Machinic, inadequate, entrepreneurial: Uncovering the citizen subject of the human-centric welfare state

This article argues that in the turn towards the human-centric in Finnish welfare reform, the human is a flexible signifier which arises out of technical metaphor to stand for certain neoliberal fantasies regarding welfare citizenship, market society and the state. I situate my analysis in the preceding literature on the cultural production of the citizen in market-oriented welfare reform. Through a close reading of user representations in a governmental AI Programme seeking transform the welfare state towards human centricity, I identify three dominant articulations of the human: the machinic, the inadequate and the entrepreneurial. These articulations disambiguate the human-in-the-centre as a chimaeral fantasy representing a late-neoliberal policy regime and evince the role of the imagination of engineers in government technopolitics.

Automated summary

This article argues that in the Finnish welfare reform towards human-centricity, the concept of "human" is a flexible signifier that represents certain neoliberal fantasies about welfare citizenship, market society, and the state. Through an analysis of user representations in a governmental AI program, the author identifies three dominant articulations of the human: the machinic, the inadequate, and the entrepreneurial. These articulations debunk the chimeric fantasy of the human-in-the-center, representing a late-neoliberal policy regime, and highlight the role of engineers' imagination in government technopolitics.