changing user status as part of provisioning / deprovisioning

The user object retrieve by the UMAPI has a "status" attribute on it..

  status: string; A user’s status with the organization. Only “active” users are returned by Get User Information and Get Users in Organization. One of the following:

• “active”: Normal status for a user account in good standing.
• “disabled”: Disabled temporarily - user is not allowed to login, but is not removed.
• “locked”: Disabled permanently - user is not allowed to login, but is not removed.
• “removed”: The user account is being removed.

How is status adjusted / calculated? Is it possible to set that status via the API?   ("status" does not seem to be one of the keys supported by the update() method in the python library..)

We're trying to integrate provisioning with our institutional identity management system, and some of the other states could be useful in our provisioning and deprovisioning efforts?

Liam