On October 7, the Rotterdam research teams of Vers Beton and OPEN Rotterdam won the Local Media Award in the audio category in Hilversum for their podcast Big Brother in de bijstand, which addresses the data hunger of the municipality of Rotterdam.
In the second episode, Margot Kersing was invited to share research insights about the contact between welfare recipients and the municipality, as well as the follow-up studies that the municipality conducts on them. In the episode, they discusses the data hunger that the municipality has developed through the Participation Act and how this is in conflict with the Privacy Act. The municipality's distrustful attitude also impacts welfare recipients, who are subjected to close scrutiny. Margot identifies four strategies for dealing with the municipality's data hunger, based on how welfare recipients respond to the way the municipality criminalizes them. This ranges from appeasing the data hunger to adjusting their lifestyles, such as only paying in cash, so that less data is available about them.
Listen and learn more about the unequal power dynamics between the municipality and welfare recipients in the second episode of the podcast by Sascha Meijer and Saskia Klaassen: Big Brother in de Bijstand - Het Heronderzoek - Vers Beton | Podcast on Spotify