To be a hard-working citizen：An institutional　ethnography study of the employment discourse for people with disability

The purpose of this study, based on the author’s personal experiences of disjuncture in her professional career, is to explore reasons for the employment promotion measures’ failure to improve the career situation of persons with severe disabilities. Drawing upon institutional ethnography, the author portrayed the actors involved in the process, and analyzed factors influencing those actors’ decisions. The aim is to disclose why, even with so many employment promotion measures, persons with disabilities are still trapped in low-paid and low-skilled jobs. The author argued in her analysis that：(1) the government, the education and the professional system promote an image of hard-working citizens and they persuade families with children with disabilities to make decisions meeting this social expectation;(2) due to the lack of and/or the unaffordable social services, those families work hard to follow the arrangement by schools and professionals;(3) the experts and professionals influence families’ decisions because of the deep trust in them by the families plus the persuasiveness they demonstrate. However, the employment services providers have been constrained by outsourcing contracts, which produce only low-skilled jobs for the disabled jobseekers for limited working periods. The social expectation imposed on persons with disabilities were further intensified by these actors working closely with one another. The whole process hence continues to exclude people with disabilities from mainstream labor markets rather than to promote the inclusion and participation.