Cash – Human rights and social sustainability in the transition to a cashless society

This project investigates aspects of the transition towards a cashless society, with an empirical focus on Sweden. There are strong and obvious benefits to – and support for – 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. Social sustainability requires inclusive technologies.

This in its turn requires understanding and knowledge of how digital exclusion works in affected people’s lives, what their experiences are, and what measures would help them.

Proceeding from the Agenda 2030 pledge to “leave no one behind” this project approaches cashlessness as a question of social justice and inclusion.

Through an interview study focusing on groups identified in existing research as vulnerable to digital exclusion, the project seeks to develop a human rights-based normative framework to guide decision-makers towards fair, inclusive and socially sustainable policies.

The experiences of the transition towards cashlessness expressed by the interviewees are treated as theory and policy relevant sources of knowledge.

The project team will work together with interviewees, stakeholders, and the project’s reference group in a process of co-learning, using a bottom-up approach to normative theory.