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- Convenors:
-
Tony Roberts
(Sussex University)
Niranjan Nampoothiri (Institute of Development Studies)
Mary Abounabhan (Institute of Development Studies)
Caroline Khene (Institute of Development Studies)
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- Chairs:
-
Caroline Khene
(Institute of Development Studies)
Tony Roberts (Sussex University)
- Format:
- Paper panel
- Stream:
- Digital futures: AI, data & platform governance
- Location:
- L2.21
- Sessions:
- Thursday 9 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Dublin
Short Abstract
Amartya Sen argues that the expansion of freedoms & the removal unfreedoms are constitutive of development. This panel features examples of digital citizenship that expand agency freedoms & the power of digital authoritarian practices (surveillance, disinformation, shutdowns) to constrain freedoms.
Description
Citizens make creative use of digital technologies to expand their agency and freedoms in ways that advance 'development as freedom' as conceived by Amartya Sen. Digital technologies afford citizens new action possibilities to engage remotely in 'acts of citizenship' including but not limited to online deliberation, participatory budgeting and hashtag campaigns - even in countries where offline civic space it closed.
However, this 'digital citizenship' is increasingly constrained by repressive acts of 'digital authoritarianism' including state surveillance, coordinated disinformation, online gender-based violence and internet shutdowns. Removal of these "unfreedoms" is the focus of digital rights activists who seek to ensure that citizens are free to exercise, defend and expand their digital rights.
The panel will present papers that feature digital citizenship practice that expand agency, rights and freedoms, as well as papers that foreground the power of digital authoritarian practices. These episodes will be analysed through lenses including but not limited to Amartya Sen's concept of 'development as freedom' and/or rights-based development frameworks.
We welcome papers from all geographies and from scholars at all stages of their career.
Accepted papers
Session 1 Thursday 9 July, 2026, -Paper short abstract
Analyzing UK and Caribbean Digital ID programmes, we expose how official empowerment narratives conceal agendas of control and colonialism. Disregarding inclusion and equality goals, Digital ID systems co-produce digital authoritarianism, serving surveillance capitalism over human development.
Paper long abstract
As Digital ID systems become a global standard, they are frequently promoted through optimistic official narratives of efficiency, safety, and transformation. Reimagining development in an uncertain world requires that we interrogate whether these technologies foster genuine digital citizenship or co-produce new forms of digital authoritarianism. This paper critically examines this tension through a comparative analysis of two distinct case studies: the United Kingdom’s proposed "Brit ID", and the push for digital identity across the Caribbean.
We argue that official government Digital ID discourses conceal ‘untold narratives’ of control, colonialism, and structural exclusion. Juxtaposing UK’s history of resistance to forms of ID and its recent failures with digital-only visas against the Caribbean’s reliance on externally driven development, integration and harmonization agendas (Grubb et al. 2024), we expose how lived realities often contradict policy goals. Therefore, Digital ID initiatives appear better explained by neoliberal logics of algorithmic power, profit, and colonialism (Bloom, 2017; Couldry & Mejias, 2019; Zheng et al., 2018) than by their explicit rhetoric. Furthermore, in both contexts, these systems disproportionately fail the most vulnerable, often exacerbating their marginalisation rather than alleviating it.
Theoretically grounded in concepts of technocolonialism (Madianou, 2019) and surveillance capitalism (Zuboff, 2023), our analysis suggests that these programmes reconfigure citizens as subjects of extraction rather than agents of development, creating mechanisms of "structural (dis)empowerment" (Mariën and Prodnik, 2014, p. 35). We contend that the current trajectory of Digital ID actively reinforces colonial-style dependencies and entrenches new infrastructures for surveillance and geopolitical control.
Paper short abstract
The paper examine the development freedoms and unfreedoms embedded in choices about DPI futures, arguing that DPI can either facilitate the inclusion and participation of citizens in civic and political life or automate and amplify existing patterns of exclusion and dis/advnatage.
Paper long abstract
Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) has become a site of development investment marketed as advancing SDG goals of legal identity for all and social protection provision. Critical voices express concern that DPI reproduces and automates existing inequality and in/exclusion. A stakeholder analysis of DPI actors in Ghana and Kenya is used to understand who is influential in shaping DPI futures, what interests are being advanced and who is being excluded. by current models of DPI and how is influential. This paper fills this gap in understanding who's freedoms are being expanded by DPI and who's expereiences unfreedoms and exclusion. The paper argues that many DPI futures are possible: ones in which DPI is an infrastructure of inclusive digital citizenship and ones in which DPI is an infrastructure of surveillance and digital authoritarianism. Through these lenses we uncover who has the most influence, power and freedom in digital public infrastructure and which excluded demographics need greater influence, power and freedoms moving forward. The paper calls for further research where power imbalances are investigated within specific contexts in order to build a future that protects agency and human rights.