Benjamin Schwarz

Key competencies

Money, tax, credit and debt; Everyday encounters between citizens and street-level bureaucrats; The digital welfare state; Automated surveillance and algorithmic governance; New social theories

Expertise

My research focuses on encounters between citizens and the welfare state, prompted by the state conditioning, monitoring, and governing how citizens acquire money and manage their finances. I have a PhD in Social Studies (Roskilde University), studying citizens’ institutionalized journeys towards debt freedom in the age of financialized capitalism. My current research, as part of the CHANSE-funded research project, ‘Automating Welfare’ (AUTO-WELF: Automating Welfare – Algorithmic Infrastructures for Human Flourishing in Europe | CHANSE), centres on citizen implications of introducing automated welfare fraud detection systems within the historically generous Danish welfare state. I am interested in intersections of economic value and moral values on micro, meso and macro scales.