Abstract

Mobile connectivity is essential to everyday life, yet access can become precarious when it depends on formal identification. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and a multilingual survey with unhoused people in Berlin, this paper examines how Germany’s mandatory SIM registration regime shapes digital inclusion.

Among participants who had experienced homelessness and used the Internet or a digital device in the preceding year, 75.8% had a SIM card, but only 40.8% held one registered in their own name. Registered SIM ownership was less common among participants with lower German-language proficiency and longer histories of homelessness. Many instead relied on widely available grey-market SIMs that had been illicitly pre-registered, exposing them to privacy risks, service disruption, and number loss.

Extending SIM registration research beyond the Global South, the paper argues that security-driven, identity-based regulation can also stratify digital inclusion in high-income contexts. Because lawful registration presupposes usable identity documents and administrative legibility, those lacking stable records may be pushed towards less secure and stable forms of access. As a second-order identification regime, SIM registration can therefore compound pre-existing administrative illegibility. The paper also considers German guidance intended to ease registration for unhoused people, noting that its implementation and broader relevance remain uncertain.

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