When you start a new job in the U.S., you are asked to fill out a form called the I-9: Employment Eligibility Verification Form. A banal yet defining piece of paperwork that can define an individual’s ability to work in this country.
The I-9 is shared by employers as a matter of compliance. But of course, it is more than that.
Government forms are not just bureaucratic steps we need to pass through to go from point A to point B. They also — sometimes obviously, sometimes insidiously — perform politics.
The form’s language can invite or reject.
Its design can render them accessible or threatening.
Its very existence can include or exclude.
Forms do things to its filler’s perception of our place in the world. And while we often don’t have any choice in how we navigate the forms our governments tell us to fill out, today, just for this exercise, let’s imagine that we do.
Take a look at the i-9
(linked in the underlined text above)
What politics does it perform?
What kind of experience does it create for the person filling it?
How would you redesign the I-9 to reflect the experience
you believe the form-filler should have?