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AbstractIt has been widely acknowledged in debates about nationalism and ethnicity that identity categories used for classifying people along the lines of culture, race, and ethnicity help to enact, that is, bring into being, the collective identities they name. However, we know little about how categories acquire their performative powers. The contribution of this paper is twofold: first, it proposes a conceptual framework based on concepts and insights from science and technology studies for investigating the performative powers of statistical identity categories and possibly also other domains. Second, it demonstrates, through an empirical study of two examples from Estonian and Dutch official population statistics, that statistical identity categories enact more than the groups to which they refer. We argue that they also enact national identities and notions of national belonging of majoritarian groups in the host countries. Therefore, statistical identity categories can be used as analytical lenses to study nationalism and processes of nation‐building.

The political integration of the European Union (EU) is fragile for many reasons, not least the reassertion of nationalism. That said, if we examine specific practices and infrastructures, a more complicated story emerges. We juxtapose the political fragility of the EU in relation to the ongoing formation of data infrastructures in official statistics that take part in postnational enactments of Europe's populations and territories. We develop this argument by analyzing transformations in how European populations are enacted through new technological infrastructures that seek to integrate national census data in "cubes" of cross-tabulated social topics and spatial "grids" of maps. In doing so, these infrastructures give meaning to what "is" Europe in ways that are both old and new. Through standardization and harmonization of social and geographical spaces, "old" geometries of organizing and mapping populations are deployed along with "new" topological arrangements that mix and fold categories of population. Furthermore, we consider how grids and cubes are generative of methodological topologies by closing the distances or differences between methods and making their data equivalent. By paying attention to these practices and infrastructures, we examine how they enable reconfiguring what is known and imagined as Europe and how it is governed.

PurposePublic sector data analytics concerns the process of retrieving data, data analysis, publication of the results as well as re-using the data by government organizations to improve their operations and enhance public policy. This paper aims to explore the use of public sector data analytics in the Netherlands and the opportunities and challenges of this use.Design/methodology/approachThis paper finds 74 applications of public sector data analytics, identified by a Web search and consultation with policymakers. The applications are categorized by application type, organization(s) involved and application domain, and illustrative examples are used to elaborate opportunities and challenges.FindingsPublic sector data analytics is most frequently used for inspection and enforcement of social services and for criminal investigation. Even though its usage is often experimental, it raises concerns for scope creep, repeated targeting of the same (group of) individuals, personal data use by third parties and the transparency of governmental processes.Research limitations/implicationsDrawing on desk research, it was not always possible to identify which type of data or which technology was used in the applications that were found. Furthermore, the case studies are illustrative rather than providing an in-depth overview of opportunities and challenges of the use of data analytics in government.Originality/valueMost studies either perform a literature overview or present a single case study; this paper presents a more comprehensive overview of how a public sector uses data analytics.

From smartphones, meters, fridges and cars to internet platforms, the data of digital technologies are the data of citizens. In addition to raising political and ethical issues of privacy, confidentiality and data protection, this calls for rethinking relations to citizens in the production of data for statistics if they are to be trusted by citizens. We outline an approach that involves co-producing data with citizens as partners of statistical production, from the design of a data production platform to the interpretation and analysis of data. While raising issues such as data quality and reliability, we argue co-production can potentially mitigate problems associated with the re-purposing of Big Data. We argue that in a time of "alternative facts", what constitutes legitimate knowledge and expertise are major political sites of contention and struggle and require going beyond defending existing practices towards inventing new ones. In this context, we contend that the future of official statistics not only depends on inventing new data sources and methods but also mobilising the possibilities of digital technologies to establish new relations with citizens.

AbstractBeck and Sznaider call on 'methodological cosmopolitanism' to transcend methodological nationalism and account for an increasingly cosmopolitanized reality. We take up their challenge by drawing on our experiences of conducting a collaborative ethnography of methodological changes in the production of population statistics within and between European national and international statistical institutes. Drawing on debates in science and technology studies, we depart from some conceptual presuppositions of methodological cosmopolitanism to define a 'transversal method'. Referring to this method as performative and ontopolitical, we reflect on how it requires collaboration and, in our ethnography, gave rise to three practical challenges – (1) going beyond the individual project; (2) using each other's field notes; (3) and working against the national order of things. To meet these challenges, we reflect on how this method required us to practise three modes of care – thinking with others, tinkering with field notes, and dissenting within.

Cover -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Foreword / Linden Lewis -- Introduction / Francio Guadeloupe and Yvon Van Der Pijl -- 1. Stories of Autonomy on Non-Sovereign Saba: Flipping the Script of Postcolonial Resistance / Nikki Mulder -- 2. "Education Must Be More!" Imagining and (Re)producing St. Martin/Sint Maarten Belonging / Jordi Halfman -- 3. People from Outside: Transnationalism and Nationness on Twenty-First-Century Curaçao / Guiselle Starink-Martha -- 4. The Trinta di Mei Labor Revolt and Its Aftermath: Anticipating a Just and Equitable Curaçaoan Nation / Rose Mary Allen -- 5. Some Are More Equal than Others? Human Rights Education at the University of Curaçao's School of Law / Lisenne Delgado -- 6. Thinking, Seeing, and Doing like a Kingdom: The Making of Caribbean Netherlands Statistics and the "Native Bonairian" / Francisca Grommé -- 7. After Free Markets and Foundations: Challenges to Self-Determination on St. Martin / Antonio Carmona Báez -- 8. Sweet Breakaway: Where Equality and Liberty Meet on Aruba / Gregory Richardson -- 9. "We Come out to Free Up": Movement, Dance, and Liberation in West Indian Calypso / Charissa Arlette Granger -- 10. "It's Gonna Be Incredible": Lessons on Being, Becoming, and Belonging from Statian Youth / Nicole Sanches and Yvon Van Der Pijl -- Epilogue / Anton Allahar -- Acknowledgments -- Notes on Contributors -- Index -- Series Titles.

Equaliberty in the Dutch Caribbean is a collection of essays that explores fundamental questions of equality and freedom on the non-sovereign islands of the Dutch Caribbean. Drawing on in-depth ethnographic research, historical and media analysis, the study of popular culture, and autoethnographic accounts, the various contributions challenge conventional assumptions about political non/sovereignty. While the book recognizes the existence of nationalist independence movements, it opens a critical space to look at other forms of political articulation, autonomy, liberty, and a good life. Focusing on all six different islands and through a multitude of voices and stories, the volume engages with the everyday projects, ordinary imaginaries, and dreams of equaliberty alongside the work of independistas and traditional social movements aiming for more or full self-determination. As such, it offers a rich and powerful telling of the various ways of being in and belonging to our contemporary postcolonial world