Governing the Un-Employable: Exploring the Biopolitical Technology of Coding Disability at the Swedish Public Employment Service

Abstract

The article explores the client perspective of receiving disability codes at the Swedish Public Employment Service. Interviews with individuals who for various reasons and on different initiatives have accepted disability codes at the PES have been analyzed by guidance of the governmentality perspective and the literature on medicalization processes. Findings suggest that there are various organizational interests in the codes. The study also indicates that present labor market measures entail processes of subjectification in the name of ‘employability’ as a normative discourse. Moreover, the article suggests that clients with neuropsychiatric diagnoses distinguish between their diagnoses and the disability codes they have received from the PES. This seems to be in line with an ongoing re-negotiation of ‘disability’ within the neurobiological discourse related to the so called ‘attention disorders’. As a result, the article shows how conflicts may be spurred between clients and caseworkers at the PES when diagnoses, such as ADHD, are to be processed into disability codes.