Assembling Sociality in Caring Spaces: Culturally Sensitive Robot Deployment During the Pandemic in Residential Care Homes in Ireland and Japan

Can robots help care professionals deliver person-centered care? If so, how? The questions concerning the relationship between care and technology have long been a focus of debate and discussion. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the development of various technologies and opened the door to trialing products and services that had previously been deemed unsuitable for care settings. Seizing the moment of change, we conducted fieldwork in two residential care homes (one in Ireland and the other in Japan) to observe caregiving processes through the deployment and use of an originally developed functional air-purification robot. Using the concepts of “carescape” and “assemblage,” the complex relationship between people, assistive technologies and care were explored. The focus of this paper is to outline key insights arising from these pilot deployments, particularly in relation to the intersection between the act of caring and the use of robots. Through ethnographic observations, interviews and focus groups with care professionals, we found the hybrid collective nature of using a robot by care professionals as well as a polysemic understanding of care. The insights gained from this study shed light on some of the potential common ingredients when a chain of care is triggered by culturally sensitive deployment and use of technologies such as care robots.