Automating passenger work

Airport Labour at the Transductive Interface

Bibliographic Data

ID3977849
AuthorsDylan Brady (0000-0001-8751-2487, National University of Singapore, corresponding author), Wei Lin (0000-0002-5484-0860, National University of Singapore)
Year2024
Volume25
Issue4
Pages525-543
Publication date2024-04-20
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial & Cultural Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-9365 • E-ISSN: 1470-1197
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14649365.2023.2197873
OpenAlexW4362552690
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited44

Contemporary airport automation often takes the form of self-service interfaces which transform the work tasks of check-in and boarding. In effect, such interfaces redistribute substantive and complex service labour to passengers. This article rethinks contemporary automation through the lens of the interface and examines how such automation constitutes a spatially-extended and more-than-technological assemblage that reconfigures labour across the consumer-worker divide. Rather than drawing clear lines between agential humans and technical things, we examine human elements of the interface as also having technicity within the spatialities of automation. Drawing on interviews with passenger services personnel at the two largest airports in Beijing, China, we find that at self-service interfaces airport workers step out of the way to allow passengers to step up, interfacing directly with 'back-end' airport digital infrastructure previously limited to paid personnel. In place of routine transduction, the work of check-in and boarding agents becomes regulatory, i.e. assisting, trouble-shooting and understanding: the work that cannot be automated. This work includes handling those passengers that self-service interfaces exclude: passengers who stray from – or cannot adhere to – the form of the generic, skilled and legible PAX. In closing, we consider this paper's implications for future research on automation, spatiality and labour

Automation · Business · Interface (matter · Interfacing · Service (business · Sociology · Work (physics · Computer Science · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Engineering · French Urban and Social Studies · Migration and Exile Studies · Marketing · Mechanical Engineering

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