TOWARDS A DIS/ABLED NORM: CHANGING DISCOURSES ON THE WORK INCLUSION OF DISABLED PEOPLE

Abstract

The rhetoric of inclusivity increasingly dominates discourses on disabled people in Singapore. Yet, there remains serious underemployment of disabled people, pointing to a disjuncture between articulation of the inclusive vision and practical experiences. This thesis seeks to understand the practical possibilities of work inclusion for disabled people, through an ethnographic study of the processes in facilitating training and employment at Dignity Kitchen. I argue that Dignity Kitchen seeks to create a dis/abled norm, which builds on the capacities of disabled people to challenge and to reshape dominant ways of knowing abilities, in order to facilitate their work inclusion. Its reorganisation of work to be inclusive demonstrates the potential for an alternative norm that proposes broadly beneficial improvements to society. Yet, through analysing both the possibilities and limitations to prompt changes in the larger society, I also highlight how criteria of work inclusion are negotiated to varied extents, for us to dis – to trouble – dominant definitions of abilities to varied extents. Insights from my study show that it remains important for work abilities to meet dominant industry standards to maximise potential for employment, while dominant labour structures favouring able-bodied/minded normality continue to marginalise disabled people. I conclude by pointing to how such difficulties of negotiating inclusivity reveal fundamental societal conditions that not only have implications for disabled people, but that concern the standards by which any individual is judged and valued as a member to be included in society.