Institutional ethnography for people in a vulnerable and oppressed situation

Among the particularly oppressed people in modern society are the people with communicative, mental or social disabilities stemming from brain injuries, developmental disorders and mental illness such as schizophrenia. These people are in many ways marginalized in modern society where social and communicative skills are highly valued and sometimes requisite for achieving a position at the labour market as well as getting into social networks of modern urban subcultures. This chapter will summarize the methodological challenges when entering the life-world and institutional structures for people in especially vulnerable and oppressed situations and present some of its results. To deal with the situation of these people is a challenge to institutional ethnography and changes slightly the elements in the research designs. Among the regulatory principles that gain importance and weight in this field are discourses referring to pedagogical theories, diagnostic systems and the concept of evidence.