Job opportunities and shortages for people with disabilities. Inclusion is possible?

Abstract

The focus on the complexity of the world of work leads to reflections, analyses, and observations and at the same time, raises ever new and challenging issues, considerations, and questions, mainly when the discourse refers to persons with disabilities. The theoretical contribution intends to investigate the human and ethical questions that the issue of work and/or its lack of it poses concerning diversity. Work is understood as a capability to which everyone is entitled and which the entire human community tends to guarantee, using ad hoc norms, concerns in a pregnant way the evolution of the processes of social inclusion of persons with disabilities. The lack of employment, on the contrary, can be considered a capability deprivation, a failure to initiate the empowerment processes that, in addition to reducing the generative prospects of the right to work, depreciates the value of differences and diversities. This drift is reduced by the testimony of some significant and positive experiences of labor inclusion implemented in Italy, which can combat social exclusion and reduce some policymakers’ paternalistic-assistance approach.