Affiliation:
1. Independent Researcher, Toronto, Canada
2. Independent Researcher, Cape Town, South Africa
Abstract
Across much of the South, digital technologies are increasingly central to the expansion of state social protection systems. Supported by major development agencies, many of these distributive technologies are developed and implemented by financial technology companies with the specific aim of accelerating financial inclusion. While researchers have documented the influence of these financial actors and logics over social policy, we know less about how these interventions are transforming the experience of receiving social protection. Based on qualitative and observational research with social grant recipients in South Africa, this research demonstrates how digital and financial technologies produce confusion, informational opacities and new forms of exclusion among grant recipients. It suggests that the increasingly prominent role of financial technologies in the delivery of social protection undermines state capacity and further entrenches the influence of neoliberal logics over social policy. Finally, the article suggests that these technologies may be transforming the nature of social citizenship in South Africa, undermining efforts to advance universal and redistributive social protection policies.
Funder
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Reference66 articles.
1. Targeting Development Aid with Machine Learning and Mobile Phone Data
2. Alston P (2019) Digital technology, social protection and human rights: Report. United Nations. Available at: https://www.ohchr.org/en/calls-for-input/digital-technology-social-protection-and-human-rights-report
3. Cash Transfers, International Finance and Neoliberal Debt Relations: The Case of Post‐apartheid South Africa
4. Geographies of development II
Cited by
2 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献