ABSTRACT
In post-socialist societies, political subjecthood has been increased for some people but not all; many people are still subjected to the traditional understanding of citizenship, that is, they are denied full participation in economic, social, and political life. Women and men with disabilities are among those for whom this is true. After 1991, socialist ideology was replaced with an economic ideology and the dictates of free market. Many people internalized the neo-liberal belief, that the “happy hours” of history, when everyone had the right to a flat and paid work, were over, and now “real life began.” Neo-liberalism exploited the idea that there was no alternative to the economic organization of the new world order. One consequence of this has been that after 1991, in Slovenia many women and men with disabilities lost paid employment. In 1999, the Employment Service of Slovenia registered 14,787 disabled job seekers and in the year 2000, the number increased to 16,141 (Slovenia has a population of 2 million). Currently, out of all people who are registered as unemployed, about 10 percent are people with various disabilities.1 Additionally, people labeled as moderately, severely, and profoundly intellectually disabled (the exception are those that are labeled as borderline or mild), are still, according to an old communist law from 1983, completely excluded from paid employment, because this law defined them as being “unemployable” and “incapable for independent living.”2 Regardless of the fact that Slovenia, in its accession into the European Union in May 2004, adopted several new laws that promoted inclusion and equal treatment, there are still many burning issues which could at least be partly resolved with some formal guidelines for change. However, neither the EU social policy officers nor the national politicians seem to have any interest to promote such guidelines.3 A limited concept of citizenship, which in the socialist period included able-bodied proletariat
and privileged disabled war veterans (predominantly men), has today been replaced with another type of exclusionary version of citizenship, which only includes those people who can respond to the demands of the new neo-liberal market. For many minorities (especially people with intellectual disabilities and ethnic and sex minorities) the end of the communist regime did not bring the basic everyday citizenship rights and in some cases did not even bring them formal rights.4
