Searching for Justice in the Automated Welfare State. a Critical Analysis of the Discursive Production of Datafication in Norway

The Norwegian Government recently announced that Norway will be the world’s most digitalized country by 2030. In the latest of a long list of white papers, the new digitalization strategy outlines the country’s proclaimed effort to reach this goal. While the actual implementation of digital technologies in one of the world’s richest countries is constrained, the discursive production of the digital imaginary seems to be limitless. The prior research on the Norwegian data imaginary has so far focused on the value-creation that the data economy promises, but little attention has been paid to how justice is envisioned to look like in the brave new welfare world. We know that data practices can reproduce existing inequalities, in ways that relate to material, epistemic and discursive injustices, but also create new forms of injustice.

This study seeks to explore the concept of justice embedded in the imaginary of the Norwegian welfare, by examining who is included and excluded, and questioning how the data welfare state intends to tackle current and future questions of justice, including potential inequalities in access, representation, and outcomes.

Based on the above problem, I will present the preliminary results from a document analysis of Norwegian white papers, preparatory works, reports and guidelines around digitalization in the public sector. I will apply insights and theories from Critical Data Studies and combine them with intersectional theories on justice. By asking what the problem is represented to be, I aim to shed light on the government’s representations of justice. This includes examining the underlying assumptions, silences, alternatives and effects, connected to justice, within the imaginary of the automated welfare states.