Justice in the Offing? Trade Union Politics in the Shipping Industry

Abstract

In this article, ‘the offing’ is used as a metaphor to think about demands for justice. The offing literally refers to the most distant part of the sea in view, while the phrase ‘in the offing’ means that something that is about to happen, or about to appear on the horizon, but is not there yet. The perpetual movement of commercial vessels sailing the oceans and cutting across multiple legal jurisdictions generates risk and profit at the same time. Discussions and struggles to bring about norms of social justice for seafarers working aboard ocean-going commercial vessels thus provide a prime example with which to consider the disembedding of workers’ rights from their national contexts along international supply chains. Oil tankers, container ships and freight carriers of all kinds that form part of the world’s fleet constitute moving working environments where labour-rights violations are everyday occurrences and ethnographic fieldwork often remains off limits. When, where and how is workers’ justice achieved in the liminal setting between shore and the distant offing? Based on ethnographic material, the article situates the anthropology of justice being advocated in this special issue in debates over labour rights in the global economy by questioning the aspirational, technocratic and transnational nature of maritime labour politics.