Of human bondage: Tales of migrant fishermen in Thailand

The mainstream anti-trafficking movement asserts a sharp distinction between freedom and unfreedom—between “free” waged employment, on the one hand, and “modern slavery”, on the other. Yet, the modern slavery concept fails to capture the reality of most forms of unfree labor today, such as where financial debts bond workers and restrict their options, and where moral obligations discourage workers from absconding without repayment. In this article, I present narratives of debt-bonded Myanmar migrants who labor in Thailand’s fishing industry, at the southern port city of Ranong. The labor relations depicted here are not accurately characterized as modern slavery. But they are nonetheless unfree in various ways: employers provide credit to cover heightened registration fees as ways to keep migrant fishermen in otherwise disagreeable employment arrangements, while the threat of deportation and workers’ kinship obligations close off the possibility of fleeing without repayment.