Under Pressure to Comply: How Neoliberal Governance Affords Consumer Self-Responsibility

Research on neoliberal governance has paid limited attention to the coercive dimensions of consumer responsibilization. We argue that when consumers depend on essential services to avoid highly undesirable outcomes, they may comply with responsibilizing demands reluctantly. Drawing on affordance theory and a qualitative study of personal assistance (PA) services for functionally impaired individuals in Sweden, we demonstrate how neoliberal governance, marked by austerity and marketization, conditions essential care services on three types of affordances: access, choice, and prosumption. These affordances emerge at the intersection of institutional constraints and personal capabilities, requiring consumers (parents of PA recipients) to take on expanded responsibilities, not only for navigating the system, but also for managing and delivering the services themselves. We contribute to research on consumer responsibilization by theorizing its coercive dimensions, showing how the means to address essential needs are afforded through neoliberal market relations that transfer responsibility to consumers. Highlighting these coercive aspects, our findings have implications related to the ethical dimensions of consumer responsibilization, marketization of care, and neoliberal governance.