Professional self-realization of disabled persons in an urban environment

Abstract

The article is a review of the part of the research conducted in the framework of the grant of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research “Urban well-being of people with disabilities”. The immediate subject of the article is professional self-realization as a factor of urban well-being of a person with a disability. Well-being is understood as a subjectively constructed phenomenon, that is, through the prism of people with disabilities’ own perceptions of the sufficiency of conditions created in the urban environment for their professional self-realization and, as a consequence, for well-being in general. Professional self-realization has become one of the six factor groups that directly or indirectly influence the urban well-being of citizens with disabilities. Along with professional self-realization, the factors of urban well-being in the framework of the study were: trust in the government and involvement in management processes; the level of implementation of basic values; psychological comfort; accessibility of the spatial environment; and finally, the quality of social services. The five factor groups listed above are not discussed in the article, but the reader should have an idea of the context in which professional self-realization is studied. The study included two sub-samples, reflecting the specifics of a megalopolis (Moscow) and a regional center (Saratov).

Keywords

• urban environment
• disability
• well-being of a person with a disability
• urban well-being
• professional self-realization