Relational Deskilling in the Digitalization of Care Work: Older Adult Volunteering in a Danish NGO

Digitalization initiatives often assume universal benefits while overlooking their impact on established collaborative work practices. Through a case study of digitalization at a Danish NGO - drawing on interviews with 6 volunteers, observations of two implementation workshops,and discussions with project coordinators - we examine its effects on older volunteers, a demographic that constitutes 39% of Denmark's volunteer workforce. Our analysis suggests that digitalization: (1) creates tensions with underlying motivations for volunteering, (2) produces new forms of inefficiencies, (3) generates additional articulation work adapting to, or working around, the new processes, and (4) can be emotionally taxing to volunteers, generating feelings of inadequacy and reinforcing ageist perceptions. Our research contributes with: a) challenging ageist perceptions of digital competences with a socio-technical, rather than individual, understanding of digitalization as determining digital exclusion, b) a relational conceptualization of deskilling drawing on an ethics of care, and c) the suggestion that national strategies should resist idealized visions of technology and rather focus on preserving existing collaborative webs of care.