Paper short abstract:

This paper presents recent developments on the use of database cross-checking process to audit the Single Registry, main registration for Brazilian social programmes. Rather than a technical solution, the datafication of realities into numbers carries political decisions and contested knowledges.

Paper long abstract:

As the leading gateway to social programs in Brazil, the Single Registry (Cadastro Único) complies socio-economic information about more than 80 million people. As most of the information provided is self-declared, the Single Registry is the object of constant control by national auditing organizations since its creation, what has compelled the establishment of numerous verification mechanisms through database cross-checking. By using other registries from the Federal Government, those processes aim at identifying possible "frauds" committed by beneficiaries in the interviews, in order to reach the eligibility criteria.

This paper is part of ethnographic research undertaken in the Ministry of Social Development in 2016/2017, in a changing institutional and political context. It analyses the State-making through two routes: i) "from persons to numbers", which refers to simplifications of multiple and complex realities into legible formats by the State, involving different human and non-human interactions; and ii) "from numbers to persons", that concerns decision-making processes based on data that reaches the bureaucratic administration. It concludes discussing recent database cross-checking exercises conducted to identify "frauds" in the Bolsa Familia Programme, which led to the exclusion of 500 thousand families.

As numbers, life existences can be compared, monitored, and audited, allowing the State to govern, by distance, numbers which define "poverty". However, this process is far from being mere technical. From the registration to the moment a social benefit reaches a person, many intersecting variables might intervene, involving economic, social and political aspects, as well as contested and stigmatized notions of poverty.