![Sample our Health and Social Care journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5938/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Health-Social-Care.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This article contributes to research examining the work situations of employees with disabilities. This is performed by demonstrating how able-bodied norms affect the work lives of employees with cerebral palsy in Danish work organizations. Thus, this article investigates how able-bodied managers and employees talk about their co-workers with cerebral palsy and examines the narratives of diversity among able-bodied managers and employees when they discuss the work situation of their colleagues with cerebral palsy. The empirical point of departure is 6 weeks of participant observations in 2 work organizations along with interviews conducted in 13 work organizations with 19 managers and 43 colleagues who work with an employee with cerebral palsy on a daily basis. The article finds two dominating narratives regarding diversity that have to do with being either ‘different but the same’ or ‘just different’. These two narratives relate to the highly praised value of equality in Scandinavia.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Nanna Mik-Meyer is Professor at The Danish National Centre for Social Research (SFI). Mik-Meyer’s research includes studies of encounters between citizens and professionals in welfare organizations as well as encounters between employees and employers in work organizations. She has a particular focus on processes of otherness, power and gender in these encounters. Mik-Meyer is the author of Power and Welfare: Understanding Citizens’ Encounters with State Welfare (with Kaspar Villadsen, Routledge, 2013). Her recent work has appeared in journals such as Human Relations, Work, Employment & Society, Gender, Work & Organization, Sociology of Health and Illness, Social Theory and Health and Journal of Political Power.