Understanding disability in the labor dimension: Unresolved debates that influence exclusionary practices

This document supports the idea that disability, as a concept and set of values, is a social invention that has been built over time in the “world of life” and has served awkwardly trying to explain what “apparently seems different.” We present the results of a hermeneutical research about debates in term of paradigms and models of disability (and evolution), in the context of hiring people with disabilities in the labor market in Latin America. A interpretive methodological approach is used and based on literature research; discovering that two important trends dominate and influence the practices of exclusion of people with disabilities in Latin American labor market: the paradigms and models focused on the “deficiency” (associated with disability as conditioning inherent in the person) and those who are focused on “recognition of diversity and talents development” (associated with disability as extrinsic conditioning to the person). These two trends are developed in this article and a methodological approach is proposed to identify how these trends may influence labor practices in order to avoid exclusion opening lines of future research efforts.