Structural Coercion, Autism, and State Responsibility Why Welfare Enforcement Constitutes Predictable Harm to Autistic Persons

Autistic persons are routinely subjected to welfare and labor enforcement regimes designed around neurotypical assumptions of regulation, motivation, and adaptability. These regimes are commonly framed as neutral, activating, or supportive. This paper argues that such framing is structurally flawed. Autism is not a disease or episodic impairment but an embodied mode of existence characterized by distinct forms of perception, regulation, and world-relation. When subsistence, legal status, or access to basic resources are conditioned on compliance with neurotypical norms, autistic persons are placed in situations of structural incompatibility that produce predictable harm. The paper develops a non-medicalized framework for understanding harm as an objective, foreseeable consequence of welfare coercion rather than as an individual pathology or subjective experience. Drawing on international human rights law, disability law, and comparative welfare regimes, it shows how continued enforcement under conditions of known incompatibility raises questions of state responsibility across jurisdictions. Using the UK Work Capability Assessment (WCA) as an empirical warning case, and referring to Germany as an illustrative jurisdiction, the paper argues that ignorance of harm can no longer be plausibly claimed. Where states continue to enforce structurally incompatible requirements despite available knowledge, legal responsibility is triggered—whether framed as negligence, failure to accommodate, or degrading treatment. The paper does not argue for automatic criminalization. Instead, it establishes a structural threshold beyond which welfare enforcement ceases to be legitimate governance and becomes legally accountable harm.