Disabled people and dirty work

Based on a longitudinal case study of the work offered by a Swedish sheltered work organization that can be regarded as ‘dirty’, in the sense that it stigmatizes those people that do it, in this paper I analyze how ‘dirty work’ can be seen as an important yet so far neglected source of the social construction of disability. Specifically, the aim of the paper is to suggest how an individual can become a ‘disabled person’ by doing dirty work. By working on ‘tainted tasks’ people (irrespective of their mental or physical condition) may come to be regarded and even officially labeled as ‘disabled’, i.e. incapacitated and impaired for any ‘normal’ and ‘clean’ character of work.     

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.     

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’.     

Doing Gender Well and Differently in Dirty Work: The Case of Exotic Dancing

This article explores how a group of exotic dancers do gender and manage the stigma associated with their work and identities. We draw upon stigma management strategies from the dirty work literature and illuminate the doing of gender in these strategies. We also contribute to the debate that gender can be done well and differently through simultaneous, multiple enactments of femininity and masculinity. We consider the experiences of 21 exotic dancers working in a chain of UK exotic dancing clubs and conclude that in order to be good at their job, exotic dancers are expected to do gender well, that is, perform exaggerated expressions of femininity. However, we also theorize that for some dirty workers, specifically exotic dancers as sex workers, doing gender well will not be enough to reposition bad girls (bad, dirty work) into good girls (good, clean work). Finally, we propose that doing gender well will have different consequences in different types of work, thereby extending our findings to other dirty work occupations and organizations in general.     

Equal or individual treatment: contesting storylines in needs assessment conversations within Swedish eldercare

This article examines the role of care managers and their work in putting policy into practice in micro-interactions with older people in Swedish eldercare. The care managers assess the individual needs of older people, and decide what type of social care and services will be given. Dilemmas in care management are often related to the gap between needs and resources. The aim was to study the positioning of care managers within different storylines advanced in needs assessment conversations. Positioning theory was applied to study discursive practices and discursive strategies within Swedish eldercare. Audio-recorded needs assessment conversations among care managers, older people and their relatives at care planning meetings in connection with hospital discharge were analyzed. Two overall positions were identified for care managers—as ‘professional experts’ and as ‘organizational representatives’—allowing the care managers to maneuver within two contesting storylines: ‘distribution of scarce eldercare resources based on the principles of eligibility and equal treatment’ and ‘older people entitled to eldercare according to their own perceived individual needs’. For social work, the results showed the importance of discussing how care managers might move towards exercising greater professional autonomy, becoming less dependent on their position in the organization.     

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.     

Women Constructing Masculinity in Voluntary Firefighting

Within gender studies, research and theorizing have used archetypal ‘masculine’ occupations to explore how masculinity is accomplished and practised in social interaction. In contrast, little work has explored how masculinity is constructed in the voluntary sector. In this paper, we address this gap by exploring how masculinity is constructed and experienced by women volunteers who are active firefighters in rural and regional Victoria. Firefighting is widely recognized as a non‐traditional occupation for women and they are underrepresented as volunteers as well as paid employees. We explore masculinity from the perspective of women volunteers because this can enhance our understanding of masculinity as a relational achievement as well as help to identify practices that they experience as problematic. Our research shows how voluntary work can afford a distinct range of resources for the ‘doing’ of gender and how this reflects the specific organizational and geographical contexts in which such volunteering occurs.     

‘To Do Or Not To Do (Gender)’ and Changing the Sex‐Typing of British Theatre

Concepts of doing, and undoing, gender have become increasingly prevalent within studies of sex‐typed work. However, these concepts, as currently figured and applied, contain a significant analytical lacuna: they tend not to register changes in the sex‐typing of work. In this study we engage this research gap by addressing the changing sex‐typing of British theatre — specifically, the shift from female‐dominated amateur to male‐dominated professional theatre work. We draw upon and develop concepts of doing and undoing gender to understand changes in the sex‐typing of work. In so doing, we explain how spatially and temporally differentiated ways of doing ‘male’ and ‘female’ become implicated in how people make sense of, and enact, the changing spaces and times of ‘amateur/female’ ‘professional/male’ work. Our analysis of theatre work suggests that, despite recent criticisms of their wider significance, concepts of un/doing gender are useful to understand broader changes in the sex‐typing of work. Thus, it also appears possible to (un)change such sex‐typings by undoing gender. However, our analysis suggests that such subversive acts remain ineffective, unless those involved in such gendered undoings engage with, rather than renounce, the gendered doings that help enact the changing sex‐typing of work.     

Visualizing ‘community’: an experiment in participatory photography among Kurdish diasporic workers in London

Most accounts of research methods in academic journals give an impression that research progresses in an orderly, logical and linear manner. Yet, in reality it is often more ‘messy’ than we admit. This paper reports on an experiment on the use of visual photographic methods in a study of Kurdish migrant workers in London who have had problems at work. The aim was to understand the type of problems workers faced and how they attempted to solve or deal with the issues they encountered. We were interested in the extent to which workers looked to local communities for support and if or how their identity impacted on the actions they took. The use of participant‐generated photography developed while the research was in progress and was utilized in addition to individual and group interviews in order to explore if this was helpful (to us and to research participants) in explaining issues, such as identity and ‘community’, which can often be difficult to verbalize or articulate. As a first foray into incorporating visual methods we struggled at first with ways to explain to participants the type of data we wanted, before learning that it was important to ‘lose control’ and allow participants to ‘speak’ for themselves using the lens of their cameras. The paper explores theoretical justifications that influenced our approach in our first attempt at participatory photography. It will look at the use of images constructed by research participants and how these were used in focus group situations to explore how or whether individual meanings of work, identity, community and belonging have resonance in the wider Kurdish community.     

Young subjectivities and affective labour in the service economy

Post-Fordist employment is characterised by the demand for new forms of labour in which workers are expected to make personal investments in their work and to mobilise their embodied subjectivities in the practice of labour. Whilst employment insecurity is well documented in the sociology of youth, theoretical development in this area has yet to contend with the role of changes in the nature of labour itself in the production of youth. This paper draws on theories of labour under post-Fordism to explore the practice of ‘affective labour’ amongst young people performing ‘front of house’ bar work in a large metropolitan service economy. The paper theorises the role of youth subjectivities – including capacities for relationality and leisure, gendered embodiment, and tastes – in the practice of contemporary labour. The paper describes how young people doing bar work contribute to the production of affective atmospheres, or sensations of ease, pleasure and enjoyment that are offered to clientele of boutique bars. In this, we suggest that affective labour mobilises young subjectivities at work in ways that are currently unrecognised within youth studies. The paper concludes by suggesting a new research agenda that goes beyond the existing focus on youth transitions through employment to explore how youth is produced as part of the social dynamics of post-Fordist labour.     

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.     

Service user or service provider? How social work and human services students integrate dual identities

Students studying undergraduate social work and human services (SWHS) degrees may have used health and human service agencies, before and during their university education. Using services provides them with insights that are useful for professional practice. However, this article identifies that they experience a fear of shame and stigma revealing this during their studies. In examining interview data from 15 undergraduate SWHS students they recounted how they integrated their experience of being a service user into their professional development. It is argued that insider knowledge of services can provide them with valuable insights for practice. Students spoke about how positive experiences motivated them to study and provided models of effective practice, exemplifying its potential power to assist those in need. Negative experiences of service use can also be beneficial for learning what ‘not to do’. Although students found the experience of service use invaluable, they felt it was never acknowledged within the curriculum. Consequently, students interviewed in this study identified service users as ‘others’. They feared disclosing their own use of services due to perceived shame and stigma. Failing to provide opportunity for students to integrate their service user experience into their professional development creates a false dichotomy which does not acknowledge the intersection of these dual identities.     

Performative identity regulation in rehabilitative home care work: an analysis of how experts’ embodied mediation of the managerial ideology ‘activates’ new frontline identities

ABSTRACT

This article explores how therapists when introduced as new so-called frontline ‘experts’ in home care work, become both discursive and embodied mediators for the managerial ideology of rehabilitation, and how their presence regulates the care aides’ subjectivities at work. We show how the managerial discourse of rehabilitation mobilizes the care aides to transform their identity from traditional nurturing to rehabilitation, as a result of promoting the latter as more professional. While the traditional managers/nurses promote the identity transfer through more classic discursive regulation at a distance from ‘the office’, the therapists do so through what we label performative regulation. Performative regulation is exercised by the therapists performing the desired role at the frontline and thus embodies the ideal and transfers it by embodied practices, not directives. With this notion of performative regulation, the article emphasizes the material, physical, embodied and performative dimensions of professional identity regulation.     

Comparative research in social work: methodological considerations using the ‘diachronic–synchronic’ distinction in linguistics

Although there has been a significant increase in the number of comparative studies in social work, there has, to date, been a deficit in terms of methodological discussion and development in this domain. In this article, a linked pair of methodological concepts (‘diachronic’–‘synchronic’), drawn from linguistics, and often used in comparative research studies in the humanities and social sciences, has been applied to the field of comparative research in social work. The use of this distinction in comparative research of social work contributes to the progress of social work as a research-based scientific discipline. The distinction also offers the potential for the development of research methodology in the field of comparative social work research.     

The challenges of a hidden disability: Social work practice in the field of traumatic brain injury

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has become an important area for social work practice. Children and adults sustaining TBI often undergo hospitalisation, rehabilitation and face the prospect of lifelong cognitive and psychosocial impairments. Families are profoundly affected by the consequences of the injury. TBI is a ‘hidden disability’ because there are typically no physical markers indicating a person has brain damage. This paper aims to provide some guidelines for social work practice in the area, in particular, outlining options for social work interventions at individual, family, community, service system and policy levels. Social workers need to acquire specialised knowledge about brain injury, reformulate traditional models of grief counselling to address the adjustment challenges and utilise community education and service innovation to address the social stigma and reduced level of community participation associated with brain damage. Finally, social workers aim to nurture a sense of hope in the face of the tragedy.     

The Social Model of Disability as a Threshold Concept: Troublesome Knowledge and Liminal Spaces in Social Work Education

This paper draws on the notion of threshold concepts to consider the way in which disability studies has the capacity to transform social work students' understandings of disability and therefore influence their practice. Most students enter social work programmes with the professed aim of ‘helping’ and so to be confronted by an approach (the social model of disability) and a body of research and theorising (disability studies) that challenges their taken-for-granted assumption that social work practice is ‘helpful’ is unsettling and can lead to resistance. The purpose of this article is to interrogate practice on a social work programme where a commitment to social model practice is explicated and embedded with the purpose of identifying what it is we want students to ‘get’, whether they find this troubling and how they can be effectively supported as they move through liminal spaces in social work education.     

‘Dirt,Death and Danger? I Don't Recall Any Adverse Reaction …’: Masculinity and the Taint Management of Hospital Private Security Work

Drawing on an ethnographic narrative written by one of the authors following his resignation from a hospital private security team in Ottawa, Canada and interview data gleaned from eight security men (all former colleagues), this article explores how hospital private security officers draw on discourses of masculinity to navigate the ‘dirty’ boundaries of their work, and to preserve their alpha‐guard statuses as controlled, autonomous and authoritative subjects. We found that hospital guards manage and deflect taint status by emphasizing their resiliency, emotional detachment and enthusiasm towards morbid, disturbing and dangerous tasks. Guards who seek to challenge these components of the job may be subject to gender harassment and reprisal from other guards, senior security officials and nursing staff. Overall, these narratives call attention to the necessity of hospital training programmes, de‐briefing exercises and best‐communication practices that promote the physical and emotional well‐being of persons who engage in intensive forms of dirty work.     

‘Recovery work’ and ‘magic’ among long‐term mental health service‐users

Based on an extended period of qualitative research with mental health service‐users in north‐east England, this article considers the various forms of ‘magical work’ and ‘recovery work’ that emerge in the lives of people living with severe mental health problems. Given the now sizeable body of literature which seeks to problematize traditional conceptual boundaries of work, the article asks to what extent these hidden and unusual work‐forms might also be considered legitimate members of the category. Rather than argue for the expansion of the construct to accommodate these activities, the paper attempts simply to problematize the extent to which so‐called ‘mad’ forms of work are irresolvably different to more conventional forms of occupation. In challenging notions of the psychiatric patient as inevitably inactive, new vocabularies for service‐user work are explored. Concluding remarks are also directed to recent policy debates concerning ‘back‐to‐work’ welfare reform for long‐term out of work service‐users.     

Working mothers,injury and embodied care work

In this article, we examine how mothers respond when injury interrupts maternal care, using the lens of embodied care, which we conceptualize as a form of ‘body work’. We draw on findings from a qualitative research project with two organizations in Australia that help people with injuries to return to work, examining the experiences of workers who are also mothers of dependent children. Mothers' inability to care for children during periods of injury was a significant concern for our interviewees; constraints on physical labour and physical affection were particularly troubling, indicating the importance of embodied maternal caregiving to maternal roles. Yet, while these mothers inhabited the spheres of paid work and unpaid care work simultaneously, service providers did not consider embodied care work or its relevance to injured women's ongoing needs for support. While our findings reflect the experiences of injured women, they also suggest the need for a materialist analysis of the ways that both paid work and care activities are deeply enmeshed in and through the bodies of those doing the work. Employers and service organizations still fail to recognize maternal ‘body work’, and this may be typical of social attitudes more widely.     

Associations of eldercare and competing demands with health and work outcomes among manufacturing workers

Employees juggling eldercare and work report work–family conflicts and poor health-related outcomes, but little is known about eldercare demands (ECDs) in the context of competing demands in the manufacturing workforce. This study determines how ECDs vary by age, gender, income, and job category, and how ECDs and competing demands are associated with health-related and work-related outcomes, among manufacturing workers. Employees from six manufacturing companies completed questionnaires. ECDs were defined as providing assistance to an adult aged 65 and older due to disability or chronic illness; those with ECDs were asked how many care-hours per week and whether assistance included personal care. Workers over age 45 were more likely than younger workers to report ECDs. After adjusting for competing demands and socio-demographic characteristics, ECDs were associated with greater depressive symptoms and family-to-work conflict (FWC), providing 5 or more hours of eldercare weekly was associated with greater depressive symptoms, and providing personal care was associated with greater FWC.