Project description DEENESFRITPL How digital ID devices are changing the citizenship experience Digital ID devices such as electronic ID cards provide access to government services via PINs, biometric databases and blockchain-secured digital identity wallets. Public debate around these devices often centres on the ramifications of their criminal misuse, instead of their intended use by the majority of citizens. The European Research Council DigID project aims to evaluate how technologies and infrastructure used for citizenship purposes is being transformed in the digital age. It will explore how citizen and government relations are being reshaped through digital ID devices with respect to birth registration, citizen-government transactions and border controls. Show the project objective Hide the project objective Objective We are witnessing the most significant change in statist identification practices since the consolidation of the international passport regime in the 19th century. Digital ID devices like electronic ID cards providing access to government services via PINs, biometric databases, and blockchain-secured digital identity wallets are increasingly complementing, or even replacing, paper-based means of identification. Yet so far, the implications of digital ID devices have mostly been studied in relation to criminal suspects and migrant 'others', not the normalized majority of citizens. This project uses this unique moment of change to assess how material citizenship - i.e. the technologies and infrastructures used to enact citizenship as a political subjectivity and a formal relation to the state - is reshaped in the digital age. Its principal research question is: How does the digitization of identification practices reconfigure relations between citizens and state authorities? The project investigates transformations of citizen-state relations through digital ID devices at three sites: birth registration, citizen-government transactions, and border controls. Theoretically, the project draws on science and technology and data studies to propose a conception of material citizenship as performative and sociotechnical and to advance a research agenda that focuses on the practical, epistemic, political, and ethical implications of digital identification. Methodologically, the project combines multi-sited ethnographies, textual analysis, and mapping to study the design, implementation, and use of digital ID devices in one international and four national case studies. In this way, DigID sheds light on the much-neglected material dimension of citizenship and shows how digital ID devices reshape the lived experience of citizenship - understood as a legal status, a form of membership in a political community, and a set of bottom-up practices enacting the 'right to have rights'. Fields of science natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdatabases Keywords citizenship digitization identification legal identity performativity political belonging rights claims statecraft Programme(s) HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme Topic(s) ERC-2021-STG - ERC STARTING GRANTS Call for proposal ERC-2021-STG See other projects for this call Funding Scheme ERC - Support for frontier research (ERC) Host institution LEUPHANA UNIVERSITAT LUNEBURG Net EU contribution € 1 495 050,00 Address SCHARNHORSTSTRASSE 1 21335 Luneburg Germany See on map Region Niedersachsen Lüneburg Lüneburg, Landkreis Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 1 495 050,00 Beneficiaries (2) Sort alphabetically Sort by Net EU contribution Expand all Collapse all LEUPHANA UNIVERSITAT LUNEBURG Germany Net EU contribution € 1 495 050,00 Address SCHARNHORSTSTRASSE 1 21335 Luneburg See on map Region Niedersachsen Lüneburg Lüneburg, Landkreis Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 1 495 050,00 UNIVERSITAET DUISBURG-ESSEN Participation ended Germany Net EU contribution € 0,00 Address UNIVERSITATSSTRASSE 2 45141 Essen See on map Region Nordrhein-Westfalen Düsseldorf Essen, Kreisfreie Stadt Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost No data
