Digital welfare for children in China: Human needs and sustainability

Abstract

This article examines the potential of digital welfare policies and practices to enhance the wellbeing of children in China, and the congruencies and contradictions of such policies with sustainable welfare. Can child welfare be supported digitally in ways that are not environmentally destructive? The rapidly diffusing concepts of digital welfare and sustainable welfare are presented, emphasising aspects of precarity, connectivity, surveillance, polarisation and environmental degradation. The context of child welfare and digital welfare policies in China is outlined and considered from the perspective of sustainable welfare. Given the underlying contradictions between digital welfare and sustainable welfare, and the inconsistencies between practices associated with these policy fields, the prospects of applying digital welfare policies to achieve sustainable wellbeing of children, in China and elsewhere, are deemed problematic.

Is digitalisation of public health and social welfare services reinforcing social exclusion? The case of Russian-speaking older migrants in Finland

“…Schou and Hjelholt, 2018, 2019; Tangi et al, 2021). Reformers also advocate digitalisation as a way of providing new avenues for inclusion, helping to put the citizens in centre of the previously government-centred services (Frach et al, 2017; Ministry of Finance, 2020; Pissin, 2020).…”

“…While research on digitalisation of public health and social welfare services is burgeoning, empirical research examining the effects that digitalisation may have on public service delivery from the point of view of socially disadvantaged people remains scarce. At the same time, the research tradition focusing on digital inequalities demonstrates widespread differential access to digital services and suggests that there are important interconnections between social and digital exclusion (See Helsper, 2021; Olsson et al, 2017; Pissin, 2020; Schou and Pors, 2019).…”