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Bailey, Sara; Kukulska-Hulme, Agnes and FitzGerald, Elizabeth
(2024).
Abstract
Overarching questions/concerns
It has long been established that in order to access essential services in the UK, many older migrants rely on the informal assistance of relatives. Relatives bridge the gap between older migrants and services by addressing the inadequacy of service providers’ informational, language and cultural support. The need to provide such support adds to the burden of unpaid care undertaken by migrant families – especially the adult children of first-generation migrants – and it falls disproportionately on women, due to the gendered nature of caregiving. Over the past decade, however, essential services in the UK have undergone a significant transformation in the form of the institution of ‘digital first’ approaches to service delivery. Consequently, service users are increasingly required to access services through digital channels such as web or smartphone apps. A small body of research conducted in other country contexts has examined the impact of the digitalisation of services on migrants. It demonstrates that many migrants are unable to access digitalised services independently due to the combined effects of inadequate digital literacy and limited language proficiency. However, the impact of digitalisation on relatives who mediate migrants’ access to essential services has been understudied. The dearth of research in this area is of concern. If migrants are unable to access digitalised services independently, the existing burden of unpaid care may be replicated or even exacerbated through digitalisation, with implications for socio-economic inequality. The existing burden of unpaid care on migrant families is already higher than among the majority population, and the correlation between the need to provide unpaid care and economic, social and cultural exclusion is well established. This paper, therefore, aims to fill an important gap in the literature by exploring the ways in which the digitalisation of two essential services in the UK – primary healthcare and social housing – is impacting on migrants as well as their families.
Statement on methods
This research was carried out as part of the Protecting Minority Ethnic Communities Online (PRIME) project which is a cross-disciplinary initiative involving five universities and several community organisation partners. It is funded by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The project team carried out 100 in depth one-to-one interviews in four project sites throughout the UK in-person and online between August and December 2022. The interviewees were purposively recruited, and the sampling strategy aimed to ensure that the target groups who are most at risk of digital exclusion due to their disadvantaged socio-economic position were well represented. Sixty-five percent of the participants were first-generation migrants and 35 percent were the adult children or grandchildren of first-generation migrants. The majority of the first-generation migrants have been resident in the UK for over ten years. Sixty percent of the participants were women. Adults were recruited from three age groups: ‘young’ (18-35), ‘mid-aged’ (36-64) and ‘older’ (above 65). All of the interviews were audio-recorded except for 12 where consent was only obtained to take notes. Data collection processes adhered to the ethical protocols of the universities involved and UK data protection guidelines. Data were stored in a secure Dropbox folder, anonymised, coded in NVivo and thematically analysed.
Important findings
• In the UK, some social housing and primary healthcare providers are closing down non-digital channels of accessing services such as the telephone (landline) and in-person visits, making older migrants increasingly reliant on digital channels to access essential services; further, as a result of inadequate digital literacy skills and language barriers, many older migrants are unable to use digital channels independently.
• Consequently, in order to access essential services, older migrants are reliant on informal support from relatives and especially from adult female children. Adult female children provide language and digital assistance and also, in some cases, act as ‘proxies’, operating older migrants’ digital service accounts on their behalf.
• In some cases, the need for informal support even appears to have increased as a result of digitalisation due to the combined effects of inadequate digital literacy and the higher language proficiency requirements entailed in engaging with digital as opposed to non-digital services.
• New forms of ‘unpaid digital care’ for the relatives of migrants, and especially adult female children, are therefore being created through digitalisation; this new form of unpaid caregiving is experienced as burdensome and onerous by many caregivers, and in some cases even results in a decreased ability to care for themselves.
• Older migrants are also negatively impacted through the need for informal support. Some research participants reported experiencing delays in accessing services as a result of the need to wait for support; others, meanwhile, experienced their reduced capacity to engage with services independently as disempowering.
Implications for research, policy and practice
This paper raises questions regarding the extent to which digitalisation is leading to the creation of a new form of ‘consumption work’, defined as the unpaid labour involved in externalised tasks connected with the consumption of goods or services. In terms of policy and practice, our findings emphasise the need for non-digital channels of accessing services to be protected and for digital channels to be made more inclusive for migrant communities, including through the provision of appropriate language support such as translation functions on web and smartphone apps. Failing to address the burden of unpaid care produced by the digitalisation of essential services will likely exacerbate existing socio-economic inequalities between migrant women and the majority ‘non-migrant’ population.
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)
