From industrial to digital citizenship

Organised by

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• GGP: Global Governance Programme

Growing inequalities in wealth and income distribution represent a major concern associated with the Digital Revolution. The seminar session tackles this issue from the point of view of social citizenship rights by exploring how welfare regulations could be rethought in the age of digital capitalism. The first part analyzes the relation between technological changes and citizenship rights by addressing the genesis and development of social rights in their connection with industrialization processes. The second part introduces the notion of ‘industrial citizenship’ to describe the architecture of social rights characterizing mature industrial societies, a model based on the ‘citizen-worker’ as the quintessential subject of rights. This notion is used to contend that European systems of welfare are still largely modeled on such an industrial standard. The third part investigates the impact of the Digital Revolution on this model of social citizenship. It identifies digital users as crucial emerging subjects of rights and explores how they could be entitled to social rights as data suppliers.   

Links:

• Global Citizenship Research Area - Global Governance Programme