Supply Nets
Paper on this project published in Antipode journal here (PDF available here).
Online platform charting the rise of seafarer abandonment. Launch it here.
Map charting locations of ships on International Labor Organisation’s dartabase of seafarer abandonment here.
Cargo ships are the backbone of the world’s supply systems, moving around 80% of the world’s goods, but seafarers are frequently subjected to expoitative labor conditions. An extreme form of this is the rise of seafarer abandonment, a calculated practice that leaves crews stranded for months or years without pay, with little to no contact with their employer, and with no way home. Lack of food, drinking water and fuel for electricity are commonplace.
The economic and legal foundations of shipping have developed to protect shipowner’s profits whilst precaritising workers. Abandonment is just the logical end-point, an extreme form of the application of these systems. For this reason, it can provide us with a window into some of the mechanics of logistical capitalism as a whole.
Rather than frame abandonments as interruptions in otherwise smooth supply chains, this project focuses on the supply chain of abandonment itself. Moving through studies of debt, insurance and flagging, it seeks to map out the specific conditions, actors and processes that allow it to happen. Supply chains are more like supply nets: matrices of interconnected lines, prone to becoming tangled, in which workers find themselves caught.