The value of cash

Description

The research project ”Cash – Human rights and social sustainability in the transition to a cashless society investigates how socio-economically vulnerable groups are affected by the disappearance of cash and the transition towards a cashless society. The empirical focus is on Sweden, where the change is more rapid than anywhere else. There are obvious benefits of the global trend towards cashlessness. However, as pointed out by the UN Committee for Development Policy and noted in the first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG1), technology can create exclusion and inequality, or acerbate existing ones. Inclusive technologies is a question of justice, but more and smarter technology is not always the solution. The project approaches cashlessness as a question of social justice, through an interview study focusing on groups identified in existing research as vulnerable to digital exclusion and organizations that represent them. We aim for a better understanding of how digital exclusion on the payment market works in affected people’s lives, what their experiences are, and what measures would help them. We also aim to develop a bottom-up approach to economic justice, where experiences and testimonies serve as important sources of knowledge. At the seminar, preliminary empirical results are presented.

Period	2022 Apr 6
Held at	Human Rights Studies
Degree of Recognition	National