Institutional Conditions for Promoting Employment of Citizens with Disabilities in the Volgograd Region

The relevance of the research is determined by Russia's social policy aimed at optimizing technologies to promote employment for citizens with disabilities. Social policy aimed at helping people with disabilities find employment is a global trend and has been taking shape since the second half of the 20th century. Nevertheless, in most countries, the problems in the labor market have not been completely solved. Institutional conditions remain unfavorable – infrastructural barriers remain, the logistics of movement of people with disabilities in space is difficult, employers evade the requirements of legislation on job quotas and workplace equipment, and not all categories of citizens are informed about the rights of people with disabilities and have experience interacting with this category of the population. The aim of our work is to characterize the institutional conditions for promoting the employment of people with disabilities in the Volgograd Region. We conducted an empirical sociological study to achieve this goal. At the first stage, we interviewed experts from socially oriented non-profit organizations working on the employment of people with disabilities. At the second stage, we conducted a questionnaire survey of the Volgograd Region urban population (n = 612, a quota sample structured by gender, age, and place of residence). As a result of the analysis of theoretical approaches and research results in different countries, we identified the following indicators of institutional conditions: the implementation of federal employment assistance programs; the presence of unique regional practices that have a beneficial effect on the employment of people with disabilities; continuity of assistance from educational programs to employment promotion; attitudes toward people with disabilities in the region. We can conclude that comprehensive work is underway in the region, innovative practices have been formed, which are being replicated in Russia today, the attitude of the population toward citizens of the studied category is positive, there are organizations that assist in the transition from an educational organization to work. Nevertheless, infrastructural problems persist, which does not allow for an increase in the proportion of working people with disabilities in the region under consideration