Ambivalent disclosures – job consultants’ experiences with the impact of diagnoses on psychiatry users' labour market participation

Abstract

Differentiations are necessary and legitimate in the allocation of labour power in a differentiated society. They contribute to the utilization of labour power and to the quality of individuals’ working lives. Differentiations are also part of confl icts over distribution of resources and privileges and they can ground discrimination. This article focuses on the contradictory function of psychiatric diagnoses in supported employment for psychiatry users. The vantage point is job consultants’ work with individual placement and support. The goal of the article is, fi rstly, to show empirically, how the differentiation of psychiatry users through their diagnoses creates ambivalences among the job consultants. Secondly, the goal is to create a theoretically substantiated understanding of labour market participation for psychiatry users that can explain the ambivalences regarding the disclosure of the psychiatric diagnoses. By use of Nancy Fraser’s concept of bivalent collectivities, it is shown how the decision to disclose diagnoses positions psychiatry users and job consultants. This has consequences for the job consultants’ use of knowledge, participation and status in the recruitment process – and ultimately for their possibilities to integrate psychiatry users on the labour market.