ABSTRACT

This volume studies the coastal and riparian fishing communities of three Asian countries – Cambodia, India and Sri Lanka. It explores issues of migration and movement, gender relations, wellbeing, and nature-society relations common among these communities, and studies the impacts of internal and external pressures such as changing state policies, increased market exposure and unstable environmental situations. It also discusses the changes needed to ensure safe migration, social inclusion and the gendered well-being of fishers in these countries, and identifies the roles that social networks and collective action play in bringing about these improvements.

Fisherfolk in Cambodia, India and Sri Lanka presents a rigorously investigated account of the peoples and production systems of some of Asia’s most populated and contested but dynamic and productive coasts and floodplains. The book will be of importance to students and researchers of Asian studies, development studies, geography, sociology, migration studies, gender studies, and minority studies.

chapter 1|24 pages

Fishers on the move

Changing livelihoods, gendered entanglements, and well-being

chapter 2|16 pages

Migration for capital accumulation

Changing class dynamics among small-scale fishers on the Coromandel Coast, Tamil Nadu

chapter 3|17 pages

Adapting to diminishing fish resources in Cambodia

Fisheries on the shoulders of women and migrating adult children in fishing communities

chapter 6|20 pages

To migrate or not

Social well-being and gendered household decision-making in fishing communities on the west and east coasts of Sri Lanka

chapter 7|20 pages

Fishing in distant waters

Issues of identity and well-being among migrant fishers on the west coast of Tamil Nadu

chapter 9|17 pages

Mobility in contexts of precarity

Kin solidarity and migrant networks among small-scale fishers in coastal Tamil Nadu

chapter 10|17 pages

Mobilizing for and against migration

Gendered networks, cooperation, and collective action in fishing communities on the west and east coasts of Sri Lanka

chapter 11|15 pages

Gender and power struggle in community fisheries in Cambodia

Creating space for women’s leadership

chapter 12|22 pages

Livelihoods, migration, and mobility

The distribution of consumption expenditure in fishing communities in Cambodia, India, and Sri Lanka