Courses

This short course seminar discusses the widespread datafication and automation of government and their impact on the equal treatment of underrepresented groups. Datafication is understood here as the trend which relies on the ubiquitous collection and processing of personal and non-personal data with the aim to transform organizations into data-driven systems. Datafication is a social, economic, and political phenomenon which has important legal implications (for example, profiling of vulnerable citizens based on gathered data in the context of welfare fraud investigations). This seminar starts thus with an analysis of datatification from a multidisciplinary perspective. The seminar focuses on the use of datafication in the public sector from welfare fraud enforcement to education. The seminar will then explore the use of AI in the public sector and how digital technology not only automates discrimination but also how automation has become a central mechanism through which racism, gender imbalances, and segregation of low-income citizens operate. Drawing on comparative cases (United States, Northern European countries such as The Netherlands and Denmark, and the Global South, namely India), we discuss some of the implications of datafication and automation for equal treatment, privacy, and due process. The final sessions of the seminar are dedicated to discussing solutions to redesign datafication and automation to empower citizens against discrimination.