Unanticipated transformations of infrapolitics

Drawing on a decade of multi-country ethnographic fieldwork with Vietnamese migrant offshore fishermen contracted to work on Taiwanese vessels, this article presents a new account of infrapolitics that emphasizes the importance of its unanticipated transformations. To resist despotism onboard, Vietnamese fishermen planned their eventual escape, deserted ships, and absconded onto the shores of Trinidad and Tobago. Desertion helped increase immigration control and interior enforcement in Trinidad and propelled the Taiwanese and Vietnamese states to overhaul their migrant labor programs. Studying desertion turns attention toward the concept of ‘revolutionary agency’ and utility and contours of infrapolitics in transnational agrarian political economies.