Paper short abstract:

This interview study with decision-makers focuses on how ‘welfare technologies’ are mobilized in imagining the future of elder care in Sweden. It analyzes how welfare technologies intersect with political structures, shaping both the conditions for digitalization and the meaning of care and welfare.

Paper long abstract:

This study focuses on how ‘welfare technologies’ are mobilized in imagining the future of elder care in Sweden. It builds on interviews with decision-makers in Swedish municipalities and focuses on the work practices surrounding the implementation of welfare technologies. I explore how decision makers make sense of and work with the concept of welfare technologies and its role in their imaginaries of future elder care provision. The concept welfare technology is used in Swedish policy documents and politics to describe technology aiming to improve welfare through increased safety, activity, participation, and independence for those with (or who risk developing) disabilities.

I combine theoretical perspectives on sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasanoff and Kim 2009) with thinking around care crises (Fraser 2017, Hansen et al 2023) to make sense of how the interviewees connected welfare technology to broader challenges facing elder care in Sweden. In my analysis, I discuss how welfare technology was conceptualized as a solution to an imaginary of a universal care crisis: the ‘aging population’. I illustrate how the crises that the municipalities (the government entity responsible for elder care provision) faced were in fact not universal but rather highly dependent on the location and size of the municipalities. I argue that these differences in conditions point to how welfare technology must be understood in relation to the political structures governing welfare in Sweden, shaping not only the conditions for digitalization, but also the meaning of care and welfare.