La socialisation aux dangers d’opérateurs débutants en raffinerie de pétrole. Enquête dans un centre d’apprentissage en entreprise

Before they start working on a Seveso site, new oil refinery operators in France are trained in risk prevention and socialised to the dangers of the plants. Based on ethnographic material, the article analyses the way in which professional socialisation is linked to training on this topic in a company learning centre. Although, at the beginning of the training, the novice operators have an unequal relationship with the risks of Seveso sites – depending on their past trajectories –, the training gives them common points of reference in the field of risk prevention, which structure their future experience of the dangers. As former refinery workers, the centre’s trainers also work, beyond the training framework, on developing and/or reinforcing the new operators’ dispositions to act on a Seveso site, to socialise them more practically to the dangers. In so doing, they draw on their own experience of the hazards of the plants. Finally, the novice operators engage in this process of socialisation to the risks outside and beyond the initial training framework, together with or apart from the trainers. The trainees develop a black sense of humour among themselves to cope with the limits of the risk monitoring systems deployed in the establishments.