Reconfiguration of the boundaries of occupational risk prevention observed during the COVID-19 pandemic: the case of personal protective equipment and collective protection in France
Résumé
During the COVID-19 pandemic, national risk management scenarios took an unexpected
course at different individual and collective scales. In France, in the field of
occupational risk, long-established practices, rules, and categories have been disturbed
and placed ‘under stress’. The field of prevention of occupational risk,
which has constituted a distinct field in health policies, with its own bodies, missions
and approaches, was similarly disturbed. To describe and analyse these social phenomena,
we propose using two complementary concepts: the British ‘risk work’ and
the French ‘prevention work’ [‘travail de prévention’]. We show some of the empirical
manifestations of risk work associated with prevention work and their effects on
the boundaries instituted in the field of prevention at work. Our investigation used
data from documentation and interviews in order to explore the experiences of two
categories of professionals – physicians specialising in occupational health and home
care aides – concerned with prevention during an acute phase of the pandemic. We
point out that the question of protective means and equipment has been a central
issue, in a context characterised by tensions between knowledge and available
material resources. We also show that contradictions and points of tension between
actors reveal the subjects under discussion and the more or less porous nature of the
boundaries. Amid these processes, however, the principles underlying occupational
health were reaffirmed, along with the need for a cooperation between workers and
prevention professionals.