Situating disability. The recognition of “disabled workers” in France

AbstractThis article concerns the issues surrounding the “recognition of the quality of disabled workers” in France, from both applicants’ and decision-makers’ points of view. While the latter strive to make “disabled workers” into a sub-category of disabled persons, applicants’ positions are often more ambivalent. In speaking of their experience, many of them use the notion of “situation of disability”, a term quite common in current French debates about disability that was not retained in the French law of 2005: even if they are bothered by a functional difficulty in certain professional situations, many still do not think of themselves as disabled persons. To understand these differences, we propose returning to the foundations of French employment policy in favour of disabled persons and exploring the variety of issues that dominate claims to recognition, without forgetting the essential interface role played by professionals in the field of disability. Our analysis is based on a field study on both sides of the counter at Departmental houses of people with disabilities, with people working in the institutions and those requesting recognition of the quality of disabled worker