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WORLD ANTHROPOLOGICAL UNION

CONGRESS 2024​

Paper

Ageing in the Digital Age: Exploring the Role of ICTs in Care Provision

presenters

    Shivangi Patel

    Nationality: India

    Residence: Delhi

    Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology Delhi, India

    Presence:Online

The proposed paper examines the shifting contours and experience of aging and care provision amongst urban Indian older persons residing alone/with spouse only. India is currently witnessing a massive shift in demographic and developmental processes. With post liberalization and globalization of the Indian economy, transnational migration for work has seen a phenomenal rise. Situated within this context, this paper illuminates the experiences of aging in absence of physical care for older persons living alone whose adult children have migrated transnationally. It illustrates how care circulation in these Indian transnational families have been facilitated by information and communication technologies (ICTs). Scholars working on migration and transnationalism have hailed ICTs as a key entity in the care-circulation process (Ahlin & Li, 2019; Baldassar et al., 2016; Madianou & Miller, 2012b; Nedelcu, 2012; Singh et. al., 2012; Vertovec, 2004; Wilding, 2006). ICTs’ role in transnational families’ care provision is referred to by scholars as having enabled ‘care collectives’ (Ahlin, 2017,2020), ‘care at a distance (Pols, 2012; Singh et. al., 2012) and ‘co-presence’ (Baldassar et al. 2016). This paper examines these conceptual understanding of 'Care' in the backdrop of 'family based care arrangements' being the only way of providing care for elderly in India. It further explores how human-digital relationships produce both enabling and constraining effects on everyday lives across borders by using the material-semiotic approach, which emphasizes the agency of material entities like technologies within social relations (Ahlin, 2017, 2020; Mol, 2002; Law, 2009; Horst & Miller, 2012).

Keywords:

Ageing, India, ICTs, Elderly Care, Migration