Chances and Obstacles for Inclusive Employment in Post-Soviet Countries

The WCRC working group on workplace inclusion and diversity management organized its own panel at the 10^th World Congress of the International Council of Central and East European Studies.

The panel was titled “Chances and Obstacles for Inclusive Employment in Post-Soviet Countries” and brought together scholars from Russia and Lithuania who discussed the actions of governments and business companies regarding inclusive employment for people with disabilities (PWD), which is widely considered one of the most important cornerstones of their full social integration. WCRC- group members Victoria Antonova, Daria Prisyazhniuk and Tatiana Ryabichenko presented their paper on HR-managers and their actions between personal attitudes and organisational decisions in developing diversity and inclusive workspace in Russian companies. Julija Moskvina’s (Lithuanian Social Science Centre) paper focused on two major tools for inclusive employment in Lithuania, namely social enterprises and active labor market policy measures. Based on secondary data, it investigates to which extent those tools improve the labor market situation for PWD. Finally, the paper by WCRC- group member Christian Fröhlich and his co-authors critically mapped the corporate social responsible strategies of Russian companies towards PWD and asked about the impact of global norms and domestic context conditions. The general discussion in the panel critically approached the possibilities and limits of improving social welfare and inclusion of PWD and productively positioned itself in the international discussion on workplace diversity in the post-Soviet space.