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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores issues relating to digital social participation in an inner-city neighbourhood in Milan. The concept of ‘social availability’ is employed to discuss how people modulate care labour and availability to/for others, with various implications for social life, health, and wellbeing.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I discuss digital social participation and care in Milan, based on 16 months of ethnographic research studying ageing, health, and smartphones in an inner-city neighbourhood. The paper refers to the period before, and during the early months of Covid-19, examining how neighbourhood residents – older adults and migrants from a range of backgrounds – live, communicate, and care for each other within families, other groups, and neighbourhood collectives.

At the core of the paper lies the concept of 'social availability' (Walton 2021), which seeks to describe how people modulate care labour and ‘availability’ to others via a range of digital practices, often via smartphones and social media. The concept relates to people’s sense of care duties and social responsibilities in the wider context of their own health, wellbeing and life; off- and online, locally, as well as transnationally. These local informal care networks are then examined against wider initiatives from local NGOs, the church, and the state (Giordano 2014); such as projects seen during the pandemic aimed at supporting citizens through ‘digital solidarity’ packages, for example, that offered a range of digital services such as free online newspapers, faster internet, and access to e-learning platforms for households. These examples will be discussed to tease out various tensions seen in digital/care infrastructures across the city and beyond. Conclusions reflect on the ongoing vicissitudes of digital daily life and wellbeing in this setting, concerning relational obligations, care duties, and health, between the bliss and burdens of social life.