Abstract

In Japan, inclusion policies place great emphasis on participation in the local community. Sheltered workshops are evolving in this direction, and their number has risen sharply while mainstream employment was being promoted as well. The aim of this paper is to examine the forms of participation in local life offered by these workshops to their workers. It analyzes the strategies implemented by workshop managers to develop opportunities for interaction between disabled workers and the outside population, as well as their impact on the image of sheltered work and disabled workers in the eyes of non-disabled members of the community. This study is based on a fieldwork conducted in 12 workshops in Tokyo, Kyoto and Akita. It shows that many Japanese sheltered workshops allow disabled people who so wish to work in contact with the local population, but also that there is a tension between emphasizing disability and asserting the status of the disabled people as workers.