Beyond metaphor and materiality: centring labour in ocean imaginaries

Keywords: oceans, labour, indigenous, migration, caste
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Friday
Session Start / End Time: 2/25/2022 02:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/25/2022 03:20 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 12

Abstract

Our paper seeks to address and extend research on the oceans through the experiences of migrant fishworkers in India, during the lockdown that followed the Covid -19 pandemic. The paper is based upon the movement of indigenous (Adivasi) communities that act as labour for the fisheries sector in Goa, a coastal state in Southern India. The paper was conceived and partially written after the experience of the first lockdown in India, where relief work indicated that labour on fishing boats comprised of in majority, indigenous people from contiguous forest regions of central India– and that existing frameworks for understanding labour, fisheries and other existing conceptual lens of oceanic thinking alone cannot explain the experiences and trajectory of this movement.

Centring the question of Adivasi workers at sea, the paper draws from debates on political economy, feminism, race, caste and critical geography to make the case that bodies that labour at sea must be understood as playing a critical role in constituting oceanic spaces and that more broadly labour movements from land to sea and vice-versa can lead to an introspection of existing forms of oceanic thinking, critically interrogating current frameworks of labour, migration, capitalism and post humanist natures in relation to the seas. Utilising and tracing the trajectory of different forms of oceanic thinking, we attempt to re-think the ‘human’ in oceanic spaces as part of connected and relational geographies that extend from the coast to the forests of central India.