Real distributive and emancipatory dilemmas within disability policy regimes : comparative perspectives with a focus on Switzerland

Abstract

Disability policy is an important policy field. However, it exhibits many contradictions and poses dilemmas. The central dilemma is that epistemic classifications often bring negative effects, but these, in turn, are necessary to provide targeted support and redistribution. The objective of this dissertation is to shed light on social policies, social services, and educational transition schemes in the area of disability policy. Disability policy regimes are assumed to comprise policies that structure reality in education, work, and care arrangements and govern disability and disablement. To investigate the different social realities of disability policy, the author has chosen a comparative perspective with a special focus on Switzerland. The dissertation employs ontological explorations, secondary data analyses, and comparative case studies. The results of the dissertation allow, on the one hand, the classification of current Swiss disability policies in comparison to other Western countries. In doing so, policies at the interfaces between the welfare state and the labor market and between the welfare state and care and support arrangements are elucidated and rendered more comprehensible. On the other hand, by drawing on discourses of comparative welfare state research and disability studies, the results of the dissertation allow the case of Switzerland to be included in an academic field of discourse and a body of literature. The dissertation is framed by critical realism, which, in addition to its philosophy of science, also provides a very suitable ontology of emergentist materialism.