This program of research focuses attention on migrant workers in the global industrial fishing. We are a team of researchers based in York University, the University of Ottawa and the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, collaborating with NGOs, seafarer missions and unions to understand how workers are recruited, how they experience their working conditions, how working conditions vary widely from brutally unacceptable to decent, based on factors including flag state, vessel type, and location, and what kinds of actions can lead to improvements in working conditions.
Industrial fisheries around the world have become dependent on workers from Global South countries, with the largest number coming from Indonesia and the Philippines. Vietnam and certain African countries are also important sources of workers. These workers produce the raw materials for some of the world’s most expensive foods, consumed by the world’s wealthiest people. Yet their working conditions would be considered unacceptable for terrestrial work. Many workers experience low wages with unexplained deductions; very long hours of intense labour; high accident rates; poor living conditions including unhealthy food and water; abusive captains; and long periods of isolation at sea. This is enabled in part by how fish workers are often excluded from national labour standards, from specific provisions in national labour standards, and from international labour standards such as those in the Maritime Labour Convention.
We have also heard from some workers in fishing that they consider what they do to be good work. Men (in industrial fishing, we have so far seen only men) from Indonesia, the Philippines, and other low wage countries continue to seek this work because they need the income, given a lack of decent and well-paid work in their home regions. While wages tend to be very low given the high value of the product (typically US$ 500/month, but ranging from US$ 200 per month to US$ 1,000/month or more), employment as migrant workers in fishing allows men to support their families at home. Thus, appropriate actions are not to shut down the industry, but rather to improve working conditions. This can also mean a more productive fishery, which can only happen by making fisheries more sustainable and enhancing rather than destroying ocean ecologies. This program of research is thus examining the actions and strategies that have led to improvements in working conditions on fishing vessels operated from diverse countries including Ireland, Thailand, and Taiwan.
We are also examining obstacles to improvements. Our aim is to go beyond explanations for poor working conditions that blame or criminalize individuals or companies. We instead look for the structural conditions that enable this behaviour, and more broadly, that pressure fishing companies or the crewing agencies that supply workers to intensify exploitation. This means explaining the lack of decent work opportunities in the source countries for workers as a manifestation of global inequality. We also highlight how low-cost racialized labour has been structured into the global seafood industry. Buying practices by the lead firms—corporate buyers in wealthy countries and transnational processing companies—pressure fishing companies to reduce costs, which they do in part by hiring low paid workers from the Global South. This also helps to explain many of the poor working conditions such as long working hours, poor living conditions, food, water, and so on. This process can be usefully captured by the concept of racial capitalism.
The Work at Sea project started in early 2020 with the intention doing field-based research on work in fisheries based out of Thailand and Taiwan, and in the places from which workers are recruited for these fisheries, including Indonesia, the Philippines, Myanmar, and Cambodia. The COVID-19 pandemic led us to shift to a more global approach. Some of the sites where we have carried out research and worked with support organizations include Thailand, Taiwan, South Africa, Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Hawai'i; and we have talked remotely with seafarer missions located key international ports around the world.
This project is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and hosted at the York Centre for Asian Research, York University.
