Rehabilitation Through Work? Disability and the Productivist Road to Participation in the East of Germany1

Abstract

Drawing on secondary data and interviews, this paper traces the economic and socio-cultural roots of contemporary policies to promote full participation of people with disabilities in mainstream German society. Underlying such policies and related practices has been a concept of rehabilitation through work that evolved within a context of labour shortages, Protestant work ethics, and German welfarism at the beginning of the 20th century and that has yielded rather ambiguous consequences. I argue this elective affinity among economic, cultural, and socio-political imperatives has undermined potentials for integration and self-actualization of people with disabilities. Not only was rehabilitation subordinated to a productivist logic and provoked forms of ill-paid or even forced labour; rehabilitation policies and measures have also been part of a system of social governance that effectively helped to segregate the “able” from the “unable” and that promulgated an ethos of productivism. Significantly, this essentially utilitarian ethos – which rendered health and rehabilitation into a social obligation and valued each wo/man according to his/her fitness and motivation to contribute to socio-economic development – evolved within capitalism but was equally pronounced in East Germany under state-socialist rule. Contrary to the egalitarian principles of both “socialist humanism” and “Western enlightenment”, policies and practices trans-societally focussed on the promotion of those who could – potentially at least – contribute to the regime of industrial production. As the example of East Germany demonstrates, social participation through paid work remains incomplete, at best, and provokes further segregation – even in times of severe labour shortages. The paper concludes that notwithstanding contemporary rhetoric, rehabilitation through work has remained a central pillar of contemporary welfare policies. In times of unbroken structural unemployment, the productivist paradigm and ensuing policies have become increasingly problematic – not only for the inclusion of people with disabilities. Experiences with the productivist modes of participation and with rehabilitation in East Germany suggest a post-productivist paradigm of inclusion that seeks participation beyond paid work.