ESTONIAN E-RESIDENCY AND CONCEPTIONS OF PLATFORMBASED STATE-INDIVIDUAL RELATIONSHIP.

• Author: Tammpuu, Piia

1. Introduction

   Identification (ID) (1) systems and documents in their various forms, as Chhotray and McConnell (2018) note, have offered valuable insights into the politics of the relationships between individuals and the state (see also Caplan and Torpey 2001, Lyon 2009, Torpey 2018). Accordingly, a growing body of research has been focusing on the implications that developing digital ID technologies and systems have for citizenship and state-individual relationship in general (see, e.g., Baubock 2018, Chaudhuri 2021, Chaudhuri and Konig 2018, Hammar 2018, Lips 2013, Lyon 2009, Rao and Nair 2019, Sullivan 2018).

   In this study, we aim to explore how government-supported digital ID systems evoke novel conceptions of platform-based state-individual relationship by drawing on the analytical concept of platformization (Poell et al. 2019) and using Estonian e-residency as the empirical case. While modern digital ID systems are deliberately being designed and built as 'platforms' (Lyon 2009), their significance as such has mainly been discussed with respect to their technological architecture and functionality, whereas broader social and cultural implications have been less examined. Besides, the existing studies have mostly applied platformization as a conceptual tool to capture institutional effects that digital platforms have at macro level. Ho wever, in our study we intend to consider how the processes of platformization also play out dynamically at macro and micro level by analysing how digital ID platforms contribute to the reconfiguration of state-individual relationship and how these emerging reconfigurations are in turn being perceived and experienced by individuals involved in them.

   E-residency, or 'electronic residency', is a policy concept and a digital service platform launched by the Estonian government in 2014, which allows foreign nationals to apply for a state-issued digital ID document, the e-resident's digi-ID, in order to gain remote access to the digital infrastructure and services provided by Estonian public and private sector (e-Residency 2.0 2018). While national ID systems generally include only citizens or resident-population of the country, Estonian e-residency is the first initiative for a state to issue a digital ID to individuals with no direct relationship to the country (Gelb and Metz 2018), and independent of their socio-economic status, nationality and residency. In this regard, being an 'electronic resident' in a country and having certain entitlements as a result of this can be seen as a supplementary state-granted status besides one's citizenship and legal residency (De Filippi 2018, Drechsler 2018, Orgad 2018). Furthermore, Estonian e-residency has been argued to challenge existing understandings of membership in and spatiality of the state by performing as a novel form of digital inclusion and globally extending the reach of a nation-state through its digital ID infrastructure and e-services (e-Residency 2.0 2018, Kotkaetal. 2015, Orgad 2018, Sullivan 2018, Tammpuu and Masso 2018). Given that Estonian e-residency has also turned into a model which has been taken up by other governments launching similar e-residency programmes (2) , makes it further an exemplary case for study in these respects.

   Previous studies have mainly considered the ways in which Estonian e-residency has been conceptualised and communicated as a policy instrument (Kotka et al. 2015, Orgad 2018, Tammpuu and Masso 2018) and discussed its legal implications (Kerikmae and Sarav 2015, Sullivan 2018, Sullivan and Burger 2017). In this study, we focus on how e-residency is understood and experienced by e-residents, that is, by persons who have been issued an e-resident's digi-ID by the Estonian state. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of 25 semi-structured in-depth interviews with e-residents from different nationalities (3) , we examine how they perceive their status as electronic residents in Estonia and the ways in which they construe the concept of e-residency from the perspective of state-individual relationship. Here we are particularly interested in how their personal perceptions are shaped by the discursive positioning Estonian e-residency as a 'platform' (e-Residency 2.0 2018) and broader processes of platformization. With our study we thus seek to respond to the call to make the emerging field of platform studies, with its main foci on big commercial tech platforms operating across global and regional scales, more sensitive both to the variety of different types of platforms, as well as to the local contexts, cultural practices and imaginations within which these platforms work (De Kloet et al. 2019).

2. Analysing the state-individual relationship through ID systems and documents

   ID systems and documents have been central to state-building and citizen-making activities by identifying who is included (and excluded) in membership terms, and who may make legitimate claims to the rights and benefits of that membership (Hammar 2018, Torpey 2018). By regulating and enabling access to a wide range of benefits and resources, including movements within and across state borders, they can enable and disable, empower and deprive, emancipate and repress both individuals and groups (Caplan and Torpey 2001, Lyon 2009). As long as the possession of an officially recognized ID can significantly shape an individual's access to various spaces and socio-economic opportunities, people also remain dependent on states to obtain such IDs (Torpey 2018).

   For the aforementioned reasons, state-issued IDs have also turned into political currency that can be traded, sold and bought (Chhotray and McConnell 2018). An example of this is the commodification and marketization of citizenship (Baubock 2018, Joppke 2018, Shachar 2018) where states strategically offer their passports, but also residence permits and visas through special citizenship-by-investment schemes, golden residence programmes and visa-free schemes in order to attract either investments or talents or both. From an individual's perspective, the possession of multiple passports, or other state-issued IDs, can likewise be part of one's personal strategy of capital accumulation, as Ong (1999) has argued with her concept of flexible citizenship. Ong's concept points here to the ways in which individuals respond fluidly and opportunistically to changing political, economic, cultural, and social situations while navigating within and between transnational spaces in order to reduce their uncertainties and optimize their opportunities and benefits (see also Cottrell Studemeyer 2015). While (national) citizenship has become emblematic of mobility rights and the opportunities for global mobility are valued more than ever, such strategically considered acquisitions of (national) citizenship(s) are also argued to be on the rise (Harpaz and Mateo 2018).

   However, besides their instrumental value, state-issued IDs can be sources of pride, dignity and self-esteem; or, on the contrary, as badges of disgrace and inferiority, and thus also carry symbolic and affective values for their holders (Chhotray and McConnell 2018, Tammpuu 2019). For example, in the case of transmigrant groups, as Pogonyi (2019) has shown, the passport can equally serve as means of identity management and ethnic boundary making, which is not obtained only for instrumental purposes but in order to assert one's national belonging and ethnic distinctiveness.

   Hence, the processes of issuing and obtaining ID documents can lead to the assertion of very different models and experiences of citizenship and membership in a state or states. The analysis of government-supported ID systems and documents can respectively provide valuable insights into the ways in which individuals and groups negotiate their relationship with a state or states (Chhotray and McConnell 2018, Hammar 2018, Lyon 2009, Martin and Taylor 2021).

   The implications of ID systems and documents are tightly related to their materiality, which affects the distribution and accessibility of different kinds of IDs, as well as their affordances and uses from both the perspectives of their issuers and holders (Hammer 2018). The shift toward digital societies and economies has created new challenges for ID technologies and systems, such as how to identify participants for remote transactions (Gelb and Metz 2018). As both private sector and government organisations have been moving their services online, the requirement to use digital ID for various online transactions has also tremendously increased (Sullivan 2018). Intensified modes of international mobility, at the same time, have brought along the need for portable and interoperable ID solutions (Gelb and Metz 2018, Lyon 2009, Sullivan 2018). Consequently, the availability and accessibility of trustworthy and multifunctional digital ID solutions has become essential in shaping citizens' opportunities to participate in the digital society and market, within as well as across the state borders (Sullivan 2018, Tammpuu and Masso 2019).

   In this respect, the view of a digital ID as an 'Internet passport' or 'e-passport' pointedly illustrates its significance and critical role in the contemporary digital societies, which not only includes identification of a person but also authenticated access to different kinds of digital transactions and resources (Van Dijck and Jacobs 2020). Since states generally issue an official digital ID only to their citizens or resident populations, such e-passports can be seen, on the one hand, as digital extensions of the existing citizen and resident entitlements. At the same time, digital IDs can also reconfigure the existing state-citizen relationship in terms of how states and citizens interact with each other, as well as regarding the ways in which the roles of state and the citizen are being re-conceptualised and re-imagined (Chaudhuri 2021, Masiero and Shakthi 2020, Rao...