Abstract
This chapter engages exclusively with narratives of mobility and insider-outsider configurations among migrants, longer-term sedentary and settler collectives. It is particularly concerned with lateral and a-sociative modes of sambandam. In particular, the analysis reveals how insider-outsider configurations do not always cohere with meanings and practices of inclusion and exclusion. By drawing on several case studies of migrant, local and settler spaces, the chapter illustrates how convivial and relatively more “cold” dependencies unfold among diverse fisher groups characterised by different modes of production, household rhythms and forms of dwelling. Furthermore, it demonstrates how social divisions and frames of “othering” do not always cohere with religious and ethnolinguistic identities and more intuitive modes of emplacement and belonging.
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- 1.
Pfaff-Czarnecka (2013) illustrates three dimensions that constitute the “bonding properties” of belonging which entail: commonality (of sharing meanings, experience, etc.), reciprocity (shared understanding through norm reification, mutuality, etc.) and attachments (the ties that bind people to the material and immaterial world). While I find the last layer of her heuristic more useful in the context of this analysis, her conceptualisation of belonging nevertheless remains restrictive in the sense that it singularly pervades social relations that are essentially affinitive and cohesive.
- 2.
Fieldnotes: September 2, 2012, Town and Gravets (fieldsite base in Alles Gardens).
- 3.
This list does not attempt to be exhaustive but outlines the more visible subcategories of seasonal migrants related to the fishing industry. Travelling female shell gleaners were briefly mentioned (see Chap. 3); however, I did not come across any during my fieldwork.
- 4.
The fish species that is caught may vary considerably. While vadis such as Salapiyaru specialise in more longlining for predatory species such as milk shark and marlin and netting for stingray, others may focus on gill-netting smaller species such as flying fish and trenched sardinella.
- 5.
Older migrants concurred that in the 1960s, before the enforcement of mandatory primary and secondary schooling, children would often camp with their parents, assisting in fishing and fish drying operations.
- 6.
Fieldnotes: September 24, 2012, Kuchchaveli.
- 7.
It is sometimes erroneously thought that their bilingualism came about as a result of their seasonal migration over several generations.
- 8.
- 9.
A man I met from Chilaw who would migrate annually with some of his village members had the misfortune of being taken on such an expedition under the command of a small naval unit. During the clearing, his leg was blown up by a landmine and subsequently had to be amputated. He subsequently took to net mending and stated that he was never compensated for the loss of his leg.
- 10.
Fieldnotes: August 19, 2012, Kuchchaveli.
- 11.
However, these did not often entail the charges made against particular enclaves in Trincomalee that resorted to using dynamite and lights.
- 12.
A pseudonym.
- 13.
Seasonal migrants , particularly those who encamp, are expected to register with the local Fisheries Department office.
- 14.
Jayanntha (1992: 19) argues that these ties were not wholly exploitative and “exhibited a strong flavour of paternalistic condescension” in which mudalalis at times were able to exercise “moral as well as economic leadership” over his/her clients. Moreover as Bavinck (1984) asserts, while these interdependencies rest on asymmetric power relations, fishers are not as indentured to their financiers as it may seem, for often contractual relations had a high turnover rate or were terminated before loans were paid in full. Therefore, such interdependencies, while being irrevocably hierarchical, were mediated just as much by trust as by exploitation.
- 15.
Fieldnotes: September 7, 2012, Kuchchaveli.
- 16.
Similarly, the use of the village well in Salavari was paid for, and the visits of camp migrant men into the village were perceived with as much suspicion as disdain, for often younger men from Chilaw were known to make snide sexual remarks at local women.
- 17.
Fieldnotes: January 14, 2013, Chilaw.
- 18.
Moreover, local family names and the primacy of one’s family reputation remained useful tradable devices. Being a kinsman or woman of a particular migrant notable in part justifies why most intergenerational migrants in the survey placed family name as their first layer of identification.
- 19.
The use of padu sites was regulated under the State Ordinance and Land Development Ordinance Acts , and in order to secure a licence in Trincomalee at least, the permission of the Land Commissioner had to be sought. A tract of land assigned to a padu could be as long as 300 meters along the beachfront. Any number of vadis, usually as palm-thatched structures, could be made. However, these could not be permanent constructions.
- 20.
Interview with an officer at the Fisheries Department in Trincomalee (September 24, 2012). The extent to which this rule was applied remains a source of contention.
- 21.
I was hard pressed to find any migrants from the deep south that occupied padu spaces in northern Trincomalee.
- 22.
The extent to which beach-seining continued in Trincomalee over wartime is difficult to determine and would have been spatially differentiated. Sites closer to Nilaveli, for example, were in operation, and operators in places like Salapiyaru stated that they had been practising beach-seining for the past 15 years. However, west coast migrants—largely from Puttalam—started acquiring sites only after 2009. It might not be wrong to state that cross-coastal migration spanning 6 months or more resumed after wartime.
- 23.
Data obtained at the Kuchchaveli Divisional Secretariat in early September 2012.
- 24.
Some karaivalai operators stated that they were in debt by as much as 11 lakhs (approximately 6500 EUR) as a result of steadily declining catches.
- 25.
The average monthly wage of a kuli worker would range from 13,000 to 15,000 rupees.
- 26.
The name has been altered.
- 27.
The padu itself had been functioning for over 15 years, and its user rights were transferred after 2009.
- 28.
The only crewmember I met from Mullaitivu was from Vishnamaduwa, close to Nayaru.
- 29.
Some of these women constitute parts of household units. However, those who are landless and work alongside their children, siblings and husbands I have noticed may not get paid in cash but would be given a share of the catch. I knew of a single mother and her two teenage daughters who lived in Irrakakandy who would together on average bring in 60 kilograms of fish in a single day.
- 30.
While this may have been the case in parts of Kuchchaveli, I do not claim that it could be unreflectively applied across all littoral spaces in Trincomalee or the east coast for that matter.
- 31.
A pseudonym.
- 32.
An exporter based on the west coast runs a small business in which crabs are iced and sent across to Colombo to be flown to Singapore.
- 33.
A pseudonym.
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Siriwardane-de Zoysa, R. (2018). Transversal Ties Across the Local-Migrant-Settler Complex. In: Fishing, Mobility and Settlerhood. MARE Publication Series, vol 20. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78837-1_5
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