Abstract

PERSONAL SAFETY AS A PUBLIC POLICY OBJECTIVE?
IMPLICATIONS TO SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT

Xiaobei Chen

This paper provides a critical analysis of the emerging safety argument in public policy discussions. The discourse of personal safety has been central to the recent child protection reform in Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta. The discourse is also observable, in various degrees, in deliberations in policy areas ranging from international adoption, regulation of homeless people on the street, environment protection, education, drug control, and health care. The formula is X (legislation, fee, action) is needed because Y's (children, passersby, patients) safety is at stake; or in a more intense form, X is needed because otherwise Y may die. The safety argument is not monopolized by the political right. In fact, it is quite often deployed by those on the left as well. Ontario NDP leader Howard Hampton's statement in November 2002 that people in Northern Ontario may freeze to death due to unaffordably expensive electricity comes to mind. What might be the effects of the safety argument on social development? The paper argues that making or advocating for public policy in the name of personal safety is compatible with and complementary to the neo-liberal emphasis on personal fulfillment as free individuals; it does not promote social development. This argument is supported by analyses of the following effects: the uneven distribution of citizenship dis/entitlement to safety and security despite the seemingly neutral and universal language of safety; the severely narrowed definition of well-being as personal safety and thus the legitimate scope of collective responsibility; and the introduction of a crime and justice logic to re-frame social problems which produces individual perpetrators.

Bio

Xiaobei Chen received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, Canada. She was a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Political Science, University of Alberta from 2001 to 2002. She joined the faculty of the School of Social Work, University of Victoria in January 2003. She has published articles on social policy in Canada and China. Her current research and writing interest is in global/local citizenship politics in areas of child welfare, international adoptions, neo-liberal restructuring and its effects on women, within and across North American and Asia-Pacific national borders.

Back to Papers