To Örebro University

This entry explores the history of eugenics with a particular focus on its implications for people with disabilities. Emerging in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, eugenics was rooted in earlier intellectual traditions concerning population control, heredity, and social order, but gained new legitimacy through the rise of modern science. Across different national contexts, eugenic policies included sterilization programs, marriage restrictions, and other interventions that disproportionately targeted those labeled as “feeble-minded” or otherwise disabled. Historians have shown that disability was not peripheral but central to early eugenic practices, with classifications such as “idiot,” “imbecile,” or “feeble-minded” legitimizing widespread segregation, institutionalization, and sterilization campaigns. Deafness also occupied a prominent place in eugenic discourse, not least by advancing the claim that deaf people should not be allowed to marry. After 1945, eugenics lost scientific credibility, particularly considering its association with Nazi atrocities, yet its assumptions persisted in subtler forms within welfare, medical, and social policies. In countries like Sweden and the United States of America, coercive sterilization programs continued well into the postwar decades, while in Germany, many medical institutions and professionals involved in earlier eugenic measures remained influential. Eugenics was also reframed in terms of genetics, family planning, and public health, while bioethical debates revived controversies over the value of disabled lives. By situating eugenics in its broader historical and cultural contexts, this entry shows how the movement both reflected and reinforced dominant societal attitudes toward disability, leaving legacies that continue to shape social policy and public debates.

Children with disabilities in conflict settings face compounded risks of exclusion, trauma, and disrupted education. In the ongoing war in Ukraine, families from de-occupied territories confront displacement, loss of services, and the burden of invisible caregiving labour. This research examines the perspective of parents of children with disabilities on how to cope with the situation. Their specific needs are highlighted and serve as a basis for developing support measures. The research is theoretically grounded in group socialisation theory, trauma-informed psychology, and the concept of solastalgia. Methodologically, 35 semi-structured parent interviews were thematically analysed. Four themes emerged: loss of safety and the search for control, digital technologies as stabilising anchors, disrupted peer interaction, and the impact of parental trauma. Parents described extensive invisible labour to support children’s fragile attempts at friendship, emotional regulation, and belonging. They perceive inclusive schools as both protective and precarious. The study concluded that resilience depends on dual-focus interventions that combine inclusive peer environments for children with psychosocial support for caregivers. 

The article explores the transition of Swedish students with intellectual disability (ID) into the labour market between 1945 and 1989, a period often overlooked in historical studies on special education and disability research. It analyses the concept of employability in the history of education for this marginalised group, shedding light on the justification for vocational education and on the significance of economic shifts, follow-up studies, and sheltered workshops. Drawing on ableism and pedagogical theory, it underscores qualification, socialisation and subjectification as key educational domains. Utilising professional literature and policy documents, the article suggests a broader understanding of employment creation, considering changes in the labour market and care services. From an ableist perspective, the emphasis on employability leads to a paradox. Due to the overvaluation of functionality and capability, inclusion in work life may result in reduced recognition for those who deviate from the norm.

In early 20th century Sweden, people categorised as “feeble-minded” were regarded as a threat to society. Social control and eugenic ideas were manifested in the form of, e.g., sterilisation and long-term internment. Contemporary tendencies of psychiatrisation led to differentiating people with disability according to their age, gender, and social characteristics. Based on a social constructivist perspective, this paper aims to demonstrate how the subcategorisation “degenerated asocial feeble-minded (asocial imbeciles)” emerged in the 1920s, and what approaches existed to deal with this group. To address this issue, contemporary green papers, professional literature, and archive documents were used as historical sources. The results reveal efforts to found state-run island institutions on the Swedish coast and in the inland Lake Vättern. Due to adverse geographical conditions such as, e.g., freezing of the surrounding water, these plans could not be realised, and eventually out-of-use military barracks were converted into homes for this undesirable group of people. However, the planning process for the island institutions emphasises the dominant motivation to protect society by means of exclusion, supported by the argument that isolation would be in the best interest of the affected persons. The findings underline tendencies of ambivalent modernisation in the nascent Swedish welfare state.