Older People in a Connected Autonomy? Promises and Challenges in the Technologisation of Care

This paper offers an ethnographic interpretation of how in a changing context of family care different Spanish home telecare services provide older people with social links to prevent their isolation, granting them "connected autonomy": the promotion of their autonomy and independent living through connectedness. To do so, services need to craft a network of "contacts". Different versions of the term figuration are employed to describe the practical materializations of the forms of relatedness put in place by such services: what roles become available and explicitly supported; what other figurations of relatedness (e.g., kinship, friendship, neighbourliness) they come across; what happens when these different figurations of relatedness meet. In doing this, our aim is to allow space to reflect ethically on the practical relational promises and challenges of these forms of technologized care of older people.