In the name of the working and fighting nation, I present to you my testimony on the recovery of the disabled. My thoughts are with all those who were mutilated 1 in the generous sacrifice of their wealth-producing labor and in the heroic endeavors of youth, immortalizing our Fatherland overseas in a virile and authentic challenge to the transient, deceitful winds of history (Nascimento, 1968, p. 63).

At the outset of the 1968 conference "Vocational Rehabilitation: A Noble Cause to Debate" held as part of the National Vocational Rehabilitation Campaign for the Physically Disabled, Fernando do Nascimento set the tone. Evoking notions of sacrifice, involving people who had suffered work accidents or war injuries, the director of the Vocational Rehabilitation Service (VRS) identified the target population for the disability recovery policies: men injured at work or wounded in war.

On one hand, this campaign was part of a broader program of reforms addressing the social functions of the Portuguese state; on the other hand, it aligned with the historical and international movement that brought rehabilitation processes into the sphere of public policy.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, rehabilitation emerged internationally as the process enabling impaired individuals to reintegrate into social life. As early as 1952, following preparatory work initiated in the immediate postwar period, the United Nations Social Commission approved the report "Social Rehabilitation of the Physically Handicapped." This report outlined ongoing or contemplated international efforts for the rehabilitation of the physically impaired. It recommended the establishment of a coordinated international program led by UN agencies and delineated the fundamental aspects of such a program. However, as demonstrated by Brégain (2018), this proposal encountered significant opposition, leading subsequent programs to diverge from its original framework.

Medicine and Rehabilitation: The International Context

The emergence of international guidelines, such as those published by the World Health Organization (WHO), on rehabilitation attests to an unprecedented global focus on these issues, stemming from the historically unparalleled widespread survival of war-wounded soldiers and civilians. Breakthroughs in medicine since the 1930s have enabled more severely injured people to survive their wounds, leading to the development of new functional recovery therapies. The practice of physical therapy saw unprecedented advancements, as did the production of prosthetic devices. Major developments that began in the 1930s established electromyography as a crucial diagnostic and therapeutic tool for diagnosing and managing neuromuscular disorders (Ladegaard, 2002). Küntscher's revolutionary intramedullary fixation technique, introduced in 1939, transformed the treatment of long bone fractures and laid the foundation for modern intramedullary fixation techniques (Baig et al., 2021). In the early 1940s, physicist Reinhold Reiter of the Bavarian Red Cross created the first myoelectric prosthesis (Childress, 1985), while Archibald McIndoe made significant advancements in the treatment of burns and facial injuries by advocating for saline bathing and early grafting as alternatives to the excruciatingly painful tannic acid techniques, greatly improving patient outcomes (Hwang, 2021). The transistor, invented in 1948 by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley, was quickly adopted for use in hearing aids (Mills, 2011). In the same year, the Bowden cable body-powered prosthesis was introduced, replacing cumbersome straps with a more elegant and comfortable cable system (Zuo & Olson, 2014). In the late 1950s, John Charnley introduced total hip arthroplasty, using acrylic cement (polymethylmethacrylate) to secure hip prostheses, offering immediate stability and allowing for early weight-bearing and movement (Gomez & Morcuende, 2005). In spinal surgery, the pedicle screw represented a major advancement. Initially used for traumatic fractures, the vertebral pedicle screw was first employed by Boucher in 1959 and later by Roy-Camille in 1963 (Baig et al., 2021). Research and experimentation with titanium and stainless-steel implants conducted throughout the 1940s and 1950s paved the way for their widespread use in orthopedic surgery starting in the 1960s.

These new medical techniques and procedures offered governments and populations the promise of re-normalizing bodies—bodies that could therefore be more easily assimilated into predominantly ableist social contexts. International guidelines and recommendations on rehabilitation that developed during this period are inseparable from this medical progress. As stated in 1952 by the WHO, "the rehabilitation of the physically handicapped can only be successfully accomplished by a combination of medical, education, social and vocational services, working together as a team." Rehabilitation, conceived as a holistic therapy, thus presented itself as a possibility of reforming bodies, rebuilding a sense of self and restoring financial independence (Anderson, 2011).

The transposition of these international guidelines to national contexts was, however, far from uniform, particularly because, when the WHO launched the Rehabilitation of the Physically Handicapped: Coordinated International Program in 1952, several countries had already established national public policies focused on the rehabilitation of disabled individuals, some of which had been introduced shortly after World War I. For example, in Spain, the Occupational Accidents Act of 1922 mandated that the Ministry of Employment set up a specific agency to retrain victims of occupational accidents (Perez, Del Cura, 2013). In France, the law of April 26, 1924 ensured the compulsory employment of wounded soldiers (Omnès, 2015). In the UK in 1944 the Disabled Persons (Employment) Act implemented a quota system that required firms with twenty or more workers to guarantee that at least 3 percent of their employees were disabled (Hyde, 1996).

Although the philosophy behind these national policies—and their effectiveness—was questionable, their existence indicated that the issue had been identified and acknowledged (at least partially) by societies and governments, requiring an organized and coordinated response. Successive Portuguese governments, however, implemented virtually no measures in response to either World War I or World War II, and by the time the National Vocational Rehabilitation Campaign for the Physically Disabled was launched in 1968, authorities had barely introduced any initiatives or public policies.

The Portuguese National Context and the Need for Rehabilitation Public Policies

By the early 1960s, the Portuguese government played a secondary role to private assistance service initiatives (Costa, 2009). The private and associative sectors, primarily structured through sector-specific associations, provided essentially housing and care. Nursing homes and asylums welcomed both the elderly and the disabled, who at the time were indiscriminately referred to as invalids (inválidos). In 1961, for example, the minutes of the Corporative Chamber stated that "assistance to the invalids essentially refers to two categories of people for whom it is impossible to gather their own necessary means of subsistence. One of these categories consists of elderly individuals who could not save up enough for old age and do not benefit from any other type of pension. The other consists of those who are unable to work due to diminished physical or mental ability" (p. 1454).

Defined in relation to the ability to work, the term invalidity (invalidez) was long used as a homogenizing qualifier for individuals who were elderly, convalescent, or impaired, reflecting the relatively late recognition and stabilization of the "disabled" category. In fact, it was not until 1966 that the Portuguese authorities established a clear distinction between these categories. This shift occurred when the government committed to promoting the employment of disabled individuals and created the VRS, which aimed to facilitate "the recovery and professional re-adaptation of workers who suffer from physical diminution (diminuição física)" (DL 46872/66, Art. 1). During the swearing-in ceremony of the VRS director that year, the minister of corporations and social security emphasized that "for administrative and recovery purposes, the new office classifies the physically disabled into three groups: those who are totally recoverable professionally; those who are recoverable but with lower productivity than able-bodied workers; and those who require a period of adaptation" (VRS, 1968). A division within the invalid/disabled category was thus established, implementing a classification system that ranked individuals based on their perceived utility to the fatherland (Anderson, 2011). Moreover, as mentioned by Henri-Jacques Stiker (2002), these transformations ushered in a new terminology; while "defective" words persisted (un-able, in-valid) they were accompanied by words of "re-turn" (re-adaptation, re-integration, re-habilitation), mirroring a process akin to what happened in France during the 1920s.

The introduction of these rehabilitation policies occurred within a highly complex national context. On the one hand, in 1955, following in the footsteps of the WHO, the International Labour Organization (ILO) published the Vocational Rehabilitation Disabled Recommendation. This recommendation stated that, to meet the employment needs of disabled individuals and make the best use of labor resources, governments should take measures to improve their work abilities by combining medical, psychosocial, educational, vocational guidance, training, placement, and performance assessment services. Portugal, a signatory of the Treaty of Versailles and thus a founding member of the ILO, had shown indifference towards the organization during the 1930s and 1940s. Starting in the mid-1950s, however, it sought to correct this strategic stance through a process of "intense rapprochement" (Rodrigues, 2012), leading to significant legislative reforms that would incorporate some of those international guidelines. Within this broader framework of change, the government established the Labor Development Fund and the Institute for Accelerated Vocational Training as two of the most prominent initiatives, both key components of its "valorization and rational economy" (DL 46872/66) policy for the workforce.

On the other hand, the number of work-related accidents during this period was high. Official figures showed that in 1960, work-related accidents reached three hundred thousand per year (Ordinance 17668/60), with an estimated three thousand impaired individuals. However, some historians (e.g., Pereira, 1963) argue that these numbers reflect only a third of the total accidents. The country then had a population of 8.85 million.

Furthermore, beginning in 1961 the ranks of the invalid contingent were significantly increased by wounded veterans of the Colonial War. For thirteen years, from 1961 to 1974, Portugal mobilized more than a million soldiers (Sertório, 2001), representing more than 90 percent of the young male population (Stubbe, 2001). Nearly ten thousand Portuguese soldiers lost their lives in that war, while nearly twenty thousand others were left impaired, with approximately five thousand suffering from a degree of impairment greater than 60 percent (Stubbe, 2001). When the Colonial War began, the Portuguese government had no coherent plan to permit wounded soldiers to return to civilian life and work, and the war ended without the government ever developing such a plan. 2

In addition, a surge in emigration during the 1960s, driven by the desire to escape poverty and the mobilization for the colonial wars, significantly reduced the available workforce. Initially felt in the northern region, where a 1970 survey estimated a labor deficit of 14.3 percent, the shortage of workers would eventually affect the entire country, leading to a widespread increase in salaries by the end of the decade (Leeds, 1983).

Lastly, there was also a significant rise in traffic accidents, with injuries from these incidents growing from 14,336 in 1960 to 28,849 in 1970 (FFMS, 2017), resulting in an increasing number of disabled persons.

The establishment of the Vocational Rehabilitation Service occurred against this backdrop of colonial warfare, high work-related accidents, significant emigration, a decreasing workforce, rising road traffic injuries, and efforts to strengthen ties with the ILO. By adhering to international guidelines on the vocational rehabilitation of disabled individuals, the government aimed, at least in theory, not only to address the labor shortage and the social issues of poverty and discontent within an increasingly disabled population, but also to enhance its international reputation.

The Vocational Rehabilitation Service

The law establishing the VRS places it within the broader context of labor policy reforms implemented by the government at the time. It emphasizes that the government's "human valorization policy" (política de valorização humana) (DL46872/66) could not "fully achieve its objectives without promoting the resolution of the ever-increasing, and already high, number of workers who are incapacitated for work due to physical decline and a lack of adequate means for their vocational rehabilitation." Most importantly, the law outlines two key arguments that would underpin the National Vocational Rehabilitation Campaign for the Physically Disabled. First, it affirms that rehabilitation aligns with moral principles, reflecting the "Christian meaning of life" and the imperative of "social justice." Second, it states that rehabilitation addresses economic challenges by serving the "higher interests of the nation," ensuring "the greatest number of able-bodied workers" and alleviating the "burden" of disability pensions.

Serving as a perfect illustration of some of the processes characterizing the medical model, Portuguese authorities succinctly defined vocational rehabilitation as a series of actions comprised of "assessment, guidance, training, and job placement" (Coimbra, 1969, p. 17). In 1967, a publication by the Ministry of Corporations and Social Security stated that "as an actuating reality, rehabilitation has complex content consisting of various successively intervening techniques, obeying the dual finality of returning the hospital patient to the factory and turning the invalid into a man like any other" (p. 16). Thus understood, the vocational rehabilitation processes were directed at men and focused on the working-class population. The same publication presented rehabilitation as a right as fundamental as the right to work, enabling individuals with "physical diminutions" to become "active members of the nation, thus preventing them from becoming a useless burden to themselves, their families, and the state" (p. 15). In this context, rehabilitation positioned the disabled person as having the responsibility not to become a burden on others—an inherently oppressive imperative.

Although it was assigned a broad set of tasks, in 1969, three years after its creation, the responsibilities of the VRS were transferred to the National Employment Service and the Vocational Training Service, which created the Rehabilitation Studies Division in 1970. Nevertheless, the documents from these brief three years provide valuable insight into the historical processes that shaped the principles supporting vocational rehabilitation for disabled people in Portugal. They also highlight how the VRS was conceived to bring coherence to certain measures already undertaken by both the public and private sectors, integrating them into a broader vocational rehabilitation policy.

In fact, in 1955 Dr. Mello e Castro, then Secretary of State for Assistance, initiated efforts that would eventually lead to the construction of the first Center for Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation in Alcoitão. In 1957 he was appointed President (Provedor) of the Lisbon's Santa Casa da Misericórdia, a centuries-old Catholic charitable organization, which took on the responsibility and management of the center, a role it has maintained to this day. That same year, construction began on the facility and would take more than a decade to complete.

The preparation of specialized medical and technical personnel, critical to the implementation of effective rehabilitation programs, began in earnest in the mid-1950s with several teams going abroad for training. By 1957 Dr. Santana Carlos spearheaded the launch of the country's first physiotherapy and physiotherapeutic courses in collaboration with American therapists Frances Robertson, Inês Stilwell, and Dorothea Ann Cepik (Carlos, 1965; Fonseca, 2012). Portugal gained admission to the World Federation of Occupational Therapy in 1962 and to the World Confederation for Physical Therapy in 1963. The inaugural specialization course in rehabilitation nursing took place in 1965, training fourteen nurses (Luís et al., 2003).

Building on these efforts, in 1967, the VRS opened a Vocational Training Center for Adapted and Protected Work. It was strategically located twenty-five kilometers from Alcoitão, in the Lisbon metropolitan area. The center provided courses in civil construction, office work, typing, and mechanics, as well as academic refresher courses in mathematics, Portuguese, and French. In its inaugural year, it admitted sixty trainees, fifty of whom were deemed qualified by the end of the course. By December 1968, twenty-five had secured employment. The protected workshops employed approximately thirty people in the areas of typesetting, bookbinding, and typewriter repair. A placement agent, a psychologist, and a social worker assisted each person (VRS, 1969). Through a beautifully designed brochure, suggestively titled "The country needs us" (VRS, 1969) and created to promote the work done in Venda Nova, the VRS addressed the following message to employers: "We can help you if you want. In your workshop, in your office, or in your factory, we can fill the vacancies you're having trouble filling." This rhetoric, while aiming to praise the skills acquired, defined disabled workers as spare labor force.

However, the services the VRS was able to offer were largely insufficient, concentrated in Lisbon, and unable to accommodate a significant portion of all those injured at work, on the roads, or in the war. Alongside it, the regime would produce a very specific discourse—heroic and sophistic—on rehabilitation, which obscured the shortcomings of real responses and shifted the eventual resolution to the realm of changing mindsets.

This discourse took shape through what is now recognized as an awareness campaign, which the VRS actively conducted. In fact, this was one of the VRS's primary attributes, as its regulations clearly stated the need to "promote among companies, through the most suitable channels, the spread and awareness of the principles and benefits of vocational rehabilitation, particularly regarding the value and profitability of reclassified individuals' work and advisability of adapting facilities and equipment to their needs" (Ordinance 22493/67, p. 4, an i). Since the new legislative framework did not foresee any changes to the material organization of work environments, nor establish a quota system for hiring disabled individuals or provide incentives for companies to employ them, employers would hire disabled people purely based on their willingness to do so. Within the framework of the idealistic ideas behind these choices, raising awareness of the abilities of disabled individuals was key to successful vocational rehabilitation programs and policies. Conducting an awareness campaign was therefore indispensable.

In the Name of the Working and Fighting Nation: The Regime's Discourse on Vocational Rehabilitation

The campaign led by the VRS included at least two exhibitions, in Lisbon and Porto, that featured a bibliographic collection of about 1,500 international works on physical disability rehabilitation along with a set of documents, including photographs, that showcased the operation of the Venda Nova Center (BAD, 1969). More importantly, the campaign organized a series of conferences the year the VRS was dissolved, in 1969. From these conferences it published three volumes titled "In the Name of the Working and Fighting Nation" that assembled the regime's most important ideas on vocational rehabilitation.

The "In the Name of the Working and Fighting Nation" conferences featured thirteen speakers, twelve men and one woman, of whom only one was disabled. All were connected to or aligned with the political regime, which explains the remarkable unity of the speeches presented. Pierced by a profound silence regarding the social causes of a significant portion of impairments and the ableism of society, 3 these conferences conveyed principles and convictions that are still hegemonic in Portugal today. Among them is the idea that the removal of disabled people from workplaces is the combined result of their incapacities and the discriminatory attitudes of employers. In this context, the functional abilities of the individual determine their employability on one side (possibility of finding a job; quality of the job they can hope to access), while on the other side are the generally discriminatory attitudes of individual employers that motivate the denial of work (Hall, 1999). For example, in 1965, Dr. Santana Carlos, the first clinical director of the Alcoitão Rehabilitation Medicine Center, explained that "the reluctance to hire a physically diminished worker does not necessarily stem from selfish convenience or a desire for security on the part of potential employers. Rather, it reflects a profound lack of understanding of the actual situation" (p. 15).

Following this logic, disabled people must rehabilitate themselves by investing in adequate personal training while employers must be sensitized. As Edward Hall argues, these explanations and solutions offer sensible and practical notions, such as acknowledging the existence of discrimination. However, this approach has a major drawback; it focuses solely on the disabled individual and their employer, neglecting to address the influence of societal processes in shaping these attitudes and experiences. The responsibility lies exclusively with the individual disabled person and the employer engaged in discriminatory practices (1999, p. 139). Conference presentations reinforced these assumptions and consistently suggested that societal ableism could be summarized in two main issues: first, the limited rehabilitation opportunities available in the country, and second, the reluctance of employers to hire disabled individuals, driven by their biases and prejudices. 4 The VRS was already working on rehabilitation facilities, with the establishment of the Venda Nova center. Through these conferences arranged for the industrialists of the era, it now sought to convince employers to hire those who were being rehabilitated.

To overcome these resistances, the arguments most commonly invoked by the speakers were those outlined in the preamble of the law that established the VRS: moral justifications and economic imperatives.

Moral justifications typically took two forms and were either rooted in religious beliefs or focused on social justice. Speaker Dr. Leonardo Coimbra, who was also a deputy for the Porto electoral district at the time, stated that "rehabilitation is a notable accomplishment of the Gospel's message: But seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you" (1969, p. 19). Similarly, Teixeira Lino, a high school teacher and the head of the Covilhã regional division of the National Employment Service, declared that rehabilitation "contributes to fighting discouragement, depression, and idleness, as well as promoting independence, equality, and joyful self-liberation" (1969, p. 45). Fernando do Nascimento, the Director of the Vocational Rehabilitation Service, conveyed that "if our society were to embrace a true sense of human solidarity and Christian love, and if companies were to recognize their grave duties of justice and solidarity, we could provide disabled individuals with the opportunity to affirm themselves as men. In doing so, we could achieve the great miracle of Bethsaida in a rehabilitated community: get up, friend, take your tool and work" (1969, p. 12).

Given the ongoing colonial war, one would expect that, among the moral and social justice imperatives invoked, the future of war veterans would be prominently emphasized. Moreover, as Anderson (2011) analyzes in the English context, authorities could use the rehabilitation of wounded soldiers to promote national unity. However, this did not happen. It is important to note that the silence surrounding the human costs of this particular war conforms to a widely shared logic that the wounds caused by war were collateral damage and not its obvious and inevitable consequence. As noted by Denis Poizat, "disability placed under collateral damage is not yet, or only anecdotally, part of the balance of war. The count, reduced to the ultimate declaration of the living and dead, overlooks the lives henceforth placed to the rhythm of disability" (2005, pp. 22-23). Moreover, Portugal was engaged in a war that did not have the full support of the people (Vaz, 1997), which ultimately led to the collapse of the regime. Bringing attention to the enduring human cost of conflict was, at the very least, thorny. Notwithstanding a policy of concealment, the regime was significantly strained by the repatriation of large numbers of wounded soldiers, and the proposition to provide vocational rehabilitation for the physically impaired appeared to be an effort to calm societal tensions. Speaker Sousa Callé, a civil engineer and Head of Planning Services at the Portuguese Oil Company who became a quadriplegic in 1965, emphasized that "reintegrating some elements, as not all can be reintegrated at this point, will foster a sense of trust between the governed and the governing authorities, thus making a significant contribution to social harmony" (1969, p. 36).

Rehabilitation, however, was not just a moral issue; it was also an economic one. The economic rationale behind the push for rehabilitation, as emphasized during the National Campaign, was multifaceted. Nevertheless, the primary argument from speakers at these conferences was the need to relieve the country—and, in some cases, families—of the burden of "dead weight." In a profoundly oppressive manner, the regime thus stigmatized those whom it had previously recognized as brave workers or heroic soldiers.

Speakers' arguments were akin to those employed in England after World War II, aimed at convincing disabled individuals to acknowledge the efforts made on their behalf and demonstrate their cooperation in the rehabilitation process. Glória Correia, a lawyer and Head of the Regional Division in Coimbra at the National Employment Service, stated that "an idle machine, a man not working, are goods that are no longer produced; they are beings that society has to maintain. Society, for better or worse, directly or indirectly, will clothe him, support him, and provide countless goods and services to him, the cost of which the user has contributed nothing towards" (1969, p. 37). Similarly, Rocha Cupido, a teacher at an industrial and commercial high school and an agent of the Public Prosecutor's Office at the labor courts, affirmed that:

The entrepreneur relies on the economic lifespan of the machine in his factory, and based on its production capacity or economic life, he amortizes its cost in the finished products. But if the machine, prematurely due to an irreparable breakdown, no longer serves its original purpose, he will certainly try to adapt it to new functions in the company's operations. And this, remember, is just a machine!… The physically diminished person, however, is still a human and therefore has rights that society must respect. As contradictory as it may seem, these rights are ultimately the rights of society itself. (1969, p. 44)

The pressure to avoid being viewed as a burden perpetuates the oppression of disabled individuals by framing rehabilitation as a duty, as previously noted. Still, this blame-shifting language extended beyond labeling disabled people as dead weight. Speakers such as Fernando do Nascimento and Dr. Luís Guerreiro, a member of the Higher Council of Social Welfare (Conselho Superior da Previdência) and a representative of the Ministry of Corporations, escalated into accusing disabled people of dishonesty, laziness, and a preference for charity. Guerreiro affirmed that "an illustrious and venerable Judge of the Supreme Administrative Court claimed that in Portugal, temporary absolute incapacities are granted in numbers unequaled by other countries," and went on to say that "it should be emphasized that diminished individuals in Portugal show no desire for education. I have never seen a firm determination to succeed in thousands of diminished individuals I examined. Their objective is the opposite: to exacerbate their incapacities" (1969, p. 39). Disabled individuals were not just burdens; they were guilty burdens.

Drawing on the example of rehabilitation programs then implemented in the United States, speakers aimed to demonstrate that rehabilitation was an inherently profitable process, contending that impaired individuals who returned to work would not only stop receiving subsidies but would also pay taxes. For instance, Fernando do Nascimento stated "if social security presents a significant challenge to the wealth creation capabilities of nations, rehabilitation emerges as a highly positive response to this challenge. It remarkably mitigates such loss by both qualitatively and quantitatively enriching the workforce potential of national communities…. A person with a disability returning to work not only ceases to be unproductive and dependent on pensions or allowances but also begins to contribute to the revenue of the state or institutions" (1969, p. 71).

Sousa Callé similarly noted, "it is certain that the Social Security Institutions and the Labor Development Fund will be motivated to eliminate or reduce the deficit created by supporting approximately forty thousand cases of diminished capacity" (1969, p. 36). Along the same lines, they also argued that those who were unemployed would diminish their families' purchasing power, thus hindering economic efficiency. Speaker Rocha Cupido, for example, affirmed that "the disabled person appears to us as an individual with no economic capacity, no income, and no purchasing power. Their consumption will be null, and they will have to share the income earned by the active members of their family. This means that the household income, or per capita income, will be reduced, as will consumption" (1969, p. 44).

Among the economic imperatives, there was still the fact that disabled individuals could help alleviate the country's labor shortage, as previously stated by the VRS in the brochure "The country needs us" (1969). Dr. Luís Azeredo, director of the Braga Rehabilitation, Orthopedics, and Traumatology Center, argued that "at this moment…when the nation must mobilize all its efforts to safeguard territories and accelerate the occupation and development of isolated regions, we cannot afford to overlook this human group, as capable and skilled as any other" (1969, p. 59). In the same vein, speaker Teixeira Lino stated that "many of the [labor] shortages can, however, be satisfactorily resolved by resorting to the work of recovered diminished people, since these, in tasks appropriate to their situation and after necessary training, can provide the same income as an undiminished worker" (1969, p. 51).

In relation to the rest of the workforce, disabled workers still presented an advantage that could not be ignored, as they were seen as a compliant workforce. Dr. Luís Azeredo affirmed that "the rehabilitated person is more cautious and poses fewer issues" (1969, p. 59), and Dr. Fernando do Nascimento stated that "when a man has struggled greatly to secure a job and realizes that his physical limitations place him at a disadvantage in the job market, he endures a great deal and does everything possible to maintain and secure his professional position. A job is the lifeline for disabled individuals who, amidst the ruins of their lives, find immense hope in it. And we are all aware of the desperate strength with which the castaway clings to the instruments of redemption that are thrown to him!" (1969, p. 70) 5

If they wanted to, if they accepted breaking away from charity, and if employers were willing to hire them, disabled workers could therefore not only produce as much as others but also respond even better to the imperatives of national production. They would not protest or go on strike, which was an argument that resonated in some quarters at a time when the regime faced strikes and other dissent.

Discussion: On the effectiveness and Legacy of These Discourses and Policies

The establishment of the VRS and the launch of the National Vocational Rehabilitation Campaign for the Physically Disabled were presented as ways to enhance the employability of disabled individuals. Based on arguments that invoked the Christian obligation to find a solution for impaired bodies and the nation's economic interest in rehabilitating them, the service and program focused primarily on men injured at work or in the Colonial War. By centering the male experience and the significance of work in defining male identity, these policies and services profoundly neglected disabled women. This reality is not unique to the Portuguese context or rehabilitation policies. As Joan Acker (1990) argues, the oppression disabled women experience is also constructed and revealed through the invisibilization carried out by public rehabilitation and employment policies aimed at disembodied but implicitly male workers.

The rhetoric constructed by the VRS also allowed the regime to define policies that ignored almost all tangible aspects of the work environment. More broadly, they completely overlooked the importance of social organization in the production of disability. As Brendan Gleeson (1997) highlights, dematerializing the explanation of disability has evident political repercussions. By reducing disability to an aesthetic or attitudinal construct, it evades the question of how these ideological constructs are formed. Consequently, recommendations are often limited to either ineffective attitude change strategies or the oppressive notion that disabled individuals must conform to specific aesthetic and behavioral norms to achieve societal acceptance. The Portuguese fascist regime insisted on both.

While an analysis of the political and textual elements of a given era may not fully capture the lived experiences of disabled individuals (Abberley, 1987), it nonetheless provides critical insights into the discursive foundations of policies that have historically justified or perpetuated oppression. The National Vocational Rehabilitation Campaign thus stands out as a significant illustration of how the issues underlying the oppression of disabled people are displaced from the tangible world to the domain of ideas, as the widespread unemployment of disabled individuals is presented primarily as the result of prejudice and interpersonal discrimination. Such a framing obscures the structural dimensions of the problem, hindering its recognition as a manifestation of social oppression and an inequitable distribution of resources (Oliver, 1990).

The 1974 Democratic Revolution led to countless important achievements and improvements in the lives of the disabled population. For the first time in 1976, the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic recognized that disabled people held the same rights and duties as the rest of the population. It established that the State had the obligation to promote a national policy for their integration as full citizens.

Recently, the discourse on disability rights has introduced new perspectives for disabled individuals and their allies (Pinto, 2011). An example of this paradigm shift is the publication of the First National Action Plan for the Integration of People with Disabilities and Impairments (2006–2009). The political rhetoric promised a public policy model based on human rights for all, adopting a vocabulary that emphasized the importance of the surrounding social and physical environment in the production of disability. Despite this change in political discourse, there has been no substantial improvement in the lives of disabled population. In fact, as Pinto observed in 2011, the transition to a rights-based approach to disability initially suggested a disruption of entrenched power dynamics, raising hopes that people with disabilities were finally gaining access to substantive equality. However, the adoption of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) has, in practice, undermined this shift and has operated as a "technology of power." It enables the state to regulate access to disability rights and benefits by distinguishing between those officially recognized as "truly" disabled and those who are not. In this context, despite the dominant rights-based discourse, disabled individuals often remain confined to structurally oppressed social positions.

Recent data reveal alarmingly high registered unemployment rates (28.6 percent among disabled men and 28.9 percent among disabled women in 2017, Pinto & Pinto, 2017) as well as minimal representation in the labor market (only 0.58 percent of private sector companies with ten or more employees and 2.62 percent of public sector workers are disabled, Pinto et al., 2022). Moreover, long-term registered unemployment among the disabled population far surpasses that of the general population, with an increase of 63.8 percent between 2012 and 2017 (Pinto & Pinto, 2017).

Amidst this situation, new challenges have arisen from the COVID-19 crisis. While the unemployment rate for the general population has decreased since the pandemic, registered unemployment among disabled people has increased by 1.2 percent (Pinto et al., 2022). Additionally, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report "Disability, Work, and Inclusion: Mainstreaming in All Policies and Practices" (OECD, 2022), disabled individuals are more likely to hold jobs that are vulnerable to automation, posing new questions within the Portuguese context.

Consistently, the Portuguese media reported in August 2022 that the government's Strategy for the Inclusion of People with Disabilities, planned to run from 2021 to 2025, had already failed to meet nearly all its objectives. Almost none of the actions planned for 2021, upon which subsequent actions depended, were carried out. Among other initiatives, a "quantitative and qualitative diagnostic study on the employment prospects of individuals with disabilities, aimed at developing proposals for change" was scheduled for 2021. As emphasized by the Portuguese Association of the Disabled, the State budget did not allocate resources for implementing the strategy (Lusa/DN, 2022).

Seeking to comprehend how, within the specific context of Portuguese society, public employment policies have evolved throughout recent history—and how the narratives that support them have taken root, influencing legislative frameworks—remains crucial. This understanding is key to denaturalizing the oppression experienced by disabled people and paving the way for much-needed social transformations.