Disability and the impact of emotional labour

To cite this work: Lamanna J. and Jackie Leach Scully (2026). Disability and the impact of emotional labour.  Disability Dialogues. Sheffield: iHuman, University of Sheffield. 

Jodi Lamanna is a researcher who lives and works on unceded Dharawal Country in Australia. Jodi’s work spans the fields of disability, education, gifted education, equity in higher education, and career development learning (CDL). Jodi has also worked with Disability Peoples Organisations (DPOs) and is familiar with systemic advocacy and policy. Some of Jodi’s publications can be found through Orcid.

Jackie Leach Scully is Professor of Bioethics, and Director of the Disability Innovation Institute at the University of New South Wales, Australia. Much of her research as a bioethicist has combined empirical and normative approaches, leading to an interest in bioethical methodologies. She has worked in the UK and Switzerland, and is now based in Australia, where she is a member of the Australian Health Ethics Committee, the Embryo Research Licensing Committee, and the National Disability Research Partnership. She has been deaf since childhood and lives with a chronic health condition.

What is emotional labour

This blog article explores the concept of emotional labour for people with disability. Hochschild (1985) wrote that emotional labour is the management of emotions, primarily to maintain employment. Over the years, Hochschild’s (1985) concept has been expanded to encompass other areas, including the additional emotional work that people with disability engage with to assimilate in the workplace (Wilton, 2008).

For people with disability who are employed, there are inherent risks in the workplace around disclosure of disability and around requests for adjustments or reasonable accommodations in case this jeopardises their employment (Ra, 2023; Wilton, 2008). Wilton (2008) calls the work around disclosure ‘feeling out’ where employees with disability have to put in the time to discern whether it is safe to disclose disability in the workplace.

For people with disability that is not visible – also called invisible disability – masking or hiding disability status is possible in the workplace. This means that employment can be obtained, but without disclosure of disability it is unlikely that supports and adjustments at work will be available (Ra, 2023).

Why it is significant

Emotional labour involves two aspects: emotive effort and emotive dissonance (Kruml & Geddes, 2000). Effort describes the amount of work required to convey appropriate emotions, while dissonance occurs when individuals need to act in a manner that may be at odds with what they are feeling. This dissonance can lead to stress and burnout (Kruml & Geddes, 2000). This is partly due to the estrangement of self between authentic emotions and those that can be expressed in the workplace (Hochschild, 1985).

In the workplace

Wilton (2008, p. 1) notes the “ableist nature of many workplaces” which require people with disability either to advocate for themselves or just to accept the lack of support. For example, a participant in their study accepted the inadequate workplace training, and another participant with chronic pain had approved work breaks that they were unable to take due to attitudes from their employer.

Emotional labour is also a hidden form of labour used to achieve specific outcomes. Scully (2010, p. 25) writes that hidden labour is often required of people with disability to manage the perception of their disability or impairment by others, and that this labour “must be hidden from the nondisabled partner in order to be effective.”

Next steps

Click on the link to watch the UNSW Australia online symposium where Ricky Kremer and Ebe Ganon-Davey share lived experience presentations on emotional labour. 

Link to the symposium here  

References

Barnartt, S. (2013). Introduction: Disability and Intersecting Statuses. In S. Barnartt & B. Altman (Eds.), Disability and Intersecting Statuses. Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of colour. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241-1299.

Gething, L. (1997). Sources of double disadvantage for people with disabilities living in remote and rural areas of New South Wales, Australia. Disability and Society, 12(4), 513-531.

Hochschild, A. (1985). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press.

Kruml, S., & Geddes, D. (2000). Exploring the dimensions of emotional labour: The heart of Hochschild's work. Management Communication Quarterly, 14(1), 8-49.  

Liasidou, A., & Gregoriou, A. (2024). A systematic literature review of intersectionality and disability in education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 45(4), 584-608.

Ra, Y.-A. (2023). Factors affecting disability disclosure in employment setting for individuals with intellectual disability. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20, 3054.

Scully, J. (2010). Hidden labor: Disabled/Nondisabled encounters, agency, and autonomy. International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics, 3(2), 25-42.

Shaw, L., Chan, F., & McMahon, B. (2012). Intersectionality and disability harassment: The interactive effects of disability, race, age and gender. Rehabilitation Counseling Bulletin, 55(2), 82-91.

Wilton, R. (2008). Workers with disabilities and the challenges of emotional labour. Disability and Society, 23(4), 361-373.