Disadvantage for work: critical policy analysis

Various government policies are designed to guide the development of resources and structures that support people who experience disadvantages in accessing paid work.

Policy, as a matter of course, reproduces dominant and/or strongly emerging ideas and ways of understanding what a problem is, and how it should be addressed.

Our analysis aims to identify how the ‘problem’ of disadvantage for work is represented in policy, and how these particular representations structure what is think-able, say-able and do-able in relation to people who struggle to access or maintain work.

Presenting policy as it is discursively constructed enables critical analysis of effects (especially unintended), including what is obscured by current representations.

The purpose is to support critical reflection and direction-setting for vocational rehabilitation, with particular consideration of systemic marginalisation.