Caring for data practices in social work – a feminist STS trajectory

As predictive algorithms, risk-management tools, and complex data entry systems reshape Nordic social work, citizen casework increasingly means data work. This brings promises of more objective case management and rational decision-making. However, as data gains importance, so does understanding how data practices are maintained, contested, and assembled to produce decisions and digital citizens - to see the relational work in data work. This paper explores a feminist STS trajectory to do so.<br/>Legislative obligations, technological competencies, and citizen relationships shape social workers’ data practices. Data is thus never simply ‘fact’ but a matter of concern (Latour, 2004) assembled through these commitments. In effect, a sociotechnical assemblage of knowing. Yet, to understand the complexities of how data practices and affective labor intertwine, our notion of concern should be a matter of care (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017).<br/>Maria Puig de la Bellacasa emphasizes seeing not just how concerns are assembled but to see the ethical and affective dimensions as well – the care, caring, and carefulness that arise as a consequence of this. As such, it seeks to give significance to those practices that tend to be neglected; the trouble (Haraway, 2016) when worrying about, maintaining, or repairing relational values through digital technologies and data. <br/>In a landscape where technology, bureaucracy, and marginalized citizens must coexist, matters of care provide an ethos that abstains from what is purely technical or purely relational, and instead sustains what is at risk of being neglected when data and social work converge.<br/>