Originally published here.

Work is a critical issue in Disability Studies. In/ability to do productive labour has been crucial to definitions of disability in many cultures, past and present. As the 2011 World Health Organization World Report on Disabilities noted, despite the fact that almost all jobs can be performed by disabled people , provided that the work environment is supportive, the employment rates of working-age disabled people fall behind their non-disabled peers in developed and developing countries alike.1 Productivity norms, discrimination and prejudice in the workplace, and disincentives to work produced by benefit systems, all affect disabled people's working lives and opportunities (WHO, 2011: 235).

Barriers that prevent or limit access to paid work determine disabled people's economic and social status, yet studying the relationship between disability and work raises wider issues. The beliefs that work is good for an individual's well-being, and that it helps maintain social order, pre-date industrial capitalism. In the early modern period, these ideas justified punitive measures against 'sturdy beggars' and stimulated the development of hospitals whose purpose was to return the 'sick and lame' to productive usefulness (Borsay, 1998; Turner, 2012). In modern neo-liberal economic systems, work helps to construct a person's identity as an adult, capable person by emphasising a link between income and autonomy. Work is not merely an economic concern; it is a political and cultural factor central to models of citizenship.

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