The technological tropism of digital inclusion policies in Belgium
(2023) Existe-t-il un droit à ne pas utiliser Internet ? — Location: Paris (22.November.2023)
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- Abstract
- The use of digital technologies within essential services is not a new phenomenon and can be traced back to the early1980 (Margetts, 2009). However, the health, economic and social crisis related to COVID-19 precipitated their entry into a compulsory computing era (Allmann and Blank, 2021). Since 2021, digitalization policies have been reinforced amongst European states, notably through the Recovery plan for Europe. This evolution imposes the use of the internet as a new dominant social norm (Vendramin, 2021) and, increasingly, as a sine qua non condition for the exercise of social rights. People who cannot easily conform to this new requirement run therefore the risk of marginalization or even exclusion. Simultaneously, concerns about the digital divide and its corollary, digital inclusion, have been publicised in an unprecedented way in political and media spheres, to such an extent that they became a new public problem (Cefaï, 1996) in European countries. In Belgium, the current ambition shared by the various levels of government is to deploy political initiatives to help “Belgians who are victims of the digital divide to get on board the digital train”. At the first glance, the attention paid to people who are unable or unwilling to meet this new norm is welcomed. However, behind the consensus on the need to deploy public policies to promote digital inclusion, different rationales emerge, depending on the conception of technical progress in society. The aim of this chapter is to take a critical look at the main orientations of current policies to promote inclusive digital transformation in Belgium in order to highlight normative frame of reference (Muller, 2005) that underpin the handling of this new social issue. What visions of the problem of e-exclusion and its consequences do these policies convey? What are the benefits and the pitfalls of solutions envisaged to resolve it? To answer these questions, this chapter is structured as follows: it first set the scene by briefly overviewing the main stages of digital transition policies of public service (I) and digital inclusion policies (II) since the turn of the 21st century in order to highlight their Europeanisation process (Barbier, 2014). It then examines the underlying rationales used in the handling of this social issue through a content analysis of recent digital inclusion policies respectively launched in the Brussels-Capital Region (2021) and in Wallonia (2023) (III). The analysis shows two mains rational at work: an overwhelming integrative rationale, aimed at adapting individuals to the dominant norm, at the one hand, and a more inclusive rationale, less visible, aimed at, at the contrary, adapting the digital environment to a wide range of needs and situations, on the other. This development is leading to point out one of the main common pitfalls of these two political approaches (IV): their goal is to achieve full participation of citizens in an increasingly digitized society, without questioning either the justifications or the direction of this movement which is considered simultaneously ineluctable and a vector of democratic progress. Finally, the conclusion invites to politicize the debate on technological choices for society by highlighting the conditions for the development of a policy to reduce digital inequalities through capability approach (Sen, 2000).
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Brotcorne, P. (2023). The technological tropism of digital inclusion policies in Belgium. Existe-t-il un droit à ne pas utiliser Internet ?, Paris. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/26808