Notes on a spoiled working identity: stigma, illness and disability in the contemporary [western] workplace

This chapter focuses on the workplace stigmatisation of disabled workers and workers experiencing long-term ill-health. Despite the chapter title, which cites Goffman (1963), this chapter draws on Imogen Tyler’s (2020) definition of stigma, positing stigmatisation as a form of oppression. Though there is extensive research and theorising that highlights the stigma related to being unemployed, whether disabled or not (Bambra, 2011; Karren and Sherman, 2012), far less work has focused on workplace enactments of stigma and their impact on disabled workers. A relatively recent proliferation of academic work relating to organisational equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) policies, strategies, and agendas implies an increased interest in the experiences of disadvantaged, oppressed, and marginalised people at work (Gould et al, 2022; Tompa et al, 2022), and a shared recognition that workplace policies, including those designed to promote equality, are broadly failing to meet the needs of these workers (Pilkington, 2020; Remnant et al, 2024).