Transitions of Deaf and Hard of Hearing People in Working Life
This research project, funded by the Hans Böckler Foundation, examines the challenges and needs of sign language-using employees during career transitions.
Over a period of 24 months, the planned study will use a qualitative content analysis approach to show what challenges people with severe hearing impairments face in transitions to work and how successful counselling and support can be implemented and designed for the target group in transitions. The study will focus in particular on transitions from unemployment to work, from work to work and from work to unemployment.
The planned research project is relevant on several levels: (1.) By focussing on transitions, a highly relevant topic in terms of social theory, practice and policy is being pursued and addressed (Wanka et al. 2020). (2.) The focus on the target group of hard of hearing and deaf people as (potential) employees fulfils a long overdue desideratum: to examine and make visible (at least in part) the lifeworld and social challenges of the target group. (3.) The participation of people with disabilities in working life, which is extensively formulated as a requirement in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Art. 27 (United Nations 2006), has so far been largely neglected in practice. The focus on vocational transitions and their potential for exclusion can contribute to improving opportunities for participation.
With the aim of providing an impetus for more extensive research and structural implementation of support services in vocational transitions to reduce social inequality and improve professorial recruitment, the research project focuses on the views of professionals from IFD (integration specialist services) and their recipients when considering transitions and brings together organisational and subject-oriented perspectives (Truschkat/Stau-ber 2013). The results of the study are intended to improve accompanying practice and to be presented to funding bodies such as employment agencies and inclusion offices. They also connect to academic discourse and practical efforts such as the research conducted by the Institute for Deaf Studies at Humboldt University in Berlin on the situation of deaf people in working life (Napier et. al. 2020) and the new part-time degree programme for German sign language consultants for integration services at the West Saxon University of Applied Sciences in Zwickau.
