“We can’t afford to be picky”: Gender, Brokerage, and Informality in Thailand’s Fishing Sector

• In Event: International Migration Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): 08. Gendered processes in migration

Abstract

This paper explores the experiences of Cambodian migrant women working informally in Thailand’s fishing sector. While male migrants working on fishing boats are the focus of most regulatory and advocacy efforts, the informal labor of women—central to the functioning of the fishing sector—has often remained invisible. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper makes two interventions. First, we highlight how gaps in Thailand’s migration regime produce a paradoxical status for many women: they routinely hold documents granting them legal status, however they also work in unprotected, unregulated, and technically illegal jobs. Second, we offer a grounded ethnographic portrait of women’s labor experiences, highlighting ways that informality and employment brokerage intersect to produce insecure and exploitive conditions of work. Women’s work in this sector is mediated through social networks and informal brokers—often other migrants—who manage job access, compensation, and working conditions. These culturally embedded brokerage practices intersect with women’s informal status, making it hard to challenge wage theft, and allowing supervisors to impose exploitive shadow conditions on workers. By centering women’s experiences, this paper reveals critical policy gaps in Thailand’s labor and migration frameworks and argues for greater scholarly and regulatory attention to the intersection of gender, informality, and precarity in Southeast Asian migration.

Authors

• Sokha Eng, University of Massachusetts Boston

• Maryann Bylander, Lewis and Clark College