Who is responsible for wellbeing? Shifting care responsibilities in the Canadian landscape: The case of state-employer interactions

Abstract

Carers comprise over one quarter of the Canadian population, and while many juggle paid work and care, they are generally left with few workplace care accommodations. As aging populations reshape care landscapes, historical and contemporary forms of decentralization continue to shift the responsibility for care from state institutions to individuals and their social systems. Scholarship in geography and associated fields have unpacked the critical ways that care(ing) is intricately connected to personal responsibilities of love and affection, while also functioning as a form of governmental responsibilization. While tactics of responsibilization shape uneven wellbeing relations and opportunities for improvement, scholarship often focuses on state-citizen relationships of responsibilization, avoiding more complicated relations between state and intermediary actors, such as employers, or the realities that support them. The Canadian care landscape provides opportunities to explore these tensions since growing numbers of employers are developing accommodations for the wellbeing of carer-employees. Drawing on qualitative research with employers across Canada, this manuscript argues that while workplace accommodations represent another form of state responsibilization, they simultaneously reflect broader contradictions in care responsibility. These contradictions are at times used as a ploy to further employer financial motivations, yet in other instances, used to embody care and compassion. Workplace accommodations represent a complex matrix of responsibilization and compassion, that at times restrict opportunities for wellbeing, while in other instances provide possibilities for wellbeing generation. Future scholarship on wellbeing-care-policy interactions should consider how the responsibility and responsibilization of care mediates wellbeing and the landscapes that attempt to support them.