The Practice of Vocational Training of Disabled Adolescents and Adults in the Federal Republic of Germany (1969-1990)

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Gabriele Lingelbach
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 504102561

The proposed research project is dedicated to the vocational training of disabled people in the Federal Republic of Germany, which has not yet been analysed historically. The focus will be on the initial training of disabled young people in Berufsbildungswerke (BBW) and on the measures for disabled adults in Berufsförderungswerke (BFW) from their establishment in 1969 to the year of German reunification in 1990. As a source-based contribution to the history of disabled people, the research project will link findings and approaches of disability history with the theoretical and methodological tools of intersectional research. One of the main questions will therefore be what effects the factors of type and cause of impairment as well as age and gender of the disabled rehabilitants had on the educational paths of the persons concerned, in addition to other categories of inequality. The project focuses on the various vocational rehabilitation services and rehabilitation practice on the one hand, and the occupational wishes and options of the disabled rehabilitants on the other. It is assumed that the training pathways outlined by BBW and BFW as well as by the Bundesanstalt für Arbeit did not always match the ideas of the rehabilitated persons themselves. Thus, it will have to be clarified which agency and which professional self-realization potentials different groups of disabled people were able to assert at which points in time through shaping the specific goals, contents, and methods of vocational education and training. Against the backdrop of changing gendered notions of disability, developments in the sphere of public attention as well as a profound structural change in the field of work and employment, negotiation processes between the (state) institutions of vocational education and training on the one hand and the disabled rehabilitants on the other hand will be analyzed.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants