Insertion et maintien dans l'emploi des personnes en situation de handicap en France

The common attitude towards disabled persons tends to be either the refusal of otherness or its acceptance. For thirty years, as written in the Law, solidarity is a duty that consists, for example, in the social integration by the work. In this context, the employment of handicapped workers has become an obligation. A complex series of either constraining or incentive measures has been implemented, to 'equalize opportunities'. Considering disability as a pool of three notions – deficiency, incapacity and disadvantage – has markedly contributed to the understanding of the concept. Such terminology should however be replaced by more positive words: efficiency, capacity for work, social participation. Although all medical fields play a role in favouring this participation, three types of practitioners are more specifically involved in the employment of disabled persons: the physician of the technical commission for vocational guidance and insertion for the assessment of work incapacity; the physician of the social insurance system, and the Occupational Medicine physician for the evaluation of the worker's ability to fulfil the post requirements. Such evaluation is both medical and social since it has to deal with various forms of social discrimination.