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Short abstract

This contribution examines the European Digital Identity Wallet as an emerging regulatory infrastructure. It asks how civil society organisations influence its development and why some are more successful than others, comparing digital rights organisations and migrant organisations.

Long abstract

The European Digital Identity Wallet (EUDIW) is reorganizing access to public and private services across the EU, reconfiguring relations between states, citizens, and private firms. We approach this development as a case of governance by information infrastructure.

The EUDIW is a particularly instructive case, because it is still in the making. Unlike established infrastructures, which fade into the background, its technical, legal, and organizational aspects are actively negotiated in social arenas where actors aim to influence an emerging digital infrastructure and the power relations it stabilizes.

We ask: How do civil society organisations attempt to influence the development of the EUDIW, and why are some more successful than others? We combine sociological field theory with STS perspectives to conceptualize the Wallet’s development as a socio-technical field with unequal distributions of capital, including social networks, technical expertise, and financial resources. Empirically, we use expert interviews and document analysis to compare digital rights organizations and migrant organizations.

We find that EU institutions, state actors, and technical experts exert direct influence on EUDIW development through participation in regulatory and standardization committees. Civil society organisations, by contrast, intervene from marginal positions and struggle to exert influence. However, while digital rights organizations can mobilize technical fluency and network proximity to articulate their concerns, migrant organizations remain excluded from design decisions despite being disproportionately affected.

By analysing the EUDIW as a contested innovation field, we show how influence over emerging regulatory infrastructures depends on organisational positioning and the capacity to translate concerns into design choices.