Putting participation into practice:An ethnographic study of sheltered workshops in the Netherlands and Portugal

Full participation is recognized as fundamental for the inclusion and wellbeing of people with intellectual disabilities. Only few studies have identified subjective meanings of participation from the perspective of people with intellectual disabilities themselves. Three cross-cutting themes that arise in the few studies that have are choice, social interaction and making a contribution. This ethnographic study of sheltered workshops in the Netherlands and Portugal takes this body of work a step further by investigating to what extent the ideal of participation is put into practice in such a way that it indeed contributes to these three elements. By including contrasting cases, it scrutinizes different ways of institutionalizing participation and the consequences this bears for the lived experiences of people with mild intellectual disabilities. The results show that there is a tension between choice on the one hand, and social interaction and making a contribution on the other

Putting participation into practice:An ethnographic study of sheltered workshops in the Netherlands and Portugal

Full participation is recognized as fundamental for the inclusion and wellbeing of people with intellectual disabilities. Only few studies have identified subjective meanings of participation from the perspective of people with intellectual disabilities themselves. Three cross-cutting themes that arise in the few studies that have are choice, social interaction and making a contribution. This ethnographic study of sheltered workshops in the Netherlands and Portugal takes this body of work a step further by investigating to what extent the ideal of participation is put into practice in such a way that it indeed contributes to these three elements. By including contrasting cases, it scrutinizes different ways of institutionalizing participation and the consequences this bears for the lived experiences of people with mild intellectual disabilities. The results show that there is a tension between choice on the one hand, and social interaction and making a contribution on the other

Meer kans in en uit de bijstand

Dit essay richt zich op de vraag hoe de bijstand rechtvaardiger kan: hoe kunnen baankansen voor bijstandsgerechtigden vergroot worden en hoe kan het bestaan in de bijstand rechtvaardiger? Onder rechtvaardigheid verstaan we, in navolging van politiek filosofe Nancy Fraser: herverdeling, erkenning en vertegenwoordiging. Op basis van recent onderzoek naar de bijstand, gebundeld in het boek Streng maar onrechtvaardig (Kampen, Sebrechts, Knijn, & Tonkens, 2020), laten we zien hoe de bijstand op al deze drie aspecten van rechtvaardigheid tekortschiet. Vervolgens bespreken we verschillende opties voor een rechtvaardiger bestaan in en uit de bijstand die elkaar wederzijds aanvullen: basisinkomen, verhogen van de bijstandsuitkering, individualisering van het recht op bijstand, opleidingskansen, meer zekerheid op de arbeidsmarkt, arbeidspools en basisbanen