Commodification online – social security claims in virtual bureaucracies

Abstract

This chapter describes the technocratic surveillance strategies of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), how digitalisation is changing the social sorting process, and the tactics claimants use in online communication with HMRC. It analyses the digital field of welfare application within a broader financial context. The commodification practices develop due to diversity in legislation and welfare provisions in the member states, which the marginalised members of weak European countries exploit to survive. The value of identity has structurally changed in digitalised societies. Technological developments in authentication, such as the use of biometric data, are hailed as the future of security and crime prevention. Yet, loopholes in the procedures of the welfare bureaucracies created by contemporary dataveillance technology have provided welfare claimants with new opportunities to construct and invent profiles of the "deserving citizen" entitled to state benefits. The chapter examines the tactics used by applicants to obtain working tax credit and child tax credit.