Abstract
In 1901 the Ongevallenwet, the first act regulating the insurance of workers in cases of accidents, was introduced in the Netherlands. In the historiography of the welfare state, introductions of acts like the Ongevallenwet mark a moment in time in which the collective started to take care of individual misfortune.
... read more
This new form of state funded compensation for the loss of income due to disabilities came with a pressing individual responsibility to not misuse this social security arrangement. The regulations have constantly been tightened to make sure ‘the right people’ receive benefits. But when was a person truly incapable to work?
Social security legislation necessitated classification. As philosophers of science have shown, classifications are moving targets that interact with our investigations. Interaction with the classification therefore ‘makes up’ the label that is being described. In line with these insights, this research examines the search for identifying properties of incapacity to work as a process of making up incapacity to work.
This dissertation provides a fresh look at the ways in which incapacity for work has historically been produced. It analyses the actions and practices that have created and sustained the phenomenon of incapacity for work. It examines how it was enacted not only through the Ongevallenwet, but also through the interactions between the officials who implemented policies, the medical experts who testified about the nature, veracity and severity of the incapacity for work, and the individuals whose working capacity was under scrutiny.
This research has shown how the three actors enacted incapacity for work in different ways, taking into account their position, knowledge, interests, (professional) rationalisations and values. Each actor undertook its own situated search for the properties of incapacity, resulting in a variety of realities of incapacity. Each assessment, however, required mediation, navigation and negotiation between legal frameworks, values and interests. Each actor had to deal with doubt and used their own rationales and techniques, and did so in interaction with the other actors involved. In that process, the characteristics of incapacity were constantly changing. This thesis has shown that there is no such thing as a fixed category of disabled workers, instead this category is created in the process of claim assessment.
This conclusion has far-reaching implications for the way we look at social security legislation. It is much more than the allocation of money: the process establishes categories associated with all sorts of socio-material realities. By recognising that the targeted group of people who earn benefits are shaped in the process, we can further explore what hierarchical dynamics are at work, how the narratives and perspectives of the actors involved are valued and taken seriously, and what rationalisations and prejudices about people claiming benefits shape examination practices.
show less
