Tell Me Your Story: How Recruitment Practices Implementing Affirmative Action Laws May Undermine the Laws’ Goals

Abstract

Scholars pointed out that antidiscrimination laws do not fully undermine workplace discrimination and that affirmative action policies mostly benefit overqualified or advantaged individuals within minorities. To elucidate this paradox, this case study analyzes how some companies adopted specific selection and assessment processes for job seekers after the reinforcement of a quota for workers with disabilities in France. I observed the creation of alternative recruitment channels, the hiring of disability experts for recruitment, the refusal of resume sorting as a prescreening tool, and an emphasis on face-to-face interviews. While these changes circumvented practices that could have excluded people with disabilities (resume screening as a preselection tool, inaccessible venues for recruitment), they changed these practices only in limited spaces within the organizations. Additionally, while they did help more people get hired, they also compelled more personal disclosure that led to a more emotional assessment of job seekers and enabled “refined statistical discrimination” within pools of job seekers with disabilities. This research therefore reveals recruitment practices that may increase the number of individuals with disabilities hired but that, at the same time, may facilitate overselectivity and trigger significant risks associated with emotional recruitment of individuals with disabilities.

Addressing racism and Islamophobia under the rules of colorblindness: When social movements engage in category work to reform the meanings of regulatory categories

“…While a potential leverage in negotiating the equality of minorities, this state-sanctioned category creates tension for antidiscrimination movements and organizations. Because its implementation seems to contradict the principle of indifference to differences, it exposes recruiters and companies to the contradictory injunction of having to promote difference while ignoring it (Buchter, 2020; Cortéséro et al, 2013; Monchatre, 2014). Subsequently, companies have focused on implementing diversity programs for the categories already protected by law, women, and people with disabilities (Bereni, 2011).…”

Educating the sighted: When activists reorganize solidarity by prefiguring new social scripts of help and interaction

“…Accordingly, they crystalized a domination entrenched in emotional responses, which needs to be understood through the lens of the cultural politics of emotions, given that such charitable feelings "involve complex relations of power" (Ahmed, 2014: 22). For instance, generosity-tainted management and recruitment can lead to professional downgrading and pose challenges for workers with impairment, which in fine disadvantage disabled workers (Buchter, 2019(Buchter, , 2020Everaere, 2010).…”

Mitteilen, offenlegen, es ist beschlossene Sache : ich sage es ! Sich als „behinderter Arbeitnehmer“ bewerben

“…La littérature rend compte du vécu au travail des personnes vivant avec des limitations de capacités, notamment dans les situations de travail quotidiennes, les interactions avec les collègues et la hiérarchie (Gardien, 2006 ;Dalle-Nazébi, Kerbourc'h, 2013 ;Lhuilier, Waser, 2016 ;Lejeune, 2019). Des études de cas ont permis de révéler les ambivalences des pratiques de recrutement ciblées sur les personnes handicapées (Buchter, 2020). La psychologie sociale a apporté plusieurs contributions sur les stéréotypes associés aux personnes handicapées (Rohmer, Louvet, 2011), ainsi que la dévalorisation de leurs compétences professionnelles par rapport aux « valides » (Rohmer, Louvet, 2006 ;Louvet, Rohmer, 2016) 9 .…”