Automation and aesthetic labour: the micro-mobilities of work in airport self-service

Abstract

Recently, the concept of mobile labour has garnered increasing attention among mobilities scholars. Yet, the preponderance of research has emphasised workers’ movements that are fairly large-scale and routes-based. This paper proposes another kind of mobility that is of equal significance—that of micro-mobilities by labour, or more accurately by their bodies. Using original research conducted through semi-structured interviews with 40 customer service agents working in an international airport in Asia, the paper examines three kinds of aesthetic labour that these workers perform alongside passengers. Enacted through various bodily motions intended to speed up aeromobile processes and augment productivity, I argue that these performances produce a (tenuous) aesthetics of assuring presence, orderly movement, and passing time. As more and more work tasks are redistributed across the airport between staff and passengers, ‘new’ automation presents an opportunity to reflect on the mobile practices being invented as self-service technologies infiltrate customer service and other work where human relations and decision-making skills are required. More broadly, it also uncovers the gendered politics of bodily comport, gaits, gestures and other micro-movements in labour (re)production in a wider age of technological change.