“There’s Going to be a Tipping Point Where I’m Not Gonna Be Able to Work”: Communicative Resilience Amidst Precarity in the Careers of Individuals with Autoimmune Diseases

Throughout their career, people living with autoimmune diseases must navigate workplace precarity amidst ongoing disruptions to health and wellbeing. Informed by the communication theory of resilience (CTR), we conduct semi-structured, narrative interviews with 25 individuals living with autoimmune diseases to examine their career-related disruptions and communicative resilience enactments. Data analysis reveals two major themes: (1) disability as a discursive-material disruption and (2) career-triggering illness complications. Theoretically, our findings extend anticipatory and adaptive-transformative CTR tensions through the moment-to-moment disruptions that intersect this community's careers and health journeys. Practically, we seek to re-imagine workplace accommodations and disability to better meet both the health and work needs of stigmatized and chronically ill individuals, such as individuals with autoimmune diseases.