Digital technology can strengthen contact with family and friends across national borders, but it can also create new barriers for older people with a migrant background. This is shown by research from Sweden, Finland and Japan examining how digitalisation affects older people’s everyday lives, relationships and access to welfare services.
The research shows that digital technology can create important opportunities for older migrants, for example by making it easier to stay in touch with family and friends in different countries. At the same time, digitalisation can create new barriers as essential services in healthcare, social care and public services become increasingly digitalised.
“Older people are not a homogeneous group, and digital technology does not affect everyone in the same way,” says Anna Pechurina, Associate Professor of Sociology at Karlstad University. “For people with a migrant background, digital tools can be crucial for maintaining relationships across national borders, but they can also lead to new forms of exclusion.”
Digitalisation creates opportunities but also new barriers
Studies show, among other things, that older people with a migrant background often need support from family members, interpreters or voluntary organisations to access and use digital public services. The research also indicates that digital systems in elderly care are not always adapted to the linguistic and social circumstances of either care recipients or staff with migrant backgrounds.
Different circumstances require different solutions
By comparing experiences from Sweden, Finland and Japan, the researchers identify common challenges in increasingly digitalised societies. A key conclusion is that future welfare services need to be designed with a greater understanding of people’s diverse living conditions and experiences.
“Technology can create major opportunities, but digitalisation must be designed in ways that include the needs of different groups. Otherwise, there is a risk that it will reinforce existing inequalities,” says Anna Pechurina. “Factors such as migrant background, language, gender, social class, disability and family networks can all influence how people access and use digital technology.”
The findings are presented in the research anthology Aging, Migration, and Digital Technologies: Welfare, Inclusion, and Transnational Lives in the Nordics and Japan, published by Routledge. The anthology is an outcome of the E-MigrAgeing research project, a collaboration between researchers at Karlstad University and Toyo University in Japan, and has been edited by Ksenia Golovina of Toyo University and Anna Pechurina, Satu Heikkinen and Tara Mehrabi of Karlstad University.
