Fisheries development, labour and working conditions on Myanmar's marine resource frontier

摘要

The history of fisheries development in Myanmar is poorly understood. A growing body of evidence suggests that working conditions in some of Myanmar's fisheries are extremely precarious. The treatment of labour in the wider fisheries literature has been fragmented. Drawing together these strands, this paper addresses two central questions through a qualitative analysis of marine fisheries in Mon State in Southeast Myanmar: (1) How have marine fisheries developed in a context of broader political, economic, technological and environmental change? (2) What are the characteristics of labour conditions in Mon's marine fisheries, and how have these been shaped by the context of fisheries development? We show that Mon's fisheries have transformed over the past three decades. Fishing has become more reliant on migrant labour, and a range of unsafe and exploitative labour practices are increasingly apparent. The paper makes several contributions: First, we address gaps in the knowledge on the nature of fisheries in Myanmar. Second, we extend previous research on working conditions in fisheries to show how labour arrangements and exploitation in fisheries emerge in the context of place-specific geographies of environmental, social and economic change. Third, we highlight the need for greater critical attention to labour and working conditions in research on fisheries of all scales.