Automated welfare surveillance in the datafied welfare state: Exploring the underlying problematisations

There is an ongoing shift in the Swedish welfare state, characterised by an increased datafication. The increasing reliance on data as a means of predicting citizens’ behaviour not only transforms the way the welfare state is organised, but also the very notion of welfare. As a response to a growing discussion on inaccurate welfare payments in Sweden, the Swedish Payments Agency (UBM) was established. The authority will make use of system-wide data analysis in order to prevent, forestall and detect inaccurate welfare payments. As such, this paper approaches the authority as an automated welfare surveillance scheme. Researchers have repeatedly emphasised how the use of computational methodologies in welfare surveillance negatively affects marginalised citizens in a disproportional manner. Consequently, effort has been put into achieving more ethical and just outcomes. However, it has also been argued that instead, more emphasis should be placed on the underlying politics of welfare surveillance technologies. In order to make the implicit problem representations underlying the establishment of the Swedish Payments Agency visible, this paper contributes insights to the implicit assumptions made within and about the datafied welfare state. This paper draws on the What's the Problem Represented to be(WPR) approach. By examining policy documents related to the establishment of the UBM, this paper identifies three representations of the ‘problem’, namely (a) inaccurate welfare payments, (b) lack of control and (c) data silos. Accordingly, the problem representations are interpreted as concerning issues of control and the lack thereof.