Digital Infrastructuring in Social Work: Professionals’ Perspectives on Social Assistance in Sweden

Digitalization is central to welfare reform, yet research often examines single tools rather than the infrastructures connecting them. By infrastructure we mean the interconnected platforms, portals, databases, automation scripts and informal tools that casework runs on; by infrastructuring, the continuous work of connecting, adapting and repairing it. Drawing on nine interviews with six caseworkers and three first-line managers in three Swedish municipalities of contrasting size and maturity, and on twelve municipal strategy documents read as background, we analyze how professionals stitch these together. Although the municipalities differ in platform architecture, automation and digital submission rates, professionals describe similar arrangements: interoperability seams that force manual reentry, capacity resting on informal fixes, and workaround tools they build and maintain themselves. Digitalization reconfigures rather than replaces discretion, which migrates into repair, exception handling and atypical cases. They also describe a two-tier pattern of access: applicants without secure electronic identification, language resources or digital literacy depend on relatives or on manual mediation. We therefore develop inclusivity as a fourth infrastructural quality – how an infrastructure’s authentication, interface and language requirements distribute access across client groups – parallel to interoperability, scalability and flexibility, while noting that it rests on professionals’ perceptions, not client accounts.