Thief or Toddler: Experiences of unemployed benefit recipients in the Dutch digital welfare state.

While data-driven systems play an increasingly important role in the digitalization of welfare provision, responsible implementation remains a challenge. Concerns raised by various societal actors indicate insufficient attention to the impact of data-driven welfare provision on citizens’ lives. This research explores the experiences and coping tactics of unemployed benefit recipients with data-driven welfare provision in the domain of work and income in the Netherlands. We used a multiple method design consisting of interviews with benefit recipients, their representatives, and service providers, and a document analysis of experience-based stories of benefit recipients and letters by the municipality. Our findings show that benefit recipients feel treated like a thief or a toddler and experience an unequal power balance in their relationship with the municipality. This unequal power balance is complicated by the increasing digitalization of welfare provision encounters because it induces a new dynamic of mutual distrust. Benefit recipients use different coping tactics to counter the unequal power balance. Negotiations about the values and ideologies that are embedded in data-driven welfare provision systems became visible through four coping tactics benefit recipients use to deal with the data hunger of their municipality: (a) pleasing, (b) fighting, (c) withdrawing, and (d) calling in auxiliaries. The implementation of data-driven systems in welfare provision results in emotional and administrative burdens for benefit recipients, and inefficient and expensive data-driven welfare provision for municipalities.