Work Inclusion Social Enterprise as Sites for Development of Post-Work Identities: The case of DBR

Work Inclusion Social Enterprises (WISEs) have assumed a central role within governments’ active labour market policies aimed at facilitating the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the labour market. The employment pathways promoted by WISEs for persons with disabilities constitute a form of citizenship guarantee and, at the same time, implicitly reaffirm the centrality of the work ethic. After outlining the relevant legal and conceptual framework, examining the relationship between post-bureaucratic organisational models and cultures and identity-control mechanisms, and exploring the nexus between organisational cultures and the development of identities that refuse the valorisation of life through work, this article argues that WISEs, when interpreted as sites of social and identity experimentation, may provide a context in which persons with disabilities can form and develop post-work identities. Drawing on an empirical study conducted at the Rome branch of the social enterprise DBR, the authors show how the dynamic relationship between organisational models and cultures, on the one hand, and workers with disabilities, on the other, can foster the disarticulation and reinterpretation of the work-centred social construction. From this perspective, the subjective dimension emerging from the experiences of the interviewed workers with disabilities offers empirical evidence of a questioning of the normative principles of work as the primary source of value and social recognition.