Digital Transformation as a Mechanism of Innovation and Exclusion: a case study of Greece

The thesis examines the phenomenon of datafication and how digital governance is transforming the relationship between the state and the citizen in contemporary society. The widespread use of digital technologies and data in public administration creates new forms of participation and service delivery, while fundamentally reshaping the dynamics of mobility, immobility, and the circulation of both data and people. Within this context, this thesis analyzes the concept of digital citizenship, according to which citizenship now extends to the digital environment, where participation, rights, and obligations are increasingly linked to the use of digital tools and services. Particular emphasis is placed on the Greek case, and more specifically on the Gov.gr platform, which serves as a prime example of the digital transformation of public governance. Specifically, it examines how bureaucratic datafication can restrict physical and social mobility, creating conditions of involuntary immobility for vulnerable or migrating populations. Rather than understanding digital governance exclusively as a technological transformation, this thesis approaches it as a mobility regime. Digital platforms do not merely provide access to services; they organize, accelerate, delay, channel, and sometimes block the movement of citizens through administrative systems. In this sense, digital inequalities can be interpreted as forms of differential mobility and immobility, whereby some subjects move frictionlessly through digital infrastructures while others encounter barriers, dependencies, and forms of exclusion.