Digitalization, Legibility, and Intergroup Inequality: the Case of eIDs in Kenya

In recent years, many developing countries have begun to introduce digital or biometric identity cards (eIDs), in an attempt to improve citizen-state legibility (Scott 1998, Lee and Zhang 2016). In the best case, expanding and deepening legibility can help states govern more efficiently and fairly, and expand citizen access to public services. But eID initiatives also represent a significant expansion of state surveillance, and raise important questions about citizen privacy and data protection, especially for groups with a history of mistrust in or conflict with the state. We conceptualize two types of marginalized group relations with the state: (1) politically marginalized (“opposition groups”) and (2) security marginalized (“securitized groups”), and compare their responses to those of dominant group relations with the state. We conceptualize opposition groups as those historically marginalized in national politics and we conceptualize securitized groups as those disproportionately policed by the state, e.g. for (stated) reasons of national security. Through these comparisons, we assess whether eID initiatives could ultimately have the effect of exacerbating, rather than reducing, inequality in access to public goods and services. We use the example of the legally contested rollout of an eID system in Kenya – the Huduma Namba card program – as an entry point to explore the perceived costs and benefits of increasing citizen legibility to the state and implications for intergroup inequality. In a conjoint experiment with 2,050 respondents drawn from regions across Kenya, we examine how potential policies governing the eID program, including those on data security, integration with voting and taxation systems, and information about program benefits affect support for the eID program, intended eID uptake, and views on the implications of eIDs for data privacy, ease of access to services, and considerations surrounding political participation. Focusing on heterogeneous treatment effects among historically dominant, opposition, and securitized groups, we examine the degree to which different groups are willing to “trade off” privacy for potentially better access to public goods and services.