The Responsibilization Strategy of Health and Safety: Neo-liberalism and the Reconfiguration of Individual Responsibility for Risk

Workplace safety is undergoing a process of ‘responsibilization’. While employers have traditionally been the target of health and safety law, workers are increasingly assigned greater responsibility for their own safety at work and are held accountable, judged, and sanctioned through this lens. This is illustrated through an analysis of the rationales and mentalities of a new ticketing regulatory system in Canada whereby workers are targeted for sanctions and blamed for health and safety violations. Under the responsibilization strategy of health and safety, workers are not only re-defined as both potential victims and offenders but they also find themselves forced to adopt a rights-defined identity. This is a significant albeit subtle shift that paves the way for a host of new projects that strive to reveal the discourses and techniques that define and characterize individual responsibilization in health and safety.