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Introduction
The United States has been recognised as the birthplace of the disability rights
movement and disability rights laws (Burke & Barnes, 2018). Despite this laudable
status, the United States has struggled to impart full social citizenship rights to indi-
viduals with disabilities, especially in the context of employment. According to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics (2022), 33.6% of the disabled population (aged 16–64)
is employed compared with 76% of non-disabled people. In an effort to address
the social exclusion of its citizens with disabilities from the labour market over the
past 50 years, the American welfare state has enacted a litany of federal legislation
to prohibit discrimination in employment and the job application process against
individuals with disabilities:
• Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act (1974)
• Sections 501 and 503 of the Rehabilitation Act (1973)
• Civil Service Reform Act (1978)
• Titles I and II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990)
• Section 188 of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (2014)
In fact, “the development of disability policy is so intimately linked to the devel-
opment of the American welfare state that it is difcult to disentangle the two”
(Pettinicchio, 2019, p. 1). Nonetheless, despite a strong motivation towards the
pursuit of the ideals of citizenship and equality, along with the provision of eco-
nomic and social security to individuals with disabilities, there is a lack of consensus
on the ameliorative effect of legislation on access to meaningful employment for
this population.
Based on their reviews of empirical studies that have attempted to measure the
impact of antidiscrimination laws on the employment of people with disabilities,
Button et al. (2016) concluded the following:
The empirical evidence of the effects of disability discrimination laws on the
labor market outcomes of individuals with disabilities is very mixed. Some
studies nd that laws have a negative effect (DeLeire, 2000; Acemoglu &
5 Social exclusion and disability
Exploring the role of ingroup/
outgroup dynamics in employment
Jaskirat Kohli and Janikke Solstad Vedeler
DOI: 10.4324/9781003347279-7
78 Jaskirat Kohli and Janikke Solstad Vedeler
Angrist, 2001; Jolls & Prescott, 2004), others generally argue for no effects
(Beegle & Stock, 2003; Houtenville & Burkhauser, 2004; Hotchkiss, 2004),
and some show a positive effect (Kruse & Schur, 2003; Button, 2017).
(p. 4)
Because of the minimal impact of antidiscrimination legislation on the employ-
ment of individuals with disabilities, liberal theories of social citizenship have
received criticism, as discussed in Chapter 2 by Falch-Eriksen. Generally, critics
have asserted that liberalist approaches to citizenship sacrice human diversity
in pursuit of an abstract notion of citizenship. Young (1989) asserted that lib-
eralism and its ideal of a universal humanity that does not take into account
social group differences is oppressive, while Waldschmidt and Sépulchre (2019)
went as far as to deem citizenship an ableist ideology “because it operates under
the assumption that citizens ought to be healthy and exercise productive social
roles” (p. 27). Furthermore, in place of social liberal theories of citizenship, crit-
ics have often heralded a human rights approach that “proposes that there are a
set of rights that all people have simply on the basis of their humanity” (Carey,
2009, p. 226).
Whether citizenship is theorised using social liberal ideals or human rights ide-
als, theories function at an abstract level. Although there is an abundance of litera-
ture evaluating the pros and cons of various citizenship theories, there is a paucity
of research investigating how such theories are operationalised and carried out.
As evidenced by the plethora of legislation that has been enacted but has been
inadequate in its impact, theories and laws are limited. As Carey (2009, p. 214)
poignantly stated, “Rights are human constructions established and negotiated in
real-world contexts . . . even when a law substantiates a right, the right does not
exist as a neat guarantee . . . [and] is negotiated within the contexts of micro-
relationships.” Citizenship rights, like most rights, cannot be actualised by the right
bearer without the consent of the right bestower.
In the context of employment rights, it is the employers and specic employ-
ees involved with recruitment and hiring who play the role of right bestowers. We
would argue that it is the attitudes and perceptions of these individuals that have
a greater inuence on hiring practices and decisions than legal mandates and poli-
cies. Although Chapter 4 by Østerud et al. has explored this phenomenon in its
examination of how Norwegian employers’ attitudes towards disability impacted
the hiring of individuals with disabilities as the state employers implemented the
Inclusion Dugnad (Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation, 2018) – a
governmental policy that sought to increase the employment rates of workers with
disabilities by establishing a quota – this chapter focuses on the role that social
psychology plays in shaping employers’ attitudes and perceptions of workers with
disabilities.
Banting and Kymlicka (2017) noted that citizenship rights are tied to group
membership and that social rights are specically tied to ingroup/outgroup afli-
ations. Given that rights are socially mediated, it is imperative to investigate the
relational aspect of the employment and hiring of individuals with disabilities.
Social exclusion and disability 79
Therefore, this chapter seeks to explore the micro-relationship between employers
and individuals with disabilities as it attempts to understand how the former’s un-
derstanding and interpretation of antidiscrimination laws, coupled with their view
of disability, impacts the hiring of the latter. Specically, the question that under-
girds this research is as follows: What is the impact of ingroup/outgroup dynamics
on employer’s hiring and recruiting practices towards applicants with disabilities?
The chapter begins with an overview of social identity theory, a description of
our research study and methodology, which is followed by the study’s ndings and
a concluding discussion.
Social identity theory
In the United States, it is under the umbrella of social welfare that laws such as
the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) have been enacted in an effort to pro-
mote equal employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities. Although, in
theory, the law should be lauded for fostering ideals of social justice, in practice, the
law falls short of actualising justice when it comes to providing equal opportunities
for employment to workers with disabilities. Although the breakdown in intent,
from theory to practice, may be the result of various factors, a signicant factor is
the gatekeepers of the law. With the ADA specically, employers often act as gate-
keepers because they are the ones who interpret and administer the law through
their recruiting and hiring decisions. Thus, because the law is socially mediated,
it is reasonable to investigate how employers interpret the law and its impact on
individuals with disabilities through a social psychology lens.
Henri Tajfel (1979) has been credited with developing social identity theory,
which postulates that not only do people establish a sense of being and belonging
to the social world based on their group memberships, but they also categorise oth-
ers into groups and divide the world into “us” and “them,” with the former form-
ing the “ingroup” and the latter forming the “outgroup.” In reecting on Tajfel’s
work, McLeod (2019) explained that, through this process of social categorisation,
“we tend to exaggerate: 1) the difference between groups and 2) the similarities
of things in the same group” (Introduction section, para. 4). These two princi-
ples serve as the foundation for the key phenomena associated with social identity
theory, which were also prevalent in our ndings:
• Ingroup favouritism – the tendency to behave more favourably towards others
who belong to our ingroup than those from the outgroup.
• Intergroup threat – experienced when members of one group perceive that an-
other group is in a position to cause them harm.
• Outgroup homogeneity – tendency to assume that the members of the outgroup
are very similar to each other.
• Outgroup disadvantage – justifying inequality by associating it with outgroup
inferiority.
• Outgroup altruism and tolerance – instances of prosocial interactions with the
outgroup.
80 Jaskirat Kohli and Janikke Solstad Vedeler
Social identity theory and the aforementioned concepts are useful for understand-
ing how employers label and interpret the social identities of applicants with disabil-
ities, specically and alongside the identities of ethnicity and gender. By unpacking
ingroup/outgroup dynamics in the context of employers’ hiring and recruiting prac-
tices, we can recognise the social dynamics that contribute to the underemploy-
ment of individuals with disabilities.
Methods
To understand how employers relate to disability in recruitment processes, we have
drawn on employer interviews conducted in the United States in 2020. We inter-
viewed a total of 11 employer representatives from the public, private and not-
for-prot sectors (see Table 5.1 for an overview). The employers were recruited
based on their use of an “Equal Opportunity Employer” (EEO) statement in job
advertisements, displaying a commitment to equal opportunity and diversity. Eight
of the employer representatives were located in the northern part of the same state
in metropolitan areas and three in major cities in three other states. The inter-
viewees were managers, human resources personnel or others actively involved in
hiring processes. To ensure compliance with the research ethics guidelines, the con-
sent form and interview guide were reviewed by the Institutional Review Board at
California State University, East Bay.
The employer representatives were asked about recruitment practices and their
understanding of what it means to be an Equal Opportunity Employer, as well as
their perceptions of the statutory requirements for hiring people with disabilities.
All interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim.
When analysing the interviews, we examined how the employers described how
they related to regulatory policies and disability. In our view, the employer accounts
Table 5.1 Overview of employer representatives
Employer Position Gender Sector Industry Number of
employees
1HR director Woman Private Health 201–500
2Chairperson Man Public Education 501+
3Stafng Man NGO Sports 15–100
4Search
committee Woman Public Education 501+
5Vice president Man Private IT 501+
6Director Woman Private Health 501+
7HR director Woman Public Science 501+
8HR adviser Man Private Social Media 501+
9Director Woman Public Community
services 15–100
10 Assistant
director Woman Private Science 501+
11 Director Woman NGO 15–100
Social exclusion and disability 81
could offer “a window – although not a perfectly transparent one” (Peacock & Hol-
land, 1993, p. 374) on social practices. We engaged in a circular analysis endeavour,
rereading our data in light of our quest to understand employers’ interpretation of
antidiscrimination laws and the impact on the hiring of individuals with disabilities,
drawing on the ingroup/outgroup concepts of Tajfel’s social identity theory.
Although our research critiques the gap between the employment rights a citi-
zen with a disability should expect and what transpires in practice, our ndings are
limited in that they only show that bias against outgroup members (i.e., workers
with disabilities) can occur in the employment process, not that they do occur.
Findings
Ingroup favouritism
In the United States, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
is a federal agency established by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The EEOC’s pur-
pose is to prohibit employers from discriminating against individuals who belong to
a protected class. Although race, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation or
gender identity) and disability are all protected classes, the former two are largely
included in meaningful diversity initiatives, while the latter is often left out or is an
afterthought.
Two factors that may contribute to the exclusion of disability from equity policies
are the afliation of disability with pathology and different treatments it demands.
With respect to the former, Kim and Aquino problematised how “seeing disability as
a form of impairment prevents disability from serving as an empowering character-
istic of an individual’s identity, and therefore further separates disability and other
demographic characteristics that are seen as traditional forms of diversity” (2017,
p. xii). With respect to the latter, Fletcher and O’Brien (2008) contended that,
unlike antidiscrimination legislation revolving around race and gender, which de-
mands equal treatment, disability legislation demands different treatment through
the provision of accommodations.
It is plausible that disability history’s inexorable relationship with medicine and
the legal mandate for disparate treatment results in not only relegating people with
disabilities into the outgroup but also in separating disability from other social iden-
tities such as race and gender. In fact, in the current study, during the conversa-
tions with the interviewees regarding diversity and diversity hiring, it was apparent
that disability continued to be viewed as an outgroup identity, while preference
was given to race and gender, a phenomenon which can be understood as ingroup
favouritism. Ingroup favouritism can be dened as the tendency to favour or give
preference to one’s own group over another. It is generally accepted that “people
act more prosocially towards members of their own group relative to those outside
their group” (Everett et al., 2015, p. 1).
In his description of the ways in which the company is increasing diversity, one
of the interviewees (Employer 5) stated that to employ more women, the company
attends a global conference for women in computing. However, when asked if the
82 Jaskirat Kohli and Janikke Solstad Vedeler
company could employ a similar strategy to increase disability hires, the employer
responded with the following:
There is no specic measure to do that, again, I mean it is, it is based on
qualication and competency. But we don’t, we don’t say, okay go and hire
you know, people on wheelchair. Because I don’t think it is going to be fair to
say that, yeah, because you are forcing like a segment of the population versus
I want to hire the most qualied one.
It is interesting to note that when it came to hiring people with disabilities, the em-
ployer emphasised qualication and competency, but to improve the employment
prospects for women, it was acceptable and suitable to utilise a specic and direct
recruitment strategy. Moreover, in the context of employing people with disabili-
ties, the employer stated that it was not fair to focus on a specic “segment of the
population” rather than the most qualied one. To summarise the employer’s view,
there was nothing wrong with implementing purposeful recruiting strategies to in-
crease women in the workforce, but it was problematic to execute similar strategies
for people with disabilities because they had to meet competency and qualication
standards to be hired.
The exclusion of people with disabilities from the realm of diversity candidates
was also evident in a statement from another interviewee (Employer 7) who ac-
knowledged the need to improve the employment rate of individuals with disa-
bilities but who qualied her statement by saying, “You can’t do it at the cost of
veterans, women . . . and other minorities . . .. ” In another instance, the inter-
viewee stated that hiring people with disabilities “has been put on the backburner,
because people are focused on women and minorities.” This comment once again
highlights that individuals with disabilities, compared with women and ethnic mi-
norities, are at the bottom of the diversity hierarchy.
Despite their shared identity as a protected class in a legal context, women, eth-
nic minorities, and people with disabilities do not share a similar fate in a diverse
context. As has been identied in the research regarding employers’ perceptions of
hiring people with disabilities, there is a “lack of a strong commitment to include
disability as a cultural group in . . . companies’ diversity plan” (Chan et al., 2010,
p. 418). Moreover, the current study found that there is a tendency in the employ-
ers’ accounts to extend ingroup membership to women and ethnic minorities more
readily than to individuals with disabilities.
Intergroup threat
In social psychology, an intergroup threat “occurs when one group’s actions, be-
liefs or characteristics challenge the goal attainment or well-being of another
group” (Riek et al., 2006, p. 336). Whether real or perceived, it is this threat that
is also associated with inuencing intergroup bias. In the context of employment,
however, and, more specically in the context of the present study, the intergroup
threat manifested itself as litigation or a nancial burden. There were several
Social exclusion and disability 83
instances throughout the interviews where the interviewees’ concern for non-
compliance with the laws or the cost of accommodation provision superseded
their belief in equity and inclusion pertaining to the employment of individuals
with disabilities.
As mentioned earlier, in the United States, the EEOC’s purpose is to prohibit
employers from discriminating against individuals based on their age, race, gender,
national origin, disability and religion. One of the avenues by which the EEOC
tracks employers’ compliance with federal antidiscrimination laws is by reporting
data from the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) surveys. Voluntary EEO sur-
veys are typically found at the end of online job applications and ask applicants to
identify their race, gender, citizenship status and disability.
When asked about the EEO surveys, one of the interviewees (Employer 1) re-
sponded, “I don’t look at [them], there is no reason for me to, it goes into an auto-
matic le . . .. ” She elaborated further, “What [the surveys are for] is if we ever have
to prove to the government that we’re . . . you know, interviewing all different types
of people, we can pull [the report] and say how look here is all the applicants for
this job, look at how they vary.” By highlighting the fact that she did not review the
EEO surveys and that their primary function was data collection (rather than data
analysis), the employer’s response provides an important insight. Although on the
surface it appears that the EEO survey is serving its purpose because the employer
is not making hiring decisions based on an applicant’s demographic data, a deeper
analysis of the employer’s response reveals that the EEO survey plays a stronger
role as an item on an antidiscrimination checklist rather than a commitment to
provide equitable opportunities for employment. Moreover, the interviewee went
on to comment, “Part of our job is to protect our company . . . by following the
law.” By emphasising that legal compliance serves as a safeguard for the company,
the employer voiced her concern over intergroup threats and the consequence of
non-compliance.
There were several interviewees who expounded on the consequences of non-
compliance. One interviewee (Employer 1) stated, “The impacts for the employer
if you don’t [follow the laws] are very expensive” and that for an employer to deny
an accommodation it would have “to be almost nancially detrimental to the com-
pany.” Here, the interviewee’s emphasis on cost considerations, whether in the
form of lawsuits for denying accommodations or in the form of expenses incurred
for granting accommodations, exemplies the expense-related intergroup threat
hiring individuals with disabilities poses to employers.
Moreover, another interviewee (Employer 8) asserted that the role of hiring per-
sonnel is to “make sure your company . . . you protect the risk, prevent, you mitigate
the risk, you reduce the risk . . . [because] they have a responsibility to their share-
holders, to their stockholders . . .. ” Here, the employer has highlighted sheltering
the company from liability as the motivation for following the law. Similarly, in
their study of small- and medium-sized companies, Fraser et al. (2010) concluded
that nancial risk and aversion were signicant factors in employers’ decisions re-
garding the hiring of workers with disabilities. Collectively, these studies reveal an
84 Jaskirat Kohli and Janikke Solstad Vedeler
important truth regarding the employment of individuals with disabilities. The ac-
counts show that cost and risk are the perceived threats that inuence a company’s
hiring practices rather than a strong belief in the law’s intention to reduce prejudice
from employment decisions.
Outgroup homogenisation
According to the ADA, a disability is a substantial physical or mental impairment
that limits an individual’s ability to perform a major life activity, such as hearing,
seeing, speaking, walking, breathing, performing manual tasks, caring for oneself,
learning or working. Moreover, common disability categories include learning, mo-
bility, psychiatric, visual, hearing and medical conditions. Thus, not only is a dis-
ability broad in its denition and categorisation, but specic disabilities also fall
within a continuum (i.e., mild, moderate, severe and profound). Despite such vari-
ance in disability, people with disabilities are often thought of and discussed as a
monolithic group, which is a phenomenon that has been described as outgroup
homogeneity:
Research on the outgroup homogeneity effect has found that when it comes
to attitudes, values, personality traits, and other characteristics, people tend
to see outgroup members as more alike than ingroup members. As a result,
outgroup members are at risk of being seen as interchangeable or expendable,
and they are more likely to be stereotyped.
(Plous, 2002, p. 6)
When asked if there were any jobs that individuals with disabilities would be unable
to perform within the organisation, in some of the accounts, a narrow-minded belief
about people with disabilities emerged. More specically, one of the interviewees
(Employer 1) responded that individuals in a wheelchair would not be able to per-
form the duties of a patient escort because “the whole idea is that they are escorting
people up and down the stairs.” Irrespective of the fact that the employer did not
consider whether an individual in a wheelchair could utilise an elevator to accom-
plish the specic task of escorting patients, the employer expressed the assumption
that all people in wheelchairs can never walk up and down stairs. Wheelchairs
full various needs because some people might only use a wheelchair when they are
experiencing an exacerbation of symptoms related to their disability, some when
they need to travel long distances and others when they need to traverse a terrain
that is not at.
Similarly, in another interview during which the discussion was about the
travel requirement aspect of various positions within the company, the inter-
viewee (Employer 5) stated, “And that’s where I think they might say, oh I can-
not travel as much or as many times.” The use of the word “they” is indicative of
the fact that the interviewee viewed all individuals with disabilities as an undif-
ferentiated group and, furthermore, as a group with a uniform inability to travel
or to travel regularly. Along the same lines, an interviewee (Employer 8) asserted
the following:
Social exclusion and disability 85
There is a whole range of roles and jobs or functions that could present a
difculty for people with disabilities. . .. On one end, I say janitorial service,
where you have to lift things and move things around, do some physical tasks.
Someone in a wheelchair might not be able to do that, but then that person
in a wheelchair might be better suited to a role where they are seated.
The statements reveal the assumptions employers can make about the abilities of
people with disabilities, even before interviewing or meeting them. It is assump-
tions such as these that may result in the stereotypical treatment that people with
disabilities are subjected to (Plous, 2002), despite their varied abilities as individu-
als. Similarly, another interviewee (Employer 6) responded, “If somebody had some
physical challenges, yeah, there are some positions that they just would not be able
to do.” Once again, the interviewees’ statements were based on generalised as-
sumptions about the ambulatory abilities of people in wheelchairs and the physical
abilities of others, respectively.
Collectively, employers’ parochial perceptions of people with disabilities unjusti-
ably limited the abilities of (all) people with disabilities and could prevent certain
individuals from obtaining positions that they may be otherwise qualied for, with or
without accommodations. It is evident how such suppositions about the capabilities of
workers with disabilities can limit their hiring prospects, as demonstrated in a study of
American employers’ responses to ctional job applicants with spinal cord injury, As-
perger’s syndrome and those without disabilities, as disclosed in a cover letter (Ameri
et al., 2018). The researchers found that there is potential for bias in employers’ hiring
decisions because employers were less likely to express interest in applicants with dis-
abilities (irrespective of the type of disability) than those without disabilities.
Outgroup disadvantages
Outgroup disadvantage or inferiority is often used by the ingroup to justify social in-
equalities. In fact, when considering the marginalisation of people with disabilities,
Dirth and Branscombe cited research to assert that mainstream society’s “social
representations and ideologies portray disability as an inferior way-of-being” (2018,
p. 1302). Furthermore, in their literature review of disability and employment,
Vornholt et al. (2013) reported that employers’ negative perceptions of individuals
with disabilities often included concern for the quality and quantity of work, at-
tendance, motivation, emotion regulation and follow-through. Such unwarranted
inferior characterisation was also present in the current study, as manifested by the
interviewees’ perceptions of accommodations and their view of disability in general.
According to the ADA National Network (2018), an accommodation in the
workplace is:
any change to the application or hiring process, to the job, to the way the job
is done, or the work environment that allows a person with a disability who
is qualied for the job to perform the essential functions of that job and enjoy
equal employment opportunities.
(Key denitions section, para. 1)
86 Jaskirat Kohli and Janikke Solstad Vedeler
What is signicant in this denition is that accommodation is anything that
removes the barriers preventing a qualied worker with a disability from success-
fully completing the duties and responsibilities required of the job. Essentially, the
goal of an accommodation is to minimise or reduce the external barriers for in-
dividuals with disabilities. In contrast, the interviewees believed that the goal of
accommodation is to minimise or reduce internal barriers within individuals with
disabilities. For example, one of the interviewees (Employer 1) stated that “if it is
an invisible disability, [human resources staff] often don’t have any idea until . . .
there is difculty in performing the job” or “until the employee is failing [and]
they need accommodation.” Both statements attribute accommodation provision
to inadequacies in the individual’s performance rather than to remedy the manner
in which a task is required to be carried out. A more blatant example of afliating
accommodations as “xes” to an individual’s shortcomings rather than to a barrier-
ridden environment was evident in the following narration of how an individual
was accommodated:
The one person who was blind who was hired, he said, you know, this place is
hard to navigate because he is walking with a cane and, and I think somebody
found him walking in the street. Because there wasn’t really any sidewalks
at the time. Well, they built sidewalks . . . because he had a limitation that
wasn’t safe.
(Employer 7)
This anecdote is insightful because it poignantly captures the crux of the accom-
modation/barrier issue by juxtaposing the interviewee’s understanding with that of
the employee’s. Although the former’s statement points to the belief that erecting
a sidewalk (accommodation) was to keep the employee safe because of his visual
limitation (barrier), the employee may have identied the building of the sidewalk
(accommodation) as a solution to the difcult-to-navigate environment (barrier).
These seemingly contrasting views of accommodation and barriers are rmly rooted
in the medical and social models of disability, respectively.
Another compelling example of outgroup inferiority was presented in the inter-
viewees’ views of individuals with disabilities, when they were asked for recommen-
dations for improving the hiring rates of this population. One of the interviewees
stated the following:
For those people who are disabled or have issues to, to gain back the con-
dence in their ability and their qualications and their future. Because that’s,
that is most, more important than the company hiring.
(Employer 5)
Here, the interviewee made it clear that the low employment rates of people
with disabilities is an issue that the individuals themselves had to improve, rather
than a concern for employers. More specically, the interviewees correlated a
Social exclusion and disability 87
lack of condence in their skills and abilities, coupled with a lack of hope for
their future, as signicant factors that impacted the job prospects of individuals
with disabilities.
The employers’ (mis)understanding of accommodations as solutions for intrinsic
deciencies and of disabilities as markers of inability and self-doubt illuminated
how the interpretation of a law has more far-reaching impacts than a law’s inten-
tion. Moreover, as the interpreters of the law, employers’ view of disability as an
outgroup disadvantage has the potential to not only limit the employment of peo-
ple with disabilities but to also justify it. Without access to meaningful and abun-
dant employment opportunities, it is questionable whether people with disabilities
can be provided the same citizenship rights as the able-bodied or whether Armer
(2004) was justied in his contention that contemporary society “confers full soci-
etal membership . . . only [to] the normal” (n.p.).
Outgroup altruism and tolerance
Although it goes without saying that the employers’ attitudes and beliefs about
individuals with disabilities were not a result of intentional animus or exclusion,
it also goes without saying that employers’ seemingly unconscious ingroup bias
may have detrimental unintended consequences ranging from the underem-
ployment of individuals with disabilities to the troubling notion that a “disabled
citizen is a contradiction in terms” (Meekosha, 1997, p. 50). As a result, the
analysis of our data would not be complete if we did not highlight instances
where the employers discussed favourable attitudes and experiences with indi-
viduals with disabilities.
Within our study, the employers shared positive experiences with individuals
with disabilities that contributed to greater practices of social inclusion. Within the
context of social identity theory and scholarship, these positive experiences have
been categorised as outgroup altruism and outgroup tolerance (e.g., Whitt et al.,
2021). Outgroup altruism is often linked to empathy that ingroup members feel
towards the outgroup. During our interviews, altruistic practices towards people
with disabilities were evident in employers who referenced the creation of employee
resource groups specic to individuals with disabilities and their allies, employers
who invited a community organisation working with individuals with autism to
speak about barriers to employment and employers who were offering unconscious
bias training to their staff. Ultimately, outgroup altruism is prompted by members
of the ingroup who are conscious of their privilege as the dominant group. On the
other hand, outgroup tolerance is often the outcome of positive experiences with
outgroup members. In the current study, employers who demonstrated outgroup
tolerance were those who had previous experiences with people with disabilities in
work and non-work settings. Other ways employers can promote prosocial attitudes
and outgroup tolerance among staff include offering opportunities to volunteer at
organisations for people with disabilities, mentor youth with disabilities and invite
guest speakers with disabilities.
88 Jaskirat Kohli and Janikke Solstad Vedeler
Concluding discussion
In differentiating between human rights and citizenship rights, Banting and Kym-
licka (2017) contended that, although the former are universal, the latter are based
on membership. Although the statement may be true theoretically, we would argue
that access to both human rights and citizenship rights are subject to the arbiter of
those rights. In the context of employment rights, a company’s human resources
(HR) staff has the power to determine the level of social inclusion/exclusion expe-
rienced by applicants with disabilities. Ultimately, access to employment is based
on whether or not employers and HR staff extend group membership to individuals
with disabilities. Group membership is characterised by shared solidarity, which “is
motivated by attitudes of mutual concern and obligation towards their fellow co-
citizens” (Banting & Kymlicka, 2017, p. 4). Unfortunately, the label “co-citizen” is
not uniformly made available to all citizens and is instead based on whether one is
designated as belonging to the ingroup or outgroup, depending on the context of
the situation. Thus, citizenship rights are not automatic but are socially mediated
and dependent on acceptance into the ingroup.
Our analysis has illuminated three distinct revelations regarding the dynamics
of ingroup/outgroup membership on employment rights, as depicted through the
relationship of employers as members of the non-disabled ingroup and job seek-
ers with disabilities as members of the outgroup. First, despite their shared history
of inequality in the US labour market, women and ethnic minorities have been
experiencing greater acceptance into the ingroup of employable citizens than peo-
ple with disabilities. As a result, diversity efforts to improve the job prospects of
women and ethnic minorities cloak the continued marginalisation experienced by
individuals with disabilities. Second, the perceived threat of lawsuits and the costs
associated with providing accommodations are prominent in employers’ hiring de-
cisions. The very legislation enacted to prevent employment discrimination simply
seems to foster compulsion towards compliance and cost/risk analysis rather than
the substantive work needed to eliminate bias and prejudice from hiring practices.
Third, irrespective of impairment to employers, disability seems to be synonymous
with inability. This association further hinders the employment of individuals with
disabilities because their ability is judged to be limited and inferior in quantity and
quality to their counterparts without disabilities.
In her multichapter book on citizenship, Beckett (2006) asserted that human
rights should be at the centre of citizenship and should be conceptualised based
on our universal need for protection from vulnerability. Although we agree with
Beckett in principle, appealing to our shared vulnerability remains a nebulous and
abstract ideal. The past 50 years of US history have been rife with antidiscrimina-
tion laws that, at best, have prevented overt discrimination against individuals with
disabilities but have neglected to produce the substantial change necessary for this
population to advance from the margins of society and actualise true citizenship
through group membership. We argue that laws and policies need to be coupled
with targeted training for those responsible for carrying out the mandates. It is im-
perative that such decision-makers acknowledge their biases and begin the arduous
Social exclusion and disability 89
work of recognising their complicity (albeit unintentional) in the social exclusion
of people with disabilities.
Funding
This chapter is part of the project “HIRE? A Mixed-method Examination of Dis-
ability and Employers Inclusive Working Life Practices”, funded by the Research
Council of Norway, project number 273745.
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