On ID, Solidarity and Resistance

Digital identity systems convert individuals into machine-readable data. Despite an increasingly diffused view of digital ID as a route to development, multiple forms of harm have been found to stem from digital identity systems, culminating into rights violations and, by reflection, into the making of resistance practices. This chapter focuses on how resistance to unfair forms of digital ID is conceived, planned and enacted. It relies on Milan and Van der Velden’s (2016) notion of data activism, conceived as the range of sociotechnical practices that interrogate the fundamental paradigm shift brought about by datafication. Three cases from the Right to Food campaign in India, the work of human rights organisations towards restoration of the rights of double registered people in Kenya, and the international #WhyID campaign coordinated by Access Now enact a data activist lens in narrating many practices of resistance to unfair ID. It is through these practices and their constructive potential that new forms of “fair ID” can be imagined, based on respect for and indeed enhancement of human rights.