The (im)possibilities of returning to work after a stroke.

BACKGROUND: What a stroke means for working-age persons has not been sufficiently studied from a sociological perspective.

OBJECTIVE: This article uses the empirical material of a larger study to describe and analyze how institutional practices and discourses influence attempts to return to work after a stroke.

METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten persons who have had a stroke and ten civil servants and professionals from the Swedish Public Employment Service, the Social Insurance Agency, and different health care institutions. The qualitative analysis was inspired by institutional ethnography.

RESULTS: The analysis shows how persons who have had a stroke and civil servants and professionals in welfare organizations share the same goal: a return to working life for the former. The persons in this study related to, translated, and put into practice discourses of normality and employability in this process. However, there were, at times, conflicting institutional practices between the different organizations.

CONCLUSIONS: Conflicting institutional practices connected to the discourses of normality and employability contribute to the difficulties that persons who have had a stroke face when trying to return to work after recovery.