Migrations and Forced Labor in the Maritime Economies of Globalized Asia – FORSEA

In a flagship region of global supply chain capitalism and a global hub for international migration, contemporary pathways of migration proliferate and labor geographies diversify. Against a backdrop of rapid changes in economies and labor markets, uneven North-South development and South-South competitions, intensive use of migrant labor, and inequalities, within Asian globalized labor regimes new situations of forced labor daily emerge. While a robust international scholarship has apprehended the link between migration, labor and inequality, there is a lack of research on contemporary forms of forced labor -in Asia as elsewhere. FORSEA examines and explains the diversification of the contemporary situations of forced labor through the unexplored lens of Southeast Asian migrants' experiences of migration, work and inequality in the emerging shipping and fishing sectors.
Through the prism of globalized Asia, which reflects our transforming global economies and workplaces, it questions, problematizes, and nuances the notion of forced labor in a context of globalization. FORSEA contributes to theoretical debates on the transformations of migration, work, and inequality within this context. Empirically, it examines the diversification of Southeast Asian workers' experiences of migration, labor and inequality in the ports and on commercial and fishing vessels in Taiwan, Singapore and Indonesia.
Methodologically, it employs a multi-sited ethnographic approach to consider both the political economy of labor migration alongside individual migration experiences in a globalized labor market. It analyzes national and international migration and labor policies, traces individual pathways of labor and migration, and explores how forced labor is daily experienced and practiced.