ABSTRACT
The growth in unemployment that has affected almost all developed countries in the last 20 years has had a more particular impact on 'less favoured' or 'disadvantaged' workers, that is, workers with physical or mental disabilities, with socialisation problems or simply unfit to work. This chapter examines the nature and the role of the productive organisations whose explicit aim is to integrate less favoured people into society through the workplace. It considers what can be learned about the labour market and the emergence of non-profit organisations specialising in the occupational integration of disadvantaged people. On the theoretical side, the debate that has accompanied the development of these enterprises has not yet revealed to what extent there is any real innovation in social integration through work for less favoured people. In the past, work integration policies for the disadvantaged mainly concerned the disabled, even though structurally and conceptually they were often elastic as to be often extended too much broader categories.
