Labour in Fisheries Through Migration Studies: Burmese Fish Worker Regularisation and Agency in the Thai Fishing Industry

Abstract

ABSTRACT In recent years, labour in fisheries has emerged as a field of study, gaining traction both from academics and through policy implementations. Fish workers often migrate across jurisdictional borders to work on industrial fishing boats around the world. I argue that research on labour in fisheries would benefit from the inclusion of concepts found within migration studies that can unpack the implications of being a migrant in a host country. In this paper, I borrow the concepts of ‘regularisation’ and ‘migrant agency’ from migration studies to examine how migrant fish workers navigate migration regimes in order to work in the offshore fishing industry. I illustrate my argument through a case of Burmese fish workers in the border city of Ranong, Thailand. Methodologically, I focus on three disruptions to Thai fisheries – labour regulatory reforms, the pandemic, and the recent military coup in Myanmar, in 2021—as open moments to explore ways in which Burmese migrant fish workers navigate their livelihood strategies. Regularisation highlights the trade-off between the benefits and the costs for migrant fish workers of gaining legal status during the disruptions. The concept of migrant agency provides a lens through which to capture how migrants explored the space of possibilities through the cultivation of ethnicity and digital technology during the disruptions. I conclude that theoretically drawing on concepts found within migration studies has the potential to reveal the complexity of migrant fish workers, who exercise their agency, rather than being understood as mere victims in the unruly nature of ocean governance.