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SOCIAL – LEGAL DISCOURSE OF LABOR MARKET INCLUSION OF PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES IN BULGARIA

P. Stoevska

Abstract

Accession of Bulgaria to the EU in 2007 was followed by a radical transformation in government and social policies towards people with disabilities. The dominant medical model, in which the disabled are perceived as passive users of financial resources, has been displaced by activating the processes of social inclusion of people with deficits, including by creating conditions for their professional realization. The legal status of the disabled is regulated by changes in legislation aimed at overcoming social isolation of this vulnerable group and providing conditions for education, training and integration into society through real employment. The effectiveness of these processes largely depends on the successful coordination between the actions of the government sector, employers, changes in society's attitude to accept people with disabilities as equals in the labor market and the willingness of the disabled themselves to integrate into social life through work. One of the purposes of this article is to follow the current changes in the legislative and regulatory framework of the Republic of Bulgaria, which guarantee the creation of conditions for employment of people with disabilities. The subject of the empirical research, conducted through voluntary anonymous surveys on paper and electronic carrier in the period October 2019-June 2020, are the trends in the attitudes of people with disabilities to be educated and qualified in order to integrate into society through labor market participation. The survey has involved 550 people of different ages, with different degrees of disability and diverse socio-demographic profile. The content of the survey has been determined by its main objectives. The author uses the established terminology in the current Bulgarian legislation and normative documents concerning the medical expertise of the disabled persons. The statistical processing of the data is conditioned by the complex analysis of the information, the methods and the techniques for their collection. The methods of descriptive statistics, as well as one-dimensional and two-dimensional frequency analysis are used for the distribution of the variables and the description of their possible categories. For this purpose, the number of units belonging to a given category is determined and the corresponding absolute and relative frequencies are calculated. The empirical data are processed using SPSS Statistics 17.0.0 WinWrap Basic and MS Excel 14.0. The findings of the survey confirm the trend of change in the attitude of people with disabilities in Bulgaria to be active participants in the processes of their labor integration for personal realization, raising their standard of living and overcoming isolation and inequality from other members of society.

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