Debt, accounting, and the transformation of individuals into financially responsible neoliberal subjects

Abstract Building on Lazzarato’s (2012, 2015) insights about the importance of debt in governing populations in financialised neoliberal societies, this paper examines the transportation loan provided by Canada to refugees to travel to the country, and the role of the accounting department of the Canadian immigration agency in responsibilising refugees to reimburse this loan. Drawing on official documentation and historical data, and focusing on individuals’ lived experiences and biographies captured through in-depth interviews with refugees, this paper demonstrates that by imposing financial obligations to repay transportation costs, the government, with the help of non-governmental organisations, financialises and ‘responsibilises’ individuals, who develop micro-accounting skills throughout the process. The paper contributes to the accounting literature on responsibilisation in neoliberal societies by showing the way in which debt, and its accompanying accounting practices, leads people to become ‘more financially responsible’, while at the same time defining the very meaning of ‘financial responsibility’. By focusing on individuals’ lived experiences, the paper sheds light on some of the means by which accounting shapes people’s subjectivity and supports the construction of the neoliberal subject. Notably, this paper demonstrates that the vagueness, inaccuracy, or absence of accounting information responsibilises individuals via the emotions that these features generate. Importantly, the paper contributes to recent efforts to investigate the role of accounting in people’s everyday lives, a fruitful way to extend and reinvigorate accounting literature seeking to better understand the increasingly invasive role of accounting in our societies.