On State Bureaucratic Systems and Self-Surveillance

avatar

One of the most offensive (to individual human liberty) means of social control today is the way nation states legally require you to do all of the leg work associated with them keeping you under surveillance.

I've spent dozens of hours over the last last few months dealing with seemingly endless shitty administrative tasks required by two bureaucratic state systems in Britain and Portugal.

Despite living in a neoliberal world order, the above two states still seem to require the man on the street to jump through all sorts of self-surveillance hoops in order to reside under one of their regimes.

And none of this has been helped by Brexit!

Screenshot 20210109 at 18.48.41.png

I've spent at least one full day a week for the last month negotiating the various administrative requirements dictated by the Portuguese and British governments and it absolutely sucks!

If I break it down - these tasks come under four main categories......

  • Portuguese residency requirements
  • Additional Brexit transition requirements
  • UK Tax returns
  • Car matriculation

Portuguese residency

The process for this looks something like:

  1. Ge your NIF number - in person interview, requiring passport, proof of UK address
  2. Go to your local town hall, get a residency certificate (pay 3EU), go the next level up municipal centre, pay 15 EU - this involved 4 trips in total because of people not being in!
  3. I'll add on to this getting a Portuguese bank account, as I need it to buy land, and 3 trips to the post office to pick up my various documents and cash card.

OK, that wasn't too bad, but I got lucky with number one (I got a nice guy!) and it gets worse.....

Additional Brexit requirements

  1. Exchanging one's UK driving licence for a Portuguese one - unbelievable hassle - upload a shed load of documents (you're supposed to upload a paper copy certifying your UK licence from the DVLA sent by mail as part of this, I got away with out it), wait 1 month for an email, pay 30 EU, send your UK licence off and a printed copy of a couple of documents, involving a 90 round trip to my nearest printer, and then hopefully get yer Portuguese license back some point soon.
  2. Oh before the above - get a health number, involving three trips to three health centres and then pay 60 EU for a medical certificate - which basically involves some bloke ticking boxes on a sheet for you.
  3. Get a biometric residency card - fill in a form online and download a certificate so you can back in the country if you leave after 2020, wait to get an appointment for a photo.

UK Tax returns

Urggh, you know it. This took me the best part of two days...

  1. Go through every transaction you've made relevant to work and put it all in a spreadsheet. This is the only time you cringe at how much you've earned and wish you earned less!
  2. Find and file all your receipts
  3. Fill in that hideous form online and submit it, get the fear that you've made an error somewhere.
    Begrudge paying any tax to a government that's giving you zero assistance during Coronavirus.

Car matriculation

  1. Have a 3 month debate with yourself about whether you can be arsed given how much hassle it is.
  2. Finally approach an agent, upload various ID and car related photos
  3. Have an interview online with the British consulate certifying you intend to live in Portugal, pay 100 EU for the privilege.
  4. Go back through all your correspondence for 6 months as proof that you held your car at the same address you lived at, file it all.
  5. And that's just the beginning - next is getting it tested.
  6. Generally have an ongoing whinge about how utterly ridiculously unnecessary this all is when my car is PERFECTLY LEGAL on UK roads and they've broadly got the same (MOT) safety standards as any other European country.

This is way beyond the Panopticon

You've no doubt heard of Michel Foucault, the guy famous for suggesting in the 1980s that social control is achieved by people thinking they are under surveillance, rather than the over threat of violence.

It's grim to realise how far we've come from that model - where the idea of state surveillance of our basic affairs (the above areas cover property and residency, income and transport, or movement) is so normalised that nation states can call on us to put so much effort into surveilling ourselves.

And some people actually revel in this!

I won't link to the Facebook groups 'British in Portugal' or 'British Expats in Portugal' - but trust me, the two people who run those groups 'revel' in helping people through the maze of self-surveillance, it's as if part of their status is tied up with it.

The same goes for 'doing your tax returns' - there are a fair few people out there who revel in the process, get a sense of achievement out of 'getting their ducks in a row'.

There are a lot of people moaning about it too, but also a lot of people who are quite confused by it all and thankful for the help and quite happy to go along with it.

Creating confusion and criminals

The downside of the above self-surveillance requirements is that millions of people end up just being confused by the processes and millions (probably) are likely to get some aspect of filling in some bit of some form wrong, which effectively makes them liable to criminal prosecution for providing false information, when in reality mistakes are made just because of people getting fed up with the whole process of surveilling themselves and doing a slap-dash job of recording the state required data.

Final thoughts - Neoliberalism was never meant to help the little guy!

All the above at the same time as living in a neoliberalising world order - as Nation States the world over gradually reduce regulation on businesses and capital flows, they still require an ENORMOUS amount of leg work by individuals to pass on information about themselves so the state can regulate their personal lives.

The last few months of moving to a new country should have been more fun, but many days have been ruined by having some kind of odious administrative chore hanging over me, and I know I'm not the only one who feels this.

I've never been a fan of anonymity, but my experiences above warm me to the pros of just going off grid entirely as far as identity is concerned - if that's even possible, and it's probably too late for me anyway!

Certainly I think we might be better of with a little less self-regulation and a little more chaos.

Picture source.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta



0
0
0.000
20 comments
avatar

Truth man. It's only going to get worse until we eventually either stand up for ourselves or just get tagged like cattle.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Very relatable. I hate doing my tax declaration with all my heart. This year I literally waited for the very last day the law allows to finish it. Just to have them getting back to me a month later asking for additional documents. Documents I have been providing for years and that are never going to change as long as my job doesn't change... and they'd knew about that.
I'm always torn on the whole thing - I obviously enjoy all the upsides of a functioning administration but sometimes I'd just love the state to leave me alone for a while. That said, at least they still don't get cryptocurrency, so I can easily deposit my wealth where they don't find it... for now.

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

0
0
0.000
avatar

I'm surprised they've got time to check for additional documents, I would have thought all their time would have been taken up with Covid claims!

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

0
0
0.000
avatar

The bureaucratic fleecing of the general public is disheartening to say the least. I have a hate on for filling out forms as it is and to have to do so for the privilege of paying someone money to do it is almost maddening.

Once you get through this, you will be on your way to enjoying the new country. Just get it done and put it behind you along with the worries of not having done it.

A little anon crypto is good for you too!

0
0
0.000
avatar

I can manage it by just wrapping it in an hour or two a day, but it's painful, and yes i'm just not thinking about the payments!

It will, as you say, come to end eventually!

0
0
0.000
avatar

Poor you! How these things can ruin your days, instead of enjoying your staying and building your future, you have to worry about these things. Awful. I just hope you get things sorted soon and can start building your life up.
Did you have any idea it's going to be this complicated before you left?

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

0
0
0.000
avatar

I had heard of Portuguese bureaucracy so yes, it's just been painful that so much of these chores have fallen in January - not a great time of year!

It'll be over eventually.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Many thanks for your great post! Not that it might apply to me, not many people in Poland can afford living in Portugal, but it's a great account of what it really means now to be a citizen of a European country. I think one should make a comparison of what life was like in a communist system and in present day Europe. You would be surprised to find so many similarities.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Quite possibly, we're probably sliding towards that, especially with the recent increase in state surveillance due to the pandemic.

0
0
0.000
avatar
(Edited)

Surveillence is one thing, but communist state was not in practice as omnipotent as in Orwell's 1984. We are certainly much better surveilled now. The communist state did not have means to spy on everyone that's why creating of the atmosphere of fear was crucial. But everyone was at all times at the mercy of beaurocrats of all levels that one had to deal with in variuous life situations. And even though there was some sort of "law" or internal regulations their freedom to do what they wanted to was enormous.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Welcome to 1984 and it's just January :)
I'm curious, are you trying to register a UK car to Portugal? Wouldn't it be easier to bay one having the steering wheel on the obvious side of the vehicle?

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta

0
0
0.000
avatar

I think this is more sinister in some ways than 1984!

Yes, on the car - the reason being that cars are about 2.5 times more expensive in Portugal - I've only done 25K miles on mine, it's 5 years old (I don't use it much), i could probably resell it for about 6500 EU and I'd be LUCKY to get a car with less than 100K miles on the clock in Portugal for that sum.

0
0
0.000
avatar
(Edited)

It's a farce, and we are so compliant with it all that it just gets worse. But what choice do we have if we want to make our lives easy in the so called real world? We will all be lining up for micro chips soon and be believing that's our choice too.

Great post by the way. I think of all people you can organise this shit better... I'd be having a meltdown, tears and fury and all in a hot mess of righteous outrage. You sound positively restrained.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Well our phones are half way to micro chipping.

It wouldn't surprise me if blockchain ends up getting used by States to surveil people either.

I'm quite organised so I can stay on top of it all easily enough, but it takes so much damn pain it is an irritant for sure.

0
0
0.000
avatar

Hard yes to all of this. We live under so much control today, and my fuzzy head can't even understand half of it.
It wows me when people get so hung up on borders when those are a fairly recent invention.

0
0
0.000
avatar

It's like a frog in boiling water, it's just got steadily worse and worse until this point.

0
0
0.000