Invisible Walls in the Digital Welfare State

How Parents Navigate Marginalization and Agency in Digitally Mediated Encounters

Abstract

This article explores how marginalized parents navigate their digitally mediated contacts with the State. Combining intersectionality theory with Haraway’s concepts of cyborgs and string figures, I ask: How do social categories and digital infrastructures co-construct parents’ experiences of marginalization and agency? Using two vignettes based on ethnographic data collected through fieldnotes, future workshops, and interviews with marginalized parents, I display challenges, constraints, and moments of agency encountered as parents negotiate complex and interwoven power structures. I draw on key concepts that position digitalization not only as a mediator of citizen–state relations, but also as a structural force that shapes and reproduces social categories. Focusing on the fluidity of marginalization, I find that parents’ struggles to assert agency and safeguard their rights are simultaneously shaped by, and push back against, intersecting categories such as gender, ethnicity, race, and class, as well as the digital infrastructures that organize access to welfare services. Due to the digital infrastructure mediating citizen-state interactions, these struggles may be invisible to the institutions responsible for providing equitable access to help, potentially exacerbating marginalization. I conclude by discussing the broader implications for citizenship, social work values, and digital inclusion in a welfare state increasingly governed through technology.