Maria Norstedt

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Berättelser om stroke och arbetsliv

THE STARTING POINT in this thesis is stroke inflicted individuals’ stories about their experience of stroke, relations in everyday life, and their relations and attempts to return to paid work with the objective of gaining a further understanding of what happens when inflicted by illness and/or disability in working age. Furthermore, it aims at understanding how social relations and ruling relations are connected to this process. Theoretically and methodologically, institutional ethnography is made use of thereby accounting for different actors’ perspectives on a process in everyday life, what is referred to as a problematic within institutional ethnography. The analysis is based on semi structured interviews with stroke inflicted persons between 42-65 years and professionals from Health Care, Employment Agencies, and the Social Insurance Office. Despite differences between the stroke inflicted and the professionals’ stories about their experiences and practices, they had one goal in common; making possible for the inflicted persons to return to working life. Such a goal is related to mainly two ruling relations: employability and normality. What was referred to as normal differed between the stroke inflicted informants but they all referred to their lives before the stroke and they all mentioned that they hoped to get back to working life in one way or another. This understanding of what is normal was reinforced by institutional practices among the professionals. No matter the organization they worked in, the professionals’ goal was to get stroke inflicted persons back to lives that were as similar as possible to their lives before the stroke. The stories of the professionals make it clear how a return to working life is considered to be the best alternative. A strong focus on full participation in working life must be understood in the light of changes in the Swedish welfare state where a basic principle, the work strategy, has come to mean employability and lifelong learning. This thesis contributes to a broader understanding of normality than merely as a norm. Normality as a ruling relation can be traced in practices and stories of the professionals and stroke inflicted informants, thus showing how certain ruling relations impinge on individuals’ attempts to return to working life after a stroke. Furthermore, by understanding the stroke inflicted informants’ stories as testimonies the analysis suggest that even though ruling relations such as normality and employability, limits the individuals’ space for action, these persons have a certain agency. However, the importance is emphasized of also taking a step further by giving such testimonies and illness stories proper value and placing them in a context where questions of power and ruling relations are made visible.