Perilous Waters: People Smuggling, Fishermen, and Hyper-precarious Livelihoods on Rote Island, Eastern Indonesia

Recent research has found that since 2001 a disproportionate number of Indonesian offenders sentenced to jail for people smuggling, both in Indonesia and Australia, are fishermen from Eastern Indonesia, the poorest part of the country.2 Based on three field trips to the Eastern Indonesian island of Rote, a frequent departure point for asylum seekers to Australia, and semi-structured interviews, this article investigates the socio-economic backgrounds of sentenced offenders from this area to explain their high numbers amongst imprisoned people smugglers. Through the narratives of fishermen who have been involved in the transport of asylum seekers, this article seeks to reconstruct their decision-making and risk-taking strategies in light of their generally precarious lives. Their motivations to become involved in people smuggling are correlated with two structural problems they face, overfishing and pollution, which have exacerbated their economic situation over the last years. Understanding the local structural constraints of these impoverished fishermen helps provide a clearer understanding of why and how transnational people-smuggling networks succeed in recruiting them. Rather than viewing the decision to become involved in people smuggling as an individual’s poor judgement and its negative outcome as self-inflicted misery, this article stresses the notion of collective hyper-precariousness, which is enhanced by extrinsic factors such as Australian policies that have further limited the meagre choices for making a living legally on Rote.

关键词：超级不安定性，非法化和犯罪化的工作，渔民，人口走私，东印度尼西亚，澳大利亚。

最近的研究发现自2001年以来印度尼西亚和澳大利亚因人口走私而被判刑入狱的印度尼西亚罪犯中来自印度尼西亚最贫困地区—东印度尼西亚—的渔民人数超出其人口比例。本文根据三次到东印度尼西亚罗特岛（到澳大利亚寻求庇护者经常从这里出发）的田野调查，以及半结构化的访谈，对来自这个地区的因走私人口而被判入狱的罪犯的社会经济背景加以调查，来解释他们在服刑的人口走私罪犯中所占的高比例现象。通过分析曾涉入运送寻求庇护者活动中的渔民的叙事，本文试图根据他们通常不安定的生活来重建他们的决策和甘冒风险的策略。他们涉入人口走私活动的背后动机是与其面临的两个结构性问题相关的：过分捕捞和污染在过去几年中恶化了他们的经济状况。对这些陷入贫困的渔民所受的当地结构性制约的理解有助于我们就跨国人口走私网络为什么而且是如何能成功地招募到他们运送寻求庇护者得出更为坚实的结论。

这篇论文并不将渔民卷入人口走私看成是其个人的糟糕的决定，或把它的负面结果看成自作自受，而是强调了集体超级不安定性这个概念，它被外部因素如澳大利亚政策的影响强化，进一步限制了本来就少得可怜的通过合法手段在罗特岛上维生的生计选择。

Translated from English by Li Guo