Window work: Screen-based eldercare and professional precarity at the welfare frontier

Abstract

Digital technologies have become essential components in the organisa­tion and delivery of elder care. With this article, we want to contribute to the study and discussion of the role and effects of monitors and telecare solutions in situated care practices. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among elderly citizens and healthcare workers in Denmark during the early phases of the corona crisis, we explore the introduction of screen-based technologies in eldercare and their implications. Our focus is particularly on what health professionals must do, to accomplish mean­ingful encounters through screens. In this context, we introduce the con­cept of “window work” to highlight how screens are active participants in care and how they frame and delimit what health practitioners can see, do and achieve in everyday care practices in significant and often unpredictable ways.