Investments in the digital welfare state are often driven by the promise of removing intermediaries between the state and citizens, yet they continue to play a key role in the last mile delivery of state services. By intermediaries, I mean people who interface between bureaucrats and citizens. Their work, often as proxies for citizens, is not only to simplify bureaucratic procedures for them, but also help insulate them from bureaucratic apathy. Based on 18-months of ethnographic fieldwork, I describe the work of intermediaries around government offices, who (in)visibly support citizens in navigating the bureaucratic procedures of enrolling into Aadhaar, India's biometrics-based national identity number. Building on Julia Elyachar's conception of “phatic labor,” I position such intermediaries themselves as infrastructure and illustrate how their affective networks can be leveraged to orchestrate a form of distributive justice to ensure that being marginal does not preclude a citizen's access to welfare services.

中文翻译：

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作为基础设施的中介机构：质疑国家建设的日常劳动

对数字福利国家的投资往往是由消除国家与公民之间中介机构的承诺推动的，但它们仍然在国家服务的最后一英里交付中发挥着关键作用。我所说的中间人是指在官僚和公民之间进行沟通的人。他们的工作通常作为公民的代理人，不仅是为了简化他们的官僚程序，而且还有助于使他们免受官僚主义的冷漠影响。基于 18 个月的民族志实地调查，我描述了政府办公室周围中介机构的工作，他们（无形）明显地支持公民办理注册 Aadhaar（印度基于生物识别的国民身份号码）的官僚程序。基于朱莉娅·埃利亚查尔（Julia Elyachar）的“社交劳动”概念，我将此类中介机构本身定位为基础设施，并说明如何利用它们的情感网络来协调某种形式的分配正义，以确保处于边缘地位不会妨碍公民获得福利服务。