Paper short abstract:

This contribution, forming part of my PhD thesis, takes a historical approach to show the (re)production of austerity in the British digital welfare state, predominately (but not limited to) its (re)production as intersectional inequality.

Paper long abstract:

Learning from scholars who focused on the United Kingdom as well as other jurisdictions that innovate in the spirit of new public governance and new public analytics, this contribution takes a historical look at the automation of social security tasks in the United Kingdom, focusing on the proprietary nature of the expertise and the infrastructures that underpin social security administration. Learning from primary sources from The National Archives, a historical approach to the British digital welfare state uncovers the computational foundation of the shift from welfare to workfare. Another way in which austerity got encoded is shown through examples of automation that replace discretion in administrative practice, and reforms such as Universal Credit that introduce indebtedness to the existing policy of (exclusionary) deservingness.

In the spirit of risk management, benefit fraud risk assessment and unemployment risk assessment are analysed, noting how the use of machine learning systems in social security helps us see the (re)production of intersectional inequality. The application of a technological, often perceived as neutral, method - segmentation - is shown in relation to the segregation it breeds. Taking a historical approach to the British digital welfare state helps us see how the (re)production of exclusionary welfare relates to dependency and coloniality. Noting the shift from the British Empire to the British welfare state, my contribution helps us read austerity in its (dis)appearance as intersectional inequality, and through other (re)forms and computational forms of othering (re)produced in the (infra)structures of the British welfare state.