Augmenting workers and new technologies of care

Technology is increasingly seen as a viable option for 'solving' future (and present) crises of healthcare labour through the automation or augmentation of human labour. Exoskeletons are wearable robotic suits designed to augment care workers' strength and endurance and to protect them from injury. We frame our analysis of them within two impulses in feminist science studies: that care work reorients how technoscience is approached and assessed, and that technology demands careful attention to its entanglements with gendered and racialized labour and with militarization. Drawing on interviews with the designers of occupational exoskeletons, we first present their claims about the ways in which exoskeletons are a form of care for the bodies of healthcare workers; a means towards race and gender workplace equity; and a vehicle for revaluing care work. We then question these technoliberal claims, voicing concerns that exoskeletons can be a means of surveilling workers' bodies for the purpose of increasing productivity; potentially creating humanoid robots to replace them; extending life spans of work; and the hardening national borders against immigrant care workers. These speculations set an agenda for further localised study. We call for more grounded assessments of technoscience to understand what new care technologies are doing in the world and how these 'creeping' technologies may unsettle the relationship between care and technology. 23 semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted in person and online from the United Kingdom and Canada between 2021 and 2026 with 13 exoskeleton companies and industry experts based in 8 countries. Observation and interviews were also conducted in person at 3 industry trade exhibitions.