Illustration by Jahnavi Koganti

Congratulations to Dr Serena Natile who has been awarded Warwick's Research Development Fund (RDF) Strategic award to support her project on ‘Transnational social security law in the digital age: towards a just socioeconomic reorder’.

The project draws on socio-legal inquiry, political economy analysis, participatory action research and collaborative policy design to conceptualise and develop a transnational framework for social security that considers the role and potential of digital technologies in facilitating and implementing social protection schemes at the global level. The project is driven by the urgency to address the increasing inequality and maldistribution of benefits and risks in the global economy, also exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic.

More specifically, the project engages with two related problems: (1) how international economic integration together with digital development in the areas of trade, investment and finance has not seen a parallel cooperation and development in the area of social security, creating a mismatch that has disproportionately affected vulnerable communities and countries at the lower end of the global income distribution (while facilitating accumulation for richer countries and actors); (2) how the recent proliferation of digitally-enabled social security/welfare projects supported by aid agencies, philanthropic foundations and the private sector, without a clear framework for accountability and protection, risks to increase inequality and maldistribution in the long term.

The project will bring together community and activist groups, inter-governmental, non-governmental and international organisations and other stakeholders to discuss and define the field of transnational social security law while reimagining a grassroots-inspired radically redistributive role for digital technology.

The project builds on Serena’s research on the limits of digital platforms to achieve social justice (The Exclusionary Politics of Digital Financial Inclusion) which demonstrates the limits of creating economic opportunities for people at the margins of the global economy without at the same time developing a redistributive social security system; and her project on ‘Feminist Recovery Plans for Covid-19 and Beyond: Learning from Grassroots Activism’ which shows the importance of giving voice to grassroots and community organisers to realise a transformative recovery.