'A frog in a well': the exclusion of disabled people from work in Cambodia

Based on ethnographic research conducted in north-west Cambodia in 2000-2001, this paper examines why disabled people experience systematic marginalisation in the labour market. Although there are no official data on the relationship between disability and employment status in Cambodia, this research suggests that disabled people are more likely than their able-bodied counterparts to be unemployed, in low status occupations, earn less or be out of the labour market altogether. Consequently, disabled people are more likely to live in poverty, experience social isolation and poor mental health. I argue that disabled people's social status effectively shapes their work patterns through (mis)conceptions that associate 'disability' with 'inability' to work and to be employable. This paper illustrates how geographical processes fix disabled people in their socio-spatial place, which together with ideological and structural inequalities distinguish and entrench their poverty from that of other social groups.