Written by Shao-Yun Chang, Vanny El Rahman, and Beatrice Zani
Image credit: Vessels in Indonesia. Provided by Vanny El Rahman.
Readjusting and Staying Afloat
So far, the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade (ART) has left government officials and employers scrambling for solutions as the clock is already ticking. To stay afloat, vessel owners will no doubt have to readjust and reposition themselves and, more importantly, re-examine their relationships with the fishers, on whom they depend to make fishing possible. Although the fishing industry in general has taken steps to improve working conditions, such as providing Wi-Fi on distant-water fishing vessels and installing shower facilities at fishing ports, the hierarchical power relationship between vessel owners and fishers remains largely unchanged. What makes the ART unsettling for employers is less its potential to upend the fishing industry. Instead, it is a powerful revelation of how fishers have been treated as disposable products on vessels and a forceful call for solutions. Since employers have not had to pay recruitment fees, fishers have limited employment security, as owners easily break contracts early when the fishing season ends or when the fisher is too sick to work.
Back in Taiwan’s northern fishing port, a migrant fisher on a mackerel vessel expresses concerns about his uncertain future. “I’ve been working on this vessel for 11 years. Who knows whether the owner will be willing to apply for a longer-term work permit for me? He will have to increase my salary to 40,000 NTD to meet the requirements. With that salary, he can almost get two new fishers. At this port, so many fishers have been unsuccessful. They ask, but their employers refuse and hire more new fishers to fill their spots instead.” In Taiwan, most migrant workers are capped after 12 years of work. To extend their stay beyond the limit, fishers must be approved for mid-level technical roles under the Long-term Retention Program for Migrant Workers to continue working. However, many employers refuse, as they would have to increase fishers’ salaries and pay application and processing fees to the manning agency (fishers have quoted their agency charge at around 60,000 NTD per application). Ironically, these veteran migrant fishers have often accumulated extensive knowledge working at sea, social and linguistic resources, and assist with all kinds of tasks on vessels. The employment structure has long enabled owners to dispose of and discard fishers wilfully.
Before Setting Sail
Recruitment and placement fees paid to Taiwanese manning agencies are just the tip of the iceberg. In Indonesia, the process of finding a job abroad is tedious, and many depend on brokers for their services. In Tegal, Central Java, one of Indonesia’s largest migrant fisher enclaves, a 25-year-old aspiring fisher told us how much he had to pay before setting sail. “I paid 1 million IDR (about 61 USD) for a medical checkup and 2 million IDR (about 121 USD) for my passport,” he said. These were not the official fees. In fact, both had been marked up to nearly three times their original price. When we asked whether he knew the actual prices and why the costs had risen so sharply, he nodded. “I know. A medical checkup should only cost around 500,000 IDR (about 30 USD), and a passport around 650,000 IDR (about 39 USD). But I couldn’t manage everything myself. There was too much paperwork to prepare, so I relied on brokers to handle it,” he explained. He also knew he would need to set aside an additional 5 million IDR (about 303 USD) for other requirements, including obtaining a seafarer’s book, Basic Safety Training certification, and visa processing. Like the earlier expenses, he was fully aware that brokers had also marked up these costs.
During our fieldwork in Indonesia, we found that manning agencies were no longer interested in making money from paperwork services. This was because the government had tightened restrictions on informal intermediaries, while handling paperwork simply did not generate enough profit for manning agencies. As a result, brokers, most of whom operate independently of recruitment agencies, have stepped in to expand their services, making these practices increasingly difficult to regulate. They usually target inexperienced prospective fishers. As one broker mentioned, “They are less critical than experienced workers. They believe whatever I tell them.
Meanwhile, experienced workers always bombard me with questions, like who the manning agency is, how much will be deducted from their salary, when they will depart, and many more.” He added, “Apart from paperwork services, I also charge them an operational fee of 5 million IDR (about 303 USD). I use the money for communication and to pay the manning agency to make sure my worker is given priority for deployment.” The broker’s rationale is not to be understood solely as predatory intent. Rather, the justification reveals tough questions about the ecosystem that facilitates workers’ transnational mobility and fulfils their desire for better financial prospects.
To what extent the ART will reshape this ecosystem remains uncertain. While the trade agreement will undoubtedly have implications for Taiwan’s migration regime, it was never intended to directly resolve forced labour in the fishing industry, whose structural causes extend far beyond the capacity of Taiwanese employers, recruitment agencies, and the government. Nevertheless, one thing is certain: it will change the way Indonesian recruitment agencies and brokers operate.
Image credit: Port infrastructure in Indonesia. Provided by Vanny El Rahman.
The ART: A Double-Edged Sword
For fishers, the ART is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it could attract more Indonesian fishers to Taiwan as the country gradually loses its appeal among younger generations. The prospective migrant fisher from Tegal, in Central Java, revealed that Taiwan and China were the two destinations he avoided. “I was told that Taiwanese and Chinese employers are demanding and unpleasant,” he said. Nonetheless, given his current financial situation, he could only afford to work on a distant-water longline vessel, where he would not have to pay fees upfront because the costs would be deducted from his monthly salary. He also knew that Taiwan’s coastal and offshore fishing sectors generally offered better wages and stronger labour and human rights protections. Yet securing that job would require him to pay tens of millions of rupiah prior to departure, whereas working on a longline vessel required only around 7 million IDR (about USD 424). Had he been able to afford the higher cost, he implied he would have chosen to work on an offshore fishing vessel in Taiwan. If the zero-fee policy is fully implemented, it may lure more Indonesian fishers to Taiwan.
On the other hand, the ART may also lead to the proliferation of illicit practices. Applications for the Long-term Retention Program for Migrant Workers offer a telling example. Although the program requires employers to increase workers’ salaries, many workers receive no pay raise in practice. Many fishers are willing to accept this arrangement as long as they can continue working in Taiwan. This is closely tied to the reality that returning to Indonesia would mean earning only around 100,000 IDR (about 6 USD) per day as a daily fisher. It is also inseparable from the perception that Indonesian workers are generally docile, obedient, and “religious.” Many regard such illegal practices as part of God’s will, believing that accepting them will bring blessings, whereas rejecting them may cause them to lose those blessings. Employers, in turn, have little reason to object because they can retain semi-skilled workers without paying higher salaries. As employers are required to shoulder the full cost of recruitment, some may instead seek ways to exploit legal loopholes to offset these additional expenses.
As fishers and employers ride this incoming new wave, no best strategy is in sight. The only hope is that ART creates a much-needed reckoning that breaks the echo chamber among policy-makers, employers, brokers, and fishers. At the end of the day, fishers and owners are in the same boat, with a shared goal of keeping the business afloat.
Shao-Yun Chang 張韶韻 is a cultural anthropologist and postdoctoral researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). Her research investigates transnational migration between East Asia and Southeast Asia, focusing on multicultural policies, human rights discourse, and migrants’ access to healthcare. More broadly, her work examines the processes of racialisation and exclusion from a postcolonial perspective.
Vanny El Rahman is a doctoral researcher in Asia-Pacific Regional Studies at National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan. His research interests include migration studies, migrant labour unions, and Taiwan’s migrant worker regime, as well as terrorism and radicalism. His current research focuses on Indonesian migrant care workers in Taiwan and migrant-led unions.
Beatrice Zani is a sociologist and ethnographer and a research fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). Her research focuses on transnational migrant labour in the Asian fishing and maritime transport industries (China, Taiwan, Singapore, Indonesia). She examines the interconnections between labour and commodity mobilities, the reconfigurations of globalised work, and the role of supply chains, informal economies, and digitalisation in the transformations of contemporary capitalism. She’s the PI of the French National Research Agency (ANR)-funded project FORSEA: Migrations and Forced Labour in the Maritime Economies of Globalised Asia (2026-2029).
This article was published as part of the special issue on Maritime Borders and Fisheries in Taiwan.