Creating the Disabled Person: A Case Study of Recruitment to “Work-for-the-Disabled” Programs

This paper reports on how the National Employment Office in Sweden creates the disabled person by recruiting them to work-for-the-disabled programs. As a rule, job applicants who are classified as “disabled” do not consider themselves as such, but they are encouraged to become disabled by adopting the organization's norms, rules and routines, which specify what is expected of them as disabled if they are to be assisted to find a job. Disability is, in other words, a learned social role enacted in a particular organizational context. It is argued that the full implications of a radical constructionist approach to the problem of disability have not yet been tapped in the standard sociological conversation on disability. The potential of society to formally enact anyone as disabled, irrespective of his or her medical and biological condition, raises a number of important social and political questions.