MIGRANT FISHERS AND THE RIGHT TO THE PORT

Principle Investigator：Jonathan S. Parhusip, PhD Student, Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies, NYCU

Three decades of trans-regional labor migration from Southeast Asia have reshaped the landscapes of Taiwanese port cities. In 2020, Fishery Agency reported there are 18,864 foreign crews employed in its distance water fishing (DWF) vessels and there are 11,343 employed in offshore fishing. Statistically, 63% of them (20,062) are from Indonesia, followed by the Philippine (6,959), Vietnam (2,673), and other (513). However, in stark contrast to its status as one of the region’s more progressive democracies, Taiwan often comes under fire for subjecting migrant fishers to exploitative system and abusive working conditions. By looking at the Port cities as a space of encounters between different actors, the project aim to highlight the challenges faced by fishers in the cycle of migration, including false advertisement, fraud, debt bondage, and forgery in the recruitment process, forced labor, inhuman working condition, and labor right abuses during the employment, and forced repatriation to their home countries.
Unlike land-based migrant workers that are dispersed throughout the cities, peripheries, and countryside, fishers’ migration and its infrastructures (Xiang & Lindquist, 2014) are all intersected and connected through port. And the port, or fishing ports in particular, is a multidimensional array to explore the migration governance, global supply chain, brokerage industries, and labor practices in fishing industries. This project would also illustrate legal-spatial practices of the states deflect and eschew responsibility for labor rights in its own territories, the ports. Sally Yea (2020) have illustrated the trend of states avoid protection responsibilities for the human trafficking victims in its territorial boundaries. The project seeks to extend the concept of ‘jurisdictional exceptionalism’ (Yea, 2020) within the state boundaries to investigate the consequences of the use of flag of convenience (FOC), offshore outsourcing, and designation of special economic zones (special fishing ports).