Research Focus

We push to expand the research frontier on ‘labour in fisheries’ and ‘global fisheries policy and supply chains’ and make impacts in wider societies. We plan to explore the relations between labour precarity and the working conditions of vulnerable workers on the one hand, and supply seafood for high-income consumers in wealthy countries on the other hand. We will do so by analyzing supply chains, ecologies, livelihoods, and labour in producing so-called trash fish in mainland Southeast Asia.

We will use trash fish as a methodological object to trace the ecological state of the ocean and the labour conditions of workers. Trash fish, also known as forage or low-value fish, are a critical ingredient in animal feeds and are often caught unsustainably. Despite its importance for resiliency and ocean ecologies, we know little about it.

5 work packages that examine aspects of trash fish supply chains and worker precarity