Samhällets panakeia? En diskursiv policyanalys av Digitaliseringsstrategin ur ett arbetsmarknadsperspektiv

Sammanfattning: The study set out to analyse the discourse surrounding ‘the digitalisation’ in relation to the labour market in the Swedish Government Offices’ Digitalisation strategy and the government report that builds it, utilising Bacchi’s (2009) WPR-approach. The discourse appears to further the premise that ‘the digitalisation’ will have austere effects on nearly all parts of society. ‘The digitalisation’ is discursively treated as exogenous to the state, close to synonymously to ‘development,’ which implies a techno-deterministic understanding. This ‘problem’ is then ‘managed’ by enforcing flexibility throughout society. The analysis also compares the discourse against possible ways ‘digitalisation’ can be conceptualised theoretically, utilising a typology on how complexity in a phenomenon is either reduced to its material aspects, projected to the social/political, or conceptualised as a dualism or dialectic between the material and ideational. How ‘the digitalisation’ is conceptualised within the discourse, and thus met, seems to be somewhat paradoxical. Since what ‘the digitalisation’ ‘demands’ in terms of flexibility and legal reviews appears to be necessary only in order for the austere effects ‘of’ the digitalisation to leave society structured the same way it is now, i.e. large changes to remain roughly the same.