Coded Care: Racial Justice and the Future of Work

Anna Romina Guevarra • University of Illinois at Chicago

May 1 @ 6pm • via Zoom ( https://wesleyan.zoom.us/j/99404313057)

Increasingly, carework today is mediated by robotics. Robotic technologies have not only become ubiquitous, but they have also been pitched as necessary in today’s world to assist aging populations, minimize occupational hazards, and address the burnout rates of caregivers. But almost from the minute they were developed, they have raised questions about the nature of carework and the limits of automation, and fundamentally altered the relationship humans have with machines in the process. Drawing on robotic interventions such as Engkey, Grace, and Ugo in three domains of carework, broadly construed – education, healthcare, and domestic work – this presentation explores these shifts and ethical dilemmas in technology’s mediation and brokering of relationships between humans and machines, gendered and racialized hierarchies, the global north and south. Ultimately, it calls for the need for critical analyses of the value and foundational premises of robotics in effecting social justice and remediating racial, class and gendered inequalities.

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