Rocking the boat: maritime rescue and the professionalization of relief, 1978–82

Abstract

ABSTRACT The 1970s were, for many humanitarians, a period of consolidation in which a professional aid industry gradually developed out of the radical idealism of the late 1960s. For the large number of relief workers who had recently joined the sector, this decade marked a turning point, as a number of small-scale and previously amateur agencies began to garner international recognition as reliable and specialized partners. Whilst most humanitarians welcomed this professionalization, the period also saw the emergence of a new and antagonistic form of relief that explicitly rejected it: the rescue of refugees at sea. This article focuses on two maritime rescue initiatives – the French and German ‘Boat for Vietnam’ projects – which were begun in 1978 and 1979 respectively to assist Vietnamese refugees in the South China Sea. It examines the ways in which these initiatives challenged the growing agenda of humanitarian professionalization. Many larger aid agencies viewed the ‘Boats for Vietnam’ as ‘amateur’ exercises but for their proponents this was precisely the attraction, allowing them to offer a purer and more authentic brand of humanitarianism within a bureaucratizing industry that they believed was losing its heart. By charting the controversies that emerged over the boat projects, the article demonstrates how the presentation of refugee rescue as an antidote to regulation ended up spreading discord, generating dramatic confrontations between relief workers. It argues that the ‘Boats for Vietnam’ touched a nerve in this rapidly expanding humanitarian system – not only by bucking the trends of professionalization and expansion, but also by explicitly criticizing them. Interestingly, contemporary rescue projects conducted in the Mediterranean today generate similar divisions, with recent non-governmental organizations’ (NGOs’) more activist brand of relief unsettling traditionalists.