Working with disabilities

Negotiations of closeness and distance in a sheltered workshop during the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

The regulations on distance and hygiene to contain the corona pandemic in 2020 changed daily work practices for many people – including workers with disabilities. Disabled people are considered particularly vulnerable and in need of increased protection against Covid-19 infection; both scientific studies and institutional protection programs made this clear. The article is based on an ethnography in a sheltered workshop in September 2020. Using Michel Foucault’s dispositif analysis and Erving Goffman’s concept of territories of the self, everyday negotiations of closeness and distance are analysed. The research results show how (difficult) it is for practiced and embodied everyday routines to change and how the territories of the self are being renegotiated, sometimes fraught with conflict.