We welcome all applicants - : A qualitative case study on the recruitment of people with physical impairments to highly qualified jobs

This bachelor thesis is a case study that deals with how Umeå kommun works with recruitment and accessibility. The purpose was to understand how recruitment processes for highly qualified services can create inclusion or exclusion of people with physical impairments and how accessibility work can affect this. To answer this, we’ve used Braun and Clarkes six steps of thematic analysis, Carol Bacchi’spolicy analysis method “What is the problem represented to be?” and a social constructionist perspective. The result was, firstly, that the organization works with standardized methods, which research shows reduces the risk of subjectivity in recruitment processes. There are, however, aspectsthat can be improved and a critical perspective is required to raise awareness of biases in the organization that can create disabilities out of impairments. Furthermore, much emphasis is placed onpersonal (desirable) characteristics which, together with a narrow and sometimes unclear profile ofrequirements, can have an exclusionary effect on people with physical impairments. Secondly, there aredifficulties in the implementation of programs and plans with the purpose to improve the situation forpeople with impairments in general, which may be partly due to lack of knowledge and partly due to a discrepancy between how decision-makers think something works and how it actually works. Thus,accessibility work does not affect either the recruitment process or the inclusion or exclusion of people with physical impairments in any other way than that it may have a positive normative effect only in its existence. However, many of the formulations in policies may rather contribute to reproducing negative prejudices and perceptions about people with impairments, and thus create more exclusion inrecruitment