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 country2. 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. © Pacific Affairs.

Australia Structural poverty Imprisonment Fishermen people smuggling Hyper-precariousness Eastern Indonesia Illegal(ized) and criminalized work Subsistence livelihoods

socioeconomic status Rote Indonesia Australia smuggling poverty marine pollution asylum seeker subsistence overfishing East Nusa Tenggara livelihood