Age.Vol.A. : Ageing, Volunteers, Assistants. Multilingual tools for assisting the ageing

This poster introduces Age.Vol.A., a recently funded research project on ageing issues in northern Italy. It concentrates on the demographic and social situation of Varese, an 80,000-inhabitant city in North-West Italy, with 13% of its population over 55 (Urbistat 2017) and foreigners representing over 8% of the province’s population, a significant proportion of whom (Rapporto Varese 2015) is employed as caregivers to assist elderly people at home. Age.Vol.A. starts from the assumption that, between homeassisted Italian seniors and their non-Italian caregivers, there exists a linguistic and cultural barrier as well as a digital divide, which tends to increase the physical and social isolation of the elderly population. Such barriers can be removed or at least reduced by creating and introducing multilingual tools (a web portal and a smart device application) aimed at providing the carers with terminology and practical information related to their assisted and the institutions (healthcare systems, health associations, etc.) they usually deal with in the carers’ own language(s). Prospective outputs include a thorough study of both the seniors and the caregivers’ populations of the Varese province, theoretical genres and models of communication, designing and creating multilingual technological products aimed to assist those who assist the elderly, which would contain information useful to the carers’ profession related to senior services, from health and healthcare to administrative issues The methodology will be based on both quantitative and qualitative tools, referring to Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 2003), domain-specific discourse and Translation Studies and methods in social sciences, anthropology and philosophy. Selected references - Fairclough N. 2003, Analysing Discourse, London, Routledge. - Provincia di Varese 2017, Statistiche demografiche, http://www.provincia.va.it/code/11905/Demografia. - Urbistat 2017, Provincia di Varese, http://www.urbistat.it/AdminStat/it/it/demografia/datisintesi/varese/12/3 - Rapporto Varese 2015, L’economia reale dal punto di osservazione delle Camere di Commercio, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Varese, 22 maggio 2015.