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“You Won’t Tell That You Have Schizophrenia, Right? You Should Say You Have a Small Depression”: Organizational Narratives of “Adjusted” Workers with Disabilities and the Rhetoric of Reassurance in France

ISBN: 978-1-83909-144-5, eISBN: 978-1-83909-143-8

Publication date: 25 November 2019

Abstract

Purpose

This chapter explores the development of organizational narratives of identities for embodying the qualified jobseeker with disabilities in the French job market.

Methods/Approach

While the concept of “organizational narratives of identities” has primarily been used to study the access to services to individuals with “troubled identities,” my study looks at how organizational narratives are shaped in labor market intermediation for the professional integration of workers with disabilities.

Findings

In this context, fitting the right formula story goes beyond embodying the morally “deserving” target population in order to encompasses corporate-related expectations, such as demonstrating resilience and grit, as well as disclosure-related expectations, that navigates the contradictory injunction of the French antidiscrimination system to both demonstrate a commitment to diversity and to remain indifferent to differences.

Implications/Value

This chapter highlights the ways in which the cultural narratives surrounding disabled identities, workers’ identities, and the French cultural ideology of “indifference to differences” were translated into specific recruitment advice on the job market, as well as into organizational changes that favored the creation of a disability-friendly buffer zone in corporations: the activist disability manager. The chapter also shows how widely circulating cultural narratives shape, and are shaped by, organizational policies and procedures that can in turn shape personal experiences in the workforce.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

I sincerely want to thank members of the editorial and peer review team for their support and guidance in editing and developing this chapter. I also want to thank the Society for the Study of Social Problems, which is a very supportive and empowering community to develop research and support young scholars and activists.

Citation

Buchter, L. (2019), "“You Won’t Tell That You Have Schizophrenia, Right? You Should Say You Have a Small Depression”: Organizational Narratives of “Adjusted” Workers with Disabilities and the Rhetoric of Reassurance in France", New Narratives of Disability (Research in Social Science and Disability, Vol. 11), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 93-105. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-354720190000011011

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited