding of public housing from a 'bricks and mortar' subsidy to Housing Benefit potentially creates greater dependency. This amounts to a policy contradiction in which the government is punishing disabled people for being dependent whilst simultaneously being the cause of their dependency. If this issue is not addressed disabled people will continue to remain excluded, albeit within accessible dwellings.     

Barriers to employment as experienced by disabled people: a qualitative analysis in Calgary and Regina,Canada

Public policies stress greater inclusion of disabled people in the labour market and suggest ways to implement accommodative measures to these ends. Often missing from this literature is the experiences of disabled people in labour markets. This article reports results from a qualitative study conducted in 2005 and 2006 consisting of one‐to‐one and focus group interviews with 56 disabled individuals participating in employment training programmes in Calgary and Regina, Canada. Findings suggest the presence of workplace and employer discrimination and labelling as primary factors impeding respondents’ success in securing and maintaining employment in the labour market. The 56 respondents provide strong evidence that perceptions of disability have a greater impact on their inability to maintain and secure employment than does the lack of accommodative practices and measures in the workplace.     

Disability and employment policy in the Israeli welfare state: between exclusion and inclusion

Based on the social model(s) of disability, this article seeks to analyse the historical development of Israeli employment policy toward disabled people during the first decade and a half of its existence (1948–1965). Findings from primary and secondary sources suggest that throughout this period disabled people, mainly immigrants, found themselves at the lowest echelons of Israeli society and the labour market. Furthermore, the Israeli welfare state offers an interesting case study of the gap between a welfare state’s stated adherence to social justice and the more limited, and even contradictory, outcomes of its policies. Our discussion suggests that a valuable way of reframing our findings can be found in the critique of de-commodification as an inadequate concept and in the use of related concepts such as re-commodification and quasi-commodification.