Constructing positive identities in ableist workplaces: Disabled employees’ discursive practices engaging with the discourse of lower productivity

Abstract

This article explores how disabled workers engage with the ableist discourse of disability as lower productivity in constructing positive identities in the workplace. Disabled employees inhabit a contradictory discursive position: as disabled individuals, they are discursively constructed for what they are unable to do, whereas as employees they are constituted as human resources and expected to be able to produce and create value. Our discourse analysis of 30 in-depth interviews with disabled employees identifies three types of discursive practices through which they construct positive workplace identities: (1) practices contesting the discourse of lower productivity as commonly defined; (2) practices contesting the discourse of lower productivity by redefining productivity; and (3) practices reaffirming the discourse of lower productivity yet refusing individual responsibility for it. The study advances the disability literature by highlighting how disabled speakers sustain positive workplace identities despite the negative institutionalized expectations of lower productivity both by challenging and reproducing ableism as an organizing principle.