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Short abstract

Brazil’s new digital ID changes how Brazilians exercise their agency over the waiting times of state ID procedures. This new ID curtails well-established waiting strategies and imposes time-consuming demands. However, it can also give citizens the chance to develop new and beneficial strategies.

Long abstract

Brazil’s new digital ID infrastructure—the CIN or carteira de identidade nacional (‘national identity card’)—promises that the time citizens spend on identification procedures will be shorter and less painful. Nevertheless, the CIN often reinforces the same temporal difficulties it seeks to redress, such as longer waiting times for appointments.

State identification is often portrayed as both granting and taking away time from marginalized populations (Gordillo, 2006; Reeves, 2020). Vulnerable groups endlessly wait to access state ID infrastructures; however, they also invest their limited time into accessing these infrastructures to fight for their rights.

Within this dual dynamic, how do digital ID infrastructures introduce new challenges and coping mechanisms for waiting in and for state identification?

My answer relies on two important modifications introduced by the CIN. First, the CIN hinders communities’ pre-established time-management strategies by shifting identification procedures from municipal and state authorities to federal and private actors. Second, it demands new resources and knowledge (e.g., a working smartphone and digital literacy) from citizens that are time-consuming to acquire. However, these new demands can also reduce or even increase the benefits of waiting in ID procedures, such as bypassing unsympathetic local officials.

My focus on Brazil’s digital ID infrastructure contributes to debates over the agency of marginalized groups in their interactions with state ID infrastructures, highlighting how these groups make active use of the waiting time imposed upon them. I also show how digital ID infrastructures significantly shift the form, potentials, and limitations of this agency.

Keywords: Brazil, digital ID, waiting