Katrin Langensiepen has heard it so often: you can’t handle it with your disability. No way, she thought – and made it to the EU Parliament. But what can she actually do, right now?
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Christoph Koopmann, Budapest
If she hadn’t said to the man from the vocational training center on the phone back then, nope, I won’t do it, she would be in a shitty situation now. Katrin Langensiepen had just finished school, regular school by the way, when the employment office, as it was called at the time, referred her to the factory. So the suggestion: training at a boarding school for people with disabilities, like she has one. Sounds really cool, she thought at first. Then she thought about it and thought: If I do that, I might never get out of this system again, vocational training centers, workshops for all those who the so-called majority society thinks can work on the normal job market don’t pack.