MARE Conference 2023
Labour governance in fisheries through boundary work:
Moving from modern slavery framing to labour standards
(Poster by the Conference organizer)
Brief:
Lack of fish workers participation in labour governance in Thailand continues to be the main problem regardless of the intense labour reform since 2015. Labour reform in fisheries reduces physical abuses and extreme forms of forced labour; it does not however help leveraging negotiate power of fishworkers toward boat owners and Thai authority. We aim to explore why fish workers are being excluded from contributing to labour governance. We argue that it is more useful to view labour governance through assembling of territory, expertise, subject, and objects of concern. This framework allows us to see the overlapping of two boundary processes, initiated by of modern slavery discourse and EU/ILO led labour reform. A case of migrant fish workers in Thailand is analysed to show how the objects of concern, referred to the labour relations and working conditions in this case, are not prioritised in the labour governance. While we agree that the improvements in working conditions require regulation, monitoring and inspection, it is also crucial to facilitate the ability of workers to improve their situations through individual and collective action. In particular, we need to pay more attention to workers’ agency in order to address the problem of precarity.
Keywords: labour, governance, boundary, modern slavery, assemblage
Authors:
Alin Kadfak, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Peter Vandergeest, York University