Imagining Caring Futures for Frontline Health Work

Abstract

Care workers are increasingly using digital technology in their daily lives, for monitoring, financial compensation, training, coordination, and more. State and corporate actors have invested significant resources to enable this digital shift, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, care work has remained chronically underpaid, and continues to rely on women from minoritized and marginalized backgrounds. Our paper examines how care workers carefully navigate digitization, precarity, and complex social relationships, in an attempt to care for their communities and each other. We analyze the emerging digital ecosystem for frontline health workers in India during the COVID-19 pandemic where these dynamics have been highly visible. Our research draws attention to four interconnected ways in which workers practiced care, by directing their efforts towards survival, resilience, advocacy, and/or resistance. We suggest these also as care orientations that can be adopted by researchers and practitioners, to critically reflect on and direct technology design towards enabling more caring futures, for (and with) workers and communities.