Marine pilots and the choreographic work of seaport mobilities

Abstract

Research on cargomobilities has emphasised containerisation, algorithmic management, and the cost-driven calculus of logistics firms. Less visible is the necessary human labour that coordinates cargomobilities in challenging environments—for example, those workers who manoeuvre ships at seaports. In response, we take to the water to learn how ports function as spaces of everyday mobilities work. We follow a day in the working life of marine pilots—a specialist, locally-based workforce who board foreign-flagged ships to dock them safely. Their labour process is, we argue, a form of choreography: executing motions in correspondence with other workers, infrastructures, vessels, and environmental forces. Increasingly volatile oceanic conditions require technical knowledge of ships and guiding equipment, plus deep place-based knowledge of port idiosyncrasies and responsiveness to elemental forces—working with rather than against swell and wind, tides, channels, and weather. While global shipping becomes ever more cutthroat in pursuit of efficiencies, marine pilots choreograph mobilities with respect for earthly forces and the bulk and power of ships and seas, and thus perform the necessary infrastructural labour that offsets risk. Amidst worsening environmental hazards, we offer choreography as an analytical frame to centre the work, workers, collaboration, and more-than-human interactions underpinning mobilities.