The "digital promise" of decent care and care work: digital documentation and robotics in the field of senior care
Sprache des Vortragstitels:
Englisch
Original Tagungtitel:
41st International Labour Process Conference
Sprache des Tagungstitel:
Englisch
Original Kurzfassung:
Care and care work have been subject to an economic shift and successive technologization over the past decades. Especially in senior care, digitalization in form of ambient assisted living, digital platforms, digital documentation, and robotics are imagined to fill in care gaps emerging due to the demographic change and are regularly displayed as being a crucial aspect in solving the global care crisis.
Research and development in the sector of digital documentation systems and care robots/robotics in care oftentimes promise that the implementation of robotics fosters decent care work: enabling care workers to focus on what is ?really essential? to their work, namely the care recipients? needs, and narrowing down the burden of their hard work. Early findings, however, show an ambivalent picture. The contribution draws from our current research project ?Digitalization and work organization: narratives, practices and opportunities for participation?, funded by the Digifonds of the Vienna Chamber of Labor. It scrutinizes the narratives and practices of digitalization and senior care work by conducting qualitative interviews with care and tech workers as well as a document analysis of two documentation systems and five robot technologies and wants to learn about the promises of decent care and care work made by the tech workers and their translation into the everyday work practices of care workers.
Forschungs-